Eric Diehl's book, Water Harvest, starts out with the Council voting on whether to attack the two rag tag Lunar colonies, full of water harvesting pirates. Until another unexpected strike occurs which changes the collective fate. 1,000 years later, yet another Council meets and high tech mingles with feudalism.
Eric has lead a scenic and colorful life settling in upstate South Carolina with his wife, Susan. Although I read about the characters, most of the questions are about the author.
Question: You feature a view of a bleak, dreary landscape in the Prologue.Is this a metaphor for the destruction of the environment?
Answer: Yes, I had actually intended the novel to be a hard science fiction piece with an environmental theme, but some of the improbable characters that showed up, surprised and delighted me. In the end, I allowed the story to take a tilt toward fantasy.
Question: I am a fan of Babylon 5, the interplanetary community in space, are you? If so, who is your favorite character and what is your favorite episode and why?
Answer: Wow, you're taxing my memory now. I don't believe that series has played in the U.S. for more than a decade now. I was a fan, but don't remember enough except to say that I liked the concept of life on a huge space station, and the intermingling of various species from throughout the galaxy.
Question: What are your favorite Science Fiction authors and why?
Answer: I suppose that I tend to favor fantasy over hard science fiction, but I also like to see them blended together (as I did in Water Harvest). I'd have to say that the author that really hooked me on science fiction would be Frank Herbert, with his Dune series (great movie also, later on). It would probably be fair to say that Dune influenced my own novel, since the scarcity of water is a major point of contention in both, though it was more extreme in Dune. One of the things that I liked about Dune was the full development of characters that I could bond with, which can sometimes be a little lacking in some 'hard' science fiction. The argument could also be made that there was an element of fantasy in Dune, since it included fantastic creatures like the huge worms, which are nothing like the world we know.
Question: Do you go to a lot of Renaissance Faires? If so, which ones? Do you dress Medieval or Renaissance? Do you dress as a character such as a wizard?
Answer: I've been to a few, more in south Florida than in South Carolina, but I'm just a spectator. I enjoy watching the staged sword fights and jousting.
Question: What sort of an animal is a Kii? It is a conglomeration of species, but which ones?
Answer: Kii could be characterized as a form of dragon, though on a small scale. I do call her a 'Dwarf Drakka', with some relation to the massive Great Drakka that inhabit the mountainous highlands.
Question: Is the apprenticeship more like Druidry or the ancient Mystery Schools?
Answer: There's an interesting question! I had to do a little investigation to get a better understanding of Druidry and the Mystery Schools, and I would say that an Apprentice is closer to the latter than the former, but not exactly like either. The Guild is comprised of practitioners known as Viizar, who learn to bend reality to their will by envisioning the changes they seek while in a drug-induced state. An apprentice is simply a young man who is training to become a Viizar. The transition from Apprentice to the lowest order of the Viizar (the Greenes) is described in one of the earlier chapters (though the transition did not go as was planned ;-).
Question: Tell me about some of the Science Fiction short stories you've published.
Answer: Most of them are a blend of SciFi and Fantasy. As an aside, I have published that collection and made it available as a free download from smashwords.com (the link is at my website). The anthology begins with an experiment in nano-biotechnology gone very wrong. There is a tongue-in-cheek space-opera style story with a female protagonist and her comedic cohort. There's a story about an evil character who is banished to 'live' in a bodiless realm in a distant past and who conspires to return for vengeance. There's also a story about a dystopian future Earth where humans are kept by a 'benevolent' alien species, somewhat in the manner of a herd of cattle. Other stories in the anthology are pure fantasy, with some horror mixed in for good measure.
For details on Water Harvest, click on the following link: http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/single.php?ISBN=1-55404-867-2
Author website: http://www.ericdiehl.com/
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