Sci-fi author Peter David interview
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Peter David has been a professional writer for over 30 years. He’s written novels, comic books, television, video games and so on. He wrote Incredible Hulk for 12 years and has written both DC and Marvel comics. He’s written numerous Star Trek novels and comic books. I was able to interview him at Far Point 2018. He has a website and is on twitter and facebook.
1:26 – Peter David has been working on the third book in the Hidden Earth trilogy and it’s taken a while so he hopes fans like it. He’s also writing the Scarlet Spider for Marvel Comics and a Battlestar Galactica 6 issue limited series where the original crew meets the crew from the new series.
2:36 – He liked the Fallen Angel comic book series. He likes his Atlantis chronicles and his Hulk work. However, he’ll look at his past work and still find things he doesn’t like. He finds things he doesn’t think he did correctly.
5:20 – People often ask what inspires him. He says what he makes from his work inspires him. But he also has too much in his brain to not be a writer. It’s an addiction and obsession. Ideas come to writers ferociously and with clarity.
7:16 – Fan interaction is his favorite part of writing. The act itself is a very lonely business. He likes being told what fans like and don’t like.
8:11 – He started writing as a kid and kept going. His father was a reporter and he thought he might be a newspaperman. But instead he became a fiction writer. He reads a lot to get better at writing. For example, he didn’t like present tense writing until he saw Stephen King had done it.
11:20 – The writer should show society the ways it can be better. Science fiction might be the best way to do this. He enjoys the Orville because it shows the way things might be. The shows has gotten better with each episode.
13:33 – He enjoys Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee. He uses other writers to reflect on his own work. The older masters provide good lesson but the newer writers inspire too with the new things they try.
14:51 – He doesn’t use science as the basis for his works but he makes sure his Star Trek novels have consistent science. For example he wanted to make Odo from Deep Space 9 maintain his mass when he changes shape.
16:31 – Mr. David likes movies and tv but he will criticize them. For example Superman IV made him think that the UN would not be happy with Superman’s decision to get rid of nuclear weapons. It would be Superman against the world. They would get Lex Luthor to fight him. If he ever wrote Superman, that’s the story he would write.
18:46 – Mr. David talked to Dale Keown, his artist on Incredible Hulk, about predicting how movies will go. Writers can figure out how a story will go. Mr. David figured out how Tango and Cash would go after watching for 30 minutes. The most recent Star Wars film fooled him though when Luke showed up for the final battle in the way he did. He also predicted Sixth Sense after the first two minutes.
22:16 – He would love to teleport. He’d like to be like Nightcrawler.
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orville
For more “Creating Sci-Fi and Fantasy – An Inside Look” please follow me on Facebook at crisalvarezwlc, on youtube at Cris Alvarez and on Instagram @crisalvarezscifi
Guests: Peter David
Host: Cris Alvarez
Tags: writer, comic books, novels, hulk, incredible hulk, marvel comics, dc comics, spider-man, supergirl, star trek
