KAREN TRAVISS (1 of 2)

Her experiences in the British Military Reserve and as a Defense Correspondent bring something new to the table: a knowledge and understanding of the military that most writers could only hope to have. A relatively new author, Karen Travis has already gained enough recognition to write for Star Wars. Not only did she write Republic Commando: Hard Contact, a tie-in to the upcoming Video Game, but she is also slated to write three books in a 9-book series set approximately 10 years after the end of The New Jedi Order Series.

For more information on Karen Traviss and her other works and accomplishments, check out her official website HERE.

TUCWS: Hello Karen, and thank you very much for having a talk with us. First of all, how does it feel to be writing a Star Wars novel? Had you been a Star Wars fan to begin with?

Karen Traviss: I knew nothing about Star Wars to begin with - although I'd seen the movies, of course - but it's very satisfying to be working with something as culturally definitive as this. It's a very different universe and method of working to my own books and I enjoy the change.

The EU is an eye-opener. If I get snarky remarks from colleagues about SW being simplistic, an accusation that seems to be based on single climate planets, I challenge them to go and have a look at the EU material. I'm constantly finding stuff now that makes me stop and think, "Hang on...that's very clever..." And as I've said in other forums, there is nothing simplistic about the politics of SW. What I really like is that the EU acknowledges the harsh reality that the good guys can very easily become bad guys if it's expedient and they can justify it to themselves. Okay, you have a few out-and-out villains and heroes, but there's an awful lot of ambiguity in there too. I like ambiguity. There are no easy answers, and that's the sort of fiction I write so I slotted in there just fine.

TUCWS: You're a new author here, so could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your other novel?

KT: I'm a new author all round - this is my first year in print at novel length. City of Pearl (HarperCollins Eos) came out in March and the sequel Crossing The Line came out the same day as Republic Commando: Hard Contact. My first short stories were published in 2002 - Asimov's, On Spec - so basically I've done everything in two years. It's not surprising that people say, "Who is she? Where on earth did she come from? And why is Lucasfilm giving her a post-NJO series already?"

My wess'har wars trilogy (the third book, The World Before, is scheduled for November 2005) is part military SF, part anthropological. It's about a commercial mission from Earth that sets out to find a lost colony on a potentially lucrative planet and ends up finding it's blundered into a war zone, and the fundamentals of human culture - like commercial exploitation - just throw fat on the fire. The mission is protected by a detachment of Royal Marines, and like all the characters in the story, both humans and alien, they're forced to rethink all the certainties they took for granted about whose side they're on.

As you'd expect, it's murky in every sense, politically and personally, and there are no easy answers about who's right and who's wrong. The main characters have done some pretty bad things in their time and the villains are sincere and even courageous. And it takes a few books to explore that. I'm working on outlines for further books in that universe at the moment as well as separate and standalone novels.

TUCWS: You're a member of the British Military, correct? What is your job over there, and has it in any way helped you with writing Military Science Fiction?

KT: No, I used to be a member of the reserve forces - first the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service and then the Territorial Army. I was also a defense correspondent for a number of years. I'm actually a journalist by profession. Oddly, it's the defense job that has been most help in writing military SF: it gave me a wider view of the military than just the view from the reserve units, and, of course, plenty of contacts.

I also grew up in a naval city, and the navy definitely permeates you. Where I come from, it's actually changed the local dialect over the centuries.

I'm now a full-time novelist. I've worked in noisy newsrooms and in teams for so long that I'm not sure how I'll cope with the quiet and solitary life, but we'll see.

TUCWS: Republic Commando: Hard Contact is the second book based off of a computer game. How much is this book from the game, Republic Commando?

KT: It's more of a book based on detail from the game than a book of the game, so to speak.. Some of the elements of the game don't work in a book and vice versa. But we found as much common ground as we could - weapons, for example, although not all are in both book and game, and of course the four-man squads. In real life, the four men in a squad will have separate specialist roles, but that wasn't the way the game was so I had to bend the book a bit. So we have Darman who shows a flair for demolitions and Atin who likes gadgets, but they can all do the other man's job equally well if they have to. The bottom line was that the book and the game have the same flavor - you can move from one to the other and recognize things.

Without doing a spoiler, there are visual perspectives in the game that I couldn't have in the book. But you absolutely have to have them in the game, so I'm waiting for someone to say, "But when he does that, this happens..." Yes, there will be differences, but for a reason.

Because the game was still being worked on while I was writing the book, little bits of the book slipped into the game. It'll be an interesting trivia quiz!

TUCWS: Had you played the game prior to writing to get a feel for the plot and environment? If so, how was it?

KT: I'm not a gamer so a working version would have been wasted on me. I would have sat there mesmerized by the images and not had the gaming skills to test it. LucasArts gave me tapes of the game in progress, as well as screen shots and concept art so I could get a feel for it. I thought the quality of the graphics was stunning. I might even try the game now.

TUCWS: There isn't much out on the Clone Commandos. Who are they and what types of training and jobs do they do?

KT: There was so little about them that I had pretty free rein to create canon. They do the stuff that the SAS and SBS do - sabotage, intelligence gathering, counter-terrorism, hostage retrieval, all the kinds of things that you need a very small force with very versatile skills to carry out. The amount of training that real special forces do is staggering - the sort of operations they carry out rely on split-second timing and some very sophisticated kit. So I tried to convey that in RC:HC.

I think a lot of SW readers are used to action in terms of conventional warfare - big battles taking up a lot of time and lots of big weapons. That's not what special forces are for, and in the book Omega Squad do complain about being used as basic infantry. It's not because infantry soldiers are inferior, because they're not: it's because they do different jobs, and commandos are an expensive asset. They're best used where their unique training and skills can make a big difference.

In the book you seem them gathering intelligence, sabotaging things, trying to win over local populations, devising entry strategies to buildings and generally doing the "keeny meeny" stuff, to use the British term. When they fight, it's mainly small but deadly skirmishes, often hand to hand. Their aim is to get in, do the job and then slip out again without being spotted, not to have battles. (It doesn't turn out that way, of course....) This is a different kind of warfare. It's largely silent, unacknowledged and invisible.

In real life, special forces do train separately but they do also exercise with regular forces because they have to be able to operate with them. In the EU, there was almost nothing existing about the clone commandos, although there was plenty about clone troopers and even a fair bit on ARCs, which gave me the idea that they were largely kept apart from both groups. So I saw these soldiers as training completely separately before Geonosis, not even having contact with ARCs, although both troopers and ARCs were aware of them and saw them around Tipoca. All special forces need a bit of mythology as well as the expertise to psych out the enemy, and this was it. Nobody really knew what they got up to. They trained in squads and competed against other squads: they were trained by carefully-selected elite fighters from a number of races that Jango Fett recruited personally, because the Kaminoans simply didn't know anything about special ops. And those training sergeants - like Kal Skirata and Walon Vau, who have a strong presence in the book without actually being there - shape the men who they teach. It's very intense and very cloistered, even by clone standards. They develop their own little quirks that vary from squad to squad. And although they're a bit wary of the ARCs, they could give them a run for their money if they had to.

When they train, they use live rounds and men get killed. Some of the training elements have been drawn from real life, like the killing house, which, put crudely, is a building designed to train you to get in and kill the bad guys without killing the hostages. On Kamino, this building is a high tech one where the rooms can be configured at will to create any layout. They also have virtual environments to simulate jungle, urban, arctic and other combat situations. But the bit about the "sickener" is very low tech ...

Basically, I aimed to create an elite regiment with a fearsome reputation that makes the enemy think twice when they hear they're being sent in - or when they see that silver armor. They're a deterrent as well as a strike force.

Basically, I aimed to create an elite regiment with a fearsome reputation that makes the enemy think twice when they hear they're being sent in - or when they see that silver armor. They're a deterrent as well as a strike force.

TUCWS: You have a second book coming out on the same day that Hard Contact will be. How does that feel? How did working on both books coincide? Did you write them both at separate times or the same times?

KT: I wrote RC:HC in April/ May this year. Crossing The Line was completed in late 2003. As soon as I finished RC:HC, I worked on the next title, The World Before, which I'd already half-written. But I ended up rewriting the lot from scratch anyway.

It feels odd to have two books out the same day. I feel like I'm catching up on lost time! I often wish I'd started writing fiction professionally earlier in life, but I don't think I had anything worth saying in those days, and now that I've got three titles on the shelves my sense of regret has evaporated.

TUCWS: After Republic Commando, you move to a whole new era for three more Star Wars tales. What types of research will you be doing for that?

KT: I'm currently reading my way through the NJO series. This is a lot more work and there's so much existing canon - and characters - that it's going to test me hard. Then I have to work out with Troy Denning and Aaron Allston where we're going over the whole nine books. It's actually the polar opposite in writing terms of my own novels, from a totally solitary experience, both in canon and story development, to a totally team one.

I'm picking up as many reference books and sites as I can get my hands on, too.

TUCWS: I've noticed that you drop into the fan boards every now and again. How has the fan's reception of the book been? How is the Star Wars fan community been in general?

KT: So far, the book's had a pretty good reception, which I appreciate. I think one of the best things about Star Wars is the fan community, and I had no idea that existed before I got the RC:HC contract. I've been made very welcome , and that's why I put that in the acknowledgements at the front of the book, because I do genuinely feel that SW fandom has done more for me that I have for them.

It's a bit of a culture shock - remember, I'm a brand new author and although I hear from readers about my own books, I've not had time to adjust to this in large numbers! Friends also said, "Oh, you'll get all those technical and detail gripes about this and that..." but I think that's part of the fun. Star Wars fans know their stuff. And they're also the people who ultimately pay my wages, so they have every right to tell me what they think. I'm a guest at the SW party, and that's a privilege, so I take it seriously.

Star Wars: Republic Commando: Hard Contact is in stores now! Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com.

(NOT Star WARS) Crossing the Line is in stores now! Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com.

(NOT Star WARS) City of Pearl is in stores now! Click here to purchase it from Amazon.com.

 

Related Items
Karen Traviss interview, Part 2

Conducted by Andrew Liptak, October 2004