AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY

When did you begin writing your first novel, Contest?

I wrote Contest in my first year out of high school. I was 19 when I started it and 20 when I finished it. My motivation at the time was to write a book that was all action—action from start to finish—a book that thrust the reader back into his or her chair because of the sheer pace of the storytelling. To be quite honest, I’d been finding that the books I was reading were too slow, or taking too long between action scenes. I also saw no reason why books couldn’t have really massive action scenes, action scenes that were even bigger than those you see in blockbuster Hollywood movies. Movies are constrained by budgets. But with books, the limit of your budget is the limit of your imagination. I like to think I have a big imagination.

What is Contest about?

Contest is the story of a man who is placed inside the New York State Library and told that he has been chosen to represent the human race in a contest that is held once every thousand years. He is told that six aliens have been placed inside the building with him and that all the entrances and exits to the building have been sealed. No-one is allowed out until only one contestant is left alive. Seven enter, only one leaves. In other words, it’s a good old-fashioned fight-to-the-death. Lots of really scary aliens and clever escapes. More so even than either Ice Station or Temple, I like to think of Contest as a roller-coaster ride on paper, a non-stop series of hold-your-breath, foot-to-the-floor thrills. The movie version will be great—kind of like Die Hard meets Aliens.

What led you to self-publish Contest?

Simple. I offered it to every major publisher in Sydney and they all rejected it! What drove me to go down the path of self-publishing was my desire to see it get picked up. I honestly thought it had the goods and, on top of that, I kind of thought that the publishers I’d offered it to hadn’t given it a fair go (some, I am certain, didn’t even read it).

So I figured that I had to get the attention of a major publisher some other way. I reasoned that publishers go to bookstores to see where their books are placed etc, so if I could get Contest onto the shelves of major bookstores, maybe someone in the publishing industry would see it. And so, with the help of my brother, Stephen, I published Contest myself—complete with blockbuster-style cover art—and offered it to bookstores in person. It cost me $8,000 to print 1,000 books at a place called Image Desktop Publishing (a free plug for them but, hey, they did do a great job. Oh, and folks, these are 1996 prices).

In any case, Contest was seen in a city bookstore by the Publisher of Mass-Market Fiction at Pan Macmillan, the kind folk publishing this tome. She called me up and asked if I was writing anything else. As it happened, only a few weeks before I had decided to commence work on a new book, a little action ditty set in Antarctica about a team of United States Marines sent to defend a spaceship found buried deep within the ice. I sent the first 50 pages to Pan Macmillan and they signed me up on the basis of those pages. That book was Ice Station.

I understand that you’ve sold the film rights to Contest. Is that right?

That’s correct. I optioned off the movie rights to Contest in early 1999. I’ve recently seen some of the ideas the movie guys have for the film, too. The special effects will be absolutely out of this world. Cannot wait to see it.

Will Contest—the novel, that is—be reissued by Pan Macmillan?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Pan are going to re-release Contest in late 2000. My humble apologies to anyone who tried to get it after they read Ice Station. I only printed 1,000 copies and by the time Ice Station came out, there were none left!

Where did the idea for Ice Station spring from?

For me, any novel starts with the question What would happen if . . . You ask yourself that question, and the answer is your novel. The idea for Ice Station came when I asked myself What would happen if someone discovered a spaceship somewhere on earth? My answer: the country in whose territory it was found would grab it and hide it—a kind of Area 51 answer, really, and as a novel, not very satisfying.

So I extended the question to ask, What would happen if that spaceship was discovered in Antarctica, the only place on earth that isn’t any country’s territory? The answer to that question was much more interesting: it would be a free-for-all. An all-or-nothing race to see who could get the ship first. By making some of America’s traditional allies (such as the French)—countries which most Westerners don’t usually see as threats—the villains in Ice Station, I felt I made the story a little more geopolitically complex. Funnily enough, I wrote Ice Station in 1997 and only this year—1999, two whole years later—an Australian spy was caught by the FBI selling American secrets to the French! How about that!

Has Ice Station been sold overseas?

Yes, it has. Ice Station has been sold to publishers in 10 countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, China, the Netherlands, and Japan. Very cool. Can’t wait to see a Japanese edition of it.

Will Shane Schofield appear in another book?

Yes. In fact, I am writing a rampaging sequel to Ice Station right now. And if anyone wants a hint as to the story, I’ll only say this: it is set in a desert.

William Race is a very different hero to Shane Schofield, isn’t he?

William Race is very different to Shane Schofield. While Schofield is a hero for all seasons—a pure Indiana Jones type—William Race is more of an ordinary guy who must discover his heroic nature in the most extraordinary of circumstances. As many people would guess, I like to picture my heroes in terms of the actors who might play them in movie versions of my books. Schofield was always written with Tom Cruise in mind for the role (he’s even described in the book as being five-foot-ten with spiky black hair!). William Race, on the other hand, was always Brad Pitt—Brad Pitt with glasses and an unloseable New York Yankees cap.

By making Race an ordinary man, however, I found I could have a lot of fun with his fear. He is not a hero. He is just a guy. He gets frightened, even when he is doing the most death-defying stuff imaginable (lowering himself under speeding riverboats, leaping from one moving aeroplane to another . . .). At one point in Temple, he sees a skeleton in the temple which he thinks belongs to Renco—who most certainly is a hero—and he thinks: that’s what happens to heroes. But, like Alberto Santiago, the monk in the manuscript story, he discovers that being a hero is really about one simple thing—doing what is right, whatever the circumstance.

How did Temple come about?

The genesis of Temple was a little different to that of Ice Station.

With Temple, I asked myself: What if I could write a book that switched between two stories set in different times? But on top of that I asked: What if those two stories had twists that affected each other?

In other words, I wanted to write a book that was set in two different time periods, but in which twists in Story 1 would actually affect Story 2 (for example, the mangled skeleton in the present day story found by Race suggests to the reader that Renco has met a grisly end in the past; conversely, in the past story, Alberto learns about the quenko underneath Vilcafor, but it is Race who uses this information for his benefit in the present).

The added bonus was with two stories I could get double the action!!!

And besides, I have always had a fascination with the Incas. So I figured I could write a no-holds-barred swashbuckling adventure set in 1535 at the same time as I wrote an explosive high-tech modern-day thriller like Ice Station. Sure, at times I felt like my head was about to explode, what with all those characters running around in it, but it was worth it.

Will William Race make another appearance?

Barring any unforeseen creative detours (such as George Lucas calling me up and asking me to write Episode III for him—it could happen . . . George, are you reading this?), yes, William Race will definitely be returning in a new adventure.

In fact, I recently dreamed up a new story for Race to be in—a story that will involve him having to translate another manuscript, thereby giving us a new split story to get into. Although, given my desire to write a new Schofield book, I might have to alternate between Schofield and Race books in the future.

Where do you want to be in ten years, Matthew?

I have several goals in life, nearly all of which are pretty much based on the acts of the two creative people I admire the most, Michael Crichton and George Lucas.

I want to write novels, I want to write and direct feature films, and I want to create TV shows. So in ten years time, I’d like to:

•    have had modest success with my novels world-wide;

•    have had at least one Hollywood film made from my books (just because you sell the film rights doesn’t actually mean your film will get made, or made well for that matter, just ask Stephen King); and

•    have directed at least one feature film.

In any case, I always aim high, since I subscribe to the maxim, ‘If you aim for the stars, you might reach the moon’. And besides, you only live once, so I figure I might as well do it all.

Any final words?

Yes. To everyone reading this, I just hope you enjoyed the book.

MR
June, 2000