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Ask Jeff VanderMeer

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Corporal Hicks:
I'd like you all to welcome Jeff VanderMeer. He recently authored the latest fan-hit novel, Predator South Sea China. And well, he's kindly offered to come here and answer your questions regarding the novel, any of his other novels and any future works.

So you know the drill. This thread'll work just like any of the others. Be pleasant and respectful and etc. Jeff is taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to you.

So...ask away.

JeffVanderMeer:
Oh, don't bother being respectful and polite. Fire away!
Jeff

War Wager:
Hi Jeff,

I must say I'm very impressed with 'South China Sea'. Not only did you give as good human characters to follow, you gave us an interesting Predator and gave it a personality of it's own. It was a fantastic read. At the moment I have two questions:

What part/s of the story were the most difficult to write?

Reading back on it, is there anything you wish you had included or are you totally happy with the finished product?

JeffVanderMeer:
Hey, thanks!

I think the hardest thing to do was to get in enough info about the characters so hopefully you'd care about them, without slowing things down too much. That's why you learn stuff later in the novel about some of them, because I didn't feel I could slow down too much before that.

I also had some trouble with the temple night battle scene. It's not very long in the final version, but it still feels too long to me. If I had something to do over, I might refigure that scene. The main problem being--I don't see Gustat or Horia being stupid enough go over to the temple and take on the Predator there. I think in a standard action movie, they'd all go there. But I wanted as much as possible to write a novel where most of the people in it try to act as smart as possible and still mostly come to grief.

I always think in Predator or Aliens books or movies you're doing the fans a disservice if you don't show them something about the Predator or Alien they might not have known before. So I would've liked to get in more stuff like the fact that the Predator uses the 'dreds for balance and kind of like a cat's whiskers. More views of the Predator fighting on other worlds, that kind of thing. But, then, again, you want to keep the story moving.

I noticed some readers had some problems with the alien virus/bacteria that winds up affecting Nikolai so drastically, so I might've messed around with that a bit more. I just liked the idea of the Predator being a sloppy carnivore and bringing in an invasive species from his last kill.

I loved Pol Pot the croc so much I had to resist making him a main character. But I think that was the right decision.

War Wager:
Thanks for the reply, the croc was pretty cool I must admit.

I'm aware that you have an idea for an 'Aliens' novel. I would like to know which 'Alien' movie is your favourite and how you would personally protray The Alien. Eg the creepy gliding wraith from 'Alien' or the screaming space bug from 'Aliens'.

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