Christopher Paolini was delighted to see snow on Mount Wellington last Tuesday. He showed me his camera with pictures of the magnificent mountains of his home state of Montana which he remarks Tasmania reminds him of. I can imagine him walking those mountains letting his fertile imagination take hold. We have a great advisory in Christopher who aims to talk up Tassie to whomever he can!
Christopher is always willing to take on a challenge, whether it is to be a salesman for self publishing his first book or on this tour, climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge and taking flight around Tasmania’s wilderness, where just maybe, he might be able to find a suitable environment where other mythical creatures live.
Christopher is in Australia to promote the latest and final of his Inheritance cycle of novels, called appropriately ‘Inheritance’ The novels were written as a tribute to the science fantasy that he loved and grew up with, as well his own desire to put his stamp on the genre. It was the David Eddings novel ‘The Ruby Knight’ that started it all for him and at the age of fifteen he began his own epic story. Christopher is an amazing young man, fluent in mythology from many different cultures he has a great grasp of the vastness and interconnectedness of literature through the ages and talks about a dialogue between past and present cultures and the place of science fantasy in the scheme of things.
I ask Christopher about the resurgence in fantasy fiction including vampires, fairies, angels, werewolves, dragons and more. Christopher explains that to him all classical lit is fantasy fiction that stretches back to Shakespeare’s Scottish play with it’s supernaturality. ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’ with its fairy folk and, even Anna Karenina because the language was foreign to him as a reader, so in effect it too was fantasy fiction drawing a parallel between difficult to pronounce Russian names and difficult to pronounce names of characters and planets in science fantasy novels.
Christopher sees fantasy fiction as dealing with the universal experience of growing up but in a world where fears such as that of spiders can be externalised to a greater magnitude, for example fears of spiders can be magnified in it’s intensity to the legitimate presence of a spider as big as a house!! The stock characters of fantasy fiction are a wise mentor, young person, a quest, a beautiful heroine, romance, a dragon and a sword!
Christopher, the fantasy fiction superhero is is a big fan of Jane Austen, particularly for her humour and has Jane Austen ‘s ‘Pride and Prejudice with Zombies’, (where Jane Austen meets fantasy fiction) at home, ready to read after this tour. I ask Christopher what he thinks of this reworking of classical literature and indeed he is all for it. He explains that even many of Shakespeare’s plays were based on pre-existing stories.
He sees this form of fan fiction as flattery and although he doesn’t read the fan fiction that is written about his characters for obvious legal reasons, he is extremely flattered that people would love the characters so much as to create new adventures for them.
Christopher has worked hard on selling his books from the early days when he was self published and would go and talk at book stores in medieval costume. his skills as a salesman are clear when he relates how he once sold a book to a man that could not speak English, admittedly the book was for the man’s girlfriend.
Christopher has also indulged in some arm wrestling on his tours and has won all competitions so far, but his publicist has warned him of indulging in such a dangerous activity for an author on a signing tour!
Christopher’s original book has been made into a film and he talks about the surreal aspects of being alone in a theatre watching actors speaking the dialogue he wrote. Christopher has ideas for many new novels and hopes to visit in his next literary outing, one of those planets with the impossible to pronounce names and if there is an absence of swords no matter, he is a more than capable arm wrestler!
Christopher’s tour continues in WA:
Monday, 25 June 2012, 17.00 -18.30
Venue:
Dymocks
Garden City Shopping Centre
125 -133 Riseley Street
BOORAGOON, Perth,
WA, 6154
Tickets:
Free event
Paula Xiberras
