| Who is Steven Gordon?
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(Steve with Beaver the Pomeranian in Riverside Park) I, Steven Gordon, am the author of the Clifford Croft series, among other books. A little about me: 1) I'm a graduate of Yale University (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and from Harvard Law School (no Laude, no Cum). 2) I created the very first large scale experts site on the internet, Allexperts.com, and sold it to About.com. 3) I and my work have been featured in over 80 magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, USA Today, Wired magazines, and others. 4) I started Allreaders.com, powered by a unique search engine that lets one search for books by plots, characters, and writing style, and built the site up into one of the largest book-related sites on the internet. 5) I used to live in the very dirty New York City, unfortunately, where every inch of sidewalk is covered with
spent gum or animal or bum droppings, where cashiers think time is an abstract and endless concept, and where the insane and the fetid roam the streets. Now I live on a houseboat on the Hudson River.
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I think most books are boring.
I think most science fiction books are boring
There are a very small number of science fiction books, which, while largely boring, have some interesting aspects, and because those books were the least uninteresting, I found myself reading them over and over. I enjoyed the first three Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison. I liked the first three Timothy Zahn Star Wars books, but only the parts dealing with Grand Admiral Thrawn. I liked the Lord of the Rings, but only the parts where Gandalf was talking. I even liked some of the early Robert A. Heinlein books, before it all became about sex and polygamy.
Over the years, I started to think what I liked about these books. Was it Zahn's descriptions of Princess Leia trying not to hurt the Wookie's feelings? Was it Tolkein's pages and pages of description of trees? Was it Lazarus Long talking about which wife to add to his family next? No, that wasn't it.
I found, thinking about it, that I didn't care for descriptions of things--ten pages of description of Rama, or Ringworld, or any other structure didn't really interest me. I found I didn't care about idle dialogue--what's for dinner? How's Bob doing? I found I also didn't care about pages and pages of feelings, or as I call them, feeeeeelings. Did Chewbacca feel guilty for shedding on Princess Leia? Did Luke feel sad because he gave 3PO more quality time than R2-D2? Was Sam really going to burst into tears every time he thought about the shire? Who knows? More importantly, who cares? I find a lot of scifi to be brooding like this, with pages of whining about hurt feelings.
So what do I like? Over time I realized I liked dialogue. In fact, witty dialogue. Characters bantering, even verbally battling each other. After all, it is drama that produces conflict. I didn't mind characters having feelings--they could be angry, or sad or happy or whatever--but I didn't want to read ten pages discussing it. Invariably in most books the most common emotion felt was guilt, and for me, reading about guilt wasn't fun. So I would find myself only reading the dialogue in books, and then only the dialogue that I felt was witty.
That should explain why my writing is mostly dialogue, and most of it (I hope) is witty, without verging into ridiculous parody. Humor is fine, but parody drains the drama from a story. I tried to have interesting and different characters who would conflict with each other, and I think that shows through pretty clearly in my books.
My good and not so good writing--Steve Gordon First Generation Writings
First, the not so good:
My first book, which is not available for publication anywhere, was a full length parody of the Hobbit. You will never be able to read it because while I thought it was hysterical at 18, I know better now. My third book was so poorly written that I refuse to even tell you what it was about.
Then came the somewhat good: My second book, which is available here, is called Clashik Cube. It's an action adventure stories with some funny lines, but is hardly my best work. Initially written while I was in college, it's been rewritten twice since, but, honestly, is not nearly as good as my other books (which, in my estimation, makes it as merely good as most other scifi novels).
I tend to lose track of exactly what came after that, but during this period I wrote Unexpected Wizardry, my first and so far only attempt at fantasy. I was trying to write a grand fantasy like Tolkein with additional humor injected into it, but got neither quite right. I also feel that this book is merely as good as most other scifi out there, but doesn't hold a candle to my later books.
During this time I also wrote Finish Line, an attempt at political satire, also not very good, because I was trying to write what I thought people wanted rather than what I wanted, and ended up with a book relatively heavy on descriptions and the hated fee-lings. When my next projects, Newt World and Teddy World, are finished, you'll see real political satire.
Another book I wrote was called Future Park, the story of an amusement park of the future. I loved the concept of an amusement park of the future, and even loved all the descriptions I put in the book. It's a great read just for that. However, I didn't get the characters quite right... they were all too sensitive for my tastes. A lot of people tell me they liked this book, however, so who am I to judge?
My good writing:--Steve Gordon Second Generation writings
In my mid to late 20's, I started to learn how to write well. My first really good book was Infiltrator, which introduced the character of Clifford Croft. At the time I thought this book was excellent and I was very excited about having written it. But in time I would learn to do even better.
I did a sequel with Croft, called The Essential Mindreader, which introduced a single character with mental powers, Dalbo Alto. This book begins the development of other characters in the Croft galaxy.
(During this period I also wrote Redweld Warrior, the story of life in a scummy New York law firm, which I think was very well written and any lawyer can understand and perhaps identify with.)
My very good writing--Steve Gordon Third Generation writings
For some reason I got the idea to write a grand story about a planetary invasion by an Insect race. I have no idea now, just four years later, why I decided to write about an insect race, because in retrospect I think the Insects are the least appealing part of the story.
But The Invasion of August is where I feel I first started to make a quantum leap in my writing. I created a large number of interesting characters, each with their own agendas and peculiarities. Croft was the focus of the story but no longer had to carry the story on his own. The interaction between the characters were excellent. I created an entire storyline for the galaxy, in fact creating a timeline and the idea for 15-20 novels to cover the events in this galaxy. The idea would be that our hero, Clifford Croft, would encounter a different 'genre' enemy in each adventure--one time it could be robots, another time it could be mind control mutants, another time technologically advanced aliens, etc.--covering most major subgenres of science fiction. So when I got the idea for the Invasion of August, it wasn't just about a story of fighting insects, it was for a whole series of stories of Croft doing things in a larger galaxy. It's an excellent book, with great, witty dialogue.
The second book in the story, formerly called "Escape from the Insectoids" (that's right, originally they were called Insectoids--but when Star Trek Enterprise started to use the term after I did, that soured me on it) and is now called Flight of the War Admiral. I really liked this book. It was a simpler book, focusing on fewer characters and easier to follow, almost a series of related short stories. Croft wasn't even in the book but Idaho Took and the War Admiral had great chemistry with the secondary characters and the book flowed very well. And it fit in with the larger story of the Insect invasion to boot!
The third book, Death to the Insects!, was also well written. It was very complicated to write because I had to once again follow the plots of several characters whose plotlines would intersect each other at different times in the story, but it was a very rewarding, action oriented story with snappy dialogue (my favorite part: the visit to the planet of the Capybaras).
My next book, Nightfall on August, was the sequel to Death to the Insects and it had an intriguing idea: how would a society cope without electricity? The book is different from the others, because it doesn't focus on conflict as much as it focuses on the basics of survival, a nice chance of pace, I felt. But the survivors were not sensitive, guilt feeling Heinlein types, but rather Croft, Mongo, Levi, and Quick. It was this book where I started writing my "dual stories"--half the book about one group of characters, the other half about another group, doing something else. While Croft was coping without power on August, Idaho Took was investigating aliens who were abducting and experimenting on humans in a very creepy adventure (another subgenre).
My next book, Rise of the Standard Imperium, was the direct sequel to Nightfall. I thought the first half of Rise of the Standard Imperium was some of my best writing ever. Trapped on a spooky alien spaceship with a monster chasing Croft is a subgenre I have wanted to explore for some time, and I think I did it quite well. The race to get back to August and restore electricity in time to stop a second invasion of the Insects, complete with the pitched battle on top of the mountain, was also some of my best writing.
My excellent writing--Steve Gordon Fourth Generation writings
Attack of the Bounty Hunters. Until I wrote "Still the Most Dangerous Game", I thought Attack of the Bounty Hunters was perhaps the best book I had ever written. I was very interested in the Silencer's character but so far we hadn't really seen much of his culture. This book was an exploration of the Silencer's culture (in dialogue form rather than description, of course) with a lot of humor to it.
Escape from Altera is trickier to categorize. It describes Idaho Took's struggle to survive in a brutal Slurian labor camp. It has some downbeat moments but I look at it as a struggle against adversity, and it has a lot of solid drama to it.
Until I wrote "Mind Bender", I thought Still the Most Dangerous Game was my best book--the subgenre being explored this time was "the game of being hunted". It was a great story, with a lot of funny lines as Croft is hunted by a killer while the Professor Capybara, arriving on the scene for the first time, is determinely trying to interview him. The story also focuses on Steven Quick, providing the fascinating insight into the mind of what a supergenius might be like.
As I write this I have just finished writing Mind Bender and I think it is my best novel so far. But then, I have a habit of thinking my most recent novel is the best. Mind Bender introduces very new and different adversaries, the Mind Bender, who can control minds, and the Twister, a powerful telekinetic. The politics between the two of them and the Terrible Thinker is very interesting to watch. I like this story very much; it had a great chapter which was all Mongo's (Mongo is one of my most favorite characters), and Croft had a lot of snappy dialogue.
What's next?
I have many ideas for many interesting novels, but I haven't as yet figured out a fun way of writing them. For example, I know full well what happens after "Rise of the Standard Imperium", and I could write it right now, but it wouldn't be amusing; I have yet to figure out an amusing way to tell the story. Until then I figure it out, I have to focus on what comes more easily to mind--Newt World and Teddy World. There will be more books in the Clifford Croft series, but only after I've satisfied myself that I can write one that will be sufficiently different from the ones before it. Only when I am really rich and famous will I simply grind out books for the money, just like Star Trek #500--Janeway and Kirk and Sisko and Archer and Picard must fight to stop a villain while coping with Spock's feelings about being human, Data's feelings about becoming human, B'elana's feelings about being Klingon, and Uhura's feelings about miniskirts... OR Star Wars # 500--the best friend of Grand Admiral Thrawn's second cousin's butler is out for revenge after Luke and Leia defeated Grand Admiral Thrawn's second cousin. Although Thrawn's second cousin's butler had never actually met Thrawn, he had read one of the previous Star Wars books and picked up some tactics from that.... OR Foundation and More Robots and Empire, where Golan Trevize must sip tea with R. Daneel Oliver and talk philosophically about how they would like the galaxy to be organized for the next 500 pages.