David Weber quite literally fell into the world of science fiction. He still remembers that fateful day when he was carrying a three-layer chocolate-frosting birthday cake downstairs to his dad. A sudden slip sent 10-year-old David and the cake tumbling into a mess.

While he healed from a sprained ankle and broken arm, he started reading science fiction stories from his dad’s collection. The first one -- The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson -- got him hooked. How could anyone resist those fantastical names, the pageantry of otherworldly civilizations, ultimate weapons that could wipe out whole planets, and the thrill of looking into the future?

More than 30 years later, David Weber is a full-time science fiction and fantasy writer with nearly two dozen published books, including his widely popular Honor Harrington series which sets a powerful heroine against forces of evil in a futuristic faraway galaxy. Weber’s books have been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, German, English, Polish and Czech. Four of his books have cracked The New York Times Top 20 bestsellers list.

During a two-day visit to Haywood County last week, the Greenville, S.C., author shared stories and writing advice with students and teachers from Canton Middle School, Central Haywood High School and Waynesville Middle School as part of a Haywood County Public Library program called “Write Between the Lines.”

“We like to think in science fiction that we’re predicting the future,” Weber said.

That means inventing a whole new set of theories to explain technology that doesn’t exist yet. While many science fiction writers tend to concentrate on the technological changes, Weber likes to focus more on how society changes. He’s comfortable talking about astrophysics and quantum theory, but he’s just as eager debating the finer points of the last election.

“I tend to construct future societies and then use technology as tools that go with them,” he said.
And he’s not afraid to draw on local towns and cities as he builds his own universe. In The Apocalypse Troll, for example, cyborg aliens battle with earth’s military and Asheville gets torched. The Biltmore Estate is demolished. There are references to the French Broad River, Madison County, Asheville streets and various Western North Carolina locations.

Thinking in terms of science fiction requires a certain amount of invention but also a degree of looking at how society and science are evolving.

A lot of science fiction writers of the 1950s and ‘60s totally missed out on the growing trend of using computers and electronics, Weber said. (Perhaps there is some trend in science right now that we are overlooking.)

Strangely enough, scientists often limit the power of science. According to Weber, it was once a popular thought that people in trains would not be able to survive high speeds and that planes would break apart if they flew faster than the speed of sound.

But the universe will probably turn out to be much more complex than we ever thought -- and much simpler than we imagined, Weber said, welcoming the idea of humans one day traveling at the speed of light or perhaps faster.

Weber might be best known for his science fiction -- military science fiction to be more precise -- but he has also taken a keen interest in writing about history and fantasy. He’s currently under contract to write 32 books. Pretty good job security, he admits.

On average, Weber can produce about four to five hefty novels a year. A self-confessed obsessive compulsive when it comes to writing, he goes through spells of working 12 to 14 hours a day sometimes.

“I do my best writing at 4 o’clock in the morning,” Weber said. But it’s not work to him. “I’m doing something that I really, really, really enjoy doing.”

What began as a keen interest in reading blossomed into a personal passion for writing. The personal writing started at 12, the professional writing started at 17, but the publishing has only been in the last 11 years.

“I tell people they should write what they enjoy reading,” Weber advised a group of Waynesville Middle School students.

Good books start with good questions. Weber’s first book, Mutineer’s Moon, started with a simple “what if” question: What if the moon isn’t really a moon? Answering that question led to more questions: If the moon is a spaceship, how long has it been there and how did it get there?

From that point, Weber explained, the author has to trust his instincts and just write the story.
“Figure out how you want to tell the story and then tell it that way,” Weber said. “You have to do what feels right as a writer.”

These days, he and his wife, Sharon, travel the country attending various sci-fi conferences, where David serves as a panelist.

Like one of those choose-your-own-ending stories, Weber’s life might have turned out much differently had he chosen to teach history. He completed a B.S. in history at Warren Wilson College and finished all but his thesis at Appalachian State University when he realized there weren’t enough places for history professors to teach.

So he tried his hand at PR work and various odd jobs while keeping his own personal writing going. The first year, he made $150 from publishing. The second year it was $1,800. The third year grew to $18,000, and by the fourth year, it was $42,000. Now it’s up around half a million dollars before taxes.

Weber explains all this not as a point of pride but as a testimony to patience. Built into that success was a great deal of rejection. Weber explained to students that J. K. Rowling had to endure 62 rejections before a publisher finally accepted Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which may go down as the greatest selling children’s book of all time.

Weber also started out by getting turned down. His first manuscript was rejected by six publishers. The seventh one told him to make some changes, and he agreed to cut some passages out of the book. Then at last, the eighth publisher, Baen Books, accepted it.

Just because you get rejected doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t writing well, Weber said.
Of course, there’s a great deal of revising and editing. Weber emphasized the need to understand grammar, avoid clichés when possible and use action verbs instead of excessive adjectives.

After finally getting that first novel published, he received a call from the assistant bookstore manager at his local Waldenbooks.

“David, guess what?” she said. “We’ve got your books and we’ve already sold half of them!”

“Really?” a jubilant Weber responded.

“Yeah!” she said. “Do you want me to keep the other one?”

Swallowing a little humble pie, Weber eventually got even with this assistant bookstore manager -- he married her.

Happily married and happily writing, Weber still has his setbacks. He broke his wrist in a freak accident and had to use voice-activated software to complete his latest book.

While the future includes plenty of science fiction stories, he and Sharon are busy with more earthly plans to build a house and adopt a child from Russia. A world of words has given David Weber a future not even he could have predicted.

 

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