Terry Goodkind -- wow. Just wow.

Daaaaaamn. So, I'd somehow gone through my entire life without knowing anything about Terry Goodkind. I read maybe a quarter of Wizard's First Rule back in the early 2000s, but never finished it. Anyway, I started reading his sequel in the Sword of Truth series, Stone of Tears, and I'll comment on that in another blog post. But I looked up some of his GoodReads reviews, and they were brutal. Even more to the point, I also started looking up some of Goodkind's author interviews, and ...

.... oh my god, this dude is seriously batshit crazy. He's a complete Ayn Rand Objectivist nut job who doesn't think his novels are fantasy because they're too literary, and Goodkind also believes his novels have forever changed the same fantasy genre that he's too literary to have read himself. Plus, he's offended if someone compares him to Robert Jordan (despite ripping off most of Jordan's world-building).

So, for your horrified fascinated, here's a random string of Goodkind quotes.

 PROPHETS INC CHAT 5

"My books are novels that deal in important human themes involving the faculty of reason. I tell these stories through heroic characters."

"I am not an obedient subservient cog of a group, slavishly following the group's conventions. I am a thinking individual acting of my own free will."

"Don't be fooled. The assertion made by these detractors is a note wrapped around a brick thrown through the window. These people are not fans. There are hundreds if not thousands of fantasy books that fulfill their professed taste in books. Why would they continue to read books they claim are bad? Because they hate that my novels exists. Values arouse hatred in these people. Their goal is not to enjoy life, but to destroy that which is good."

"[On the War on Terror]: Unless you can name the philosophies and people dedicated to killing you, how can you possibly hope to fight it? No war has ever been won defensively. Killers must be hunted down and eliminated. Evil ideas must be countered with rational ideas. Most of the means employed to protect us, such as the sham of airline check ins are merely public relation stunts. We will never win this war until we get the guts to name our enemy, Islamic fundamentalist and stop negotiating with them."

"What I have done with my work has irrevocably changed the face of fantasy. In so doing I've raised the standards. I have not only injected thought into a tired empty genre, but, more importantly, I've transcended it showing what more it can be-and is so doing spread my readership to completely new groups who don’t like and wont ready typical fantasy. Agents and editors are screaming for more books like mine. They can’t find any."

"Funds for government services, for example the courts, should be collected from those who use them. All welfare should come from those who volunteer their own money, not the money of others, not the victims of theft (the tax payer). "

 A USA Today interview:

"Because most fantasy is about world-building and magic, a lot of it is plotless and has no story. My primary interest is in telling stories that are fun to read and make people think. That puts my books in a genre all their own."

"[I don't use Elves or Dwarves because ...] I'm not writing fantasy ... My purpose is not weirdo cultural diversity. I repeat: I am writing stories about important human beings."

"If you notice a similarity [between me and Robert Jordan], then you probably aren't old enough to read my books."

"Philosophy is what has an influence on me. Current affairs and politics are driven by the same philosophy, therefore my stories always seem to be relevant to what's happening at the moment. . . . A thief in the 18th century is the same as a thief in the 20th century is the same as a thief 1,000 years ago. A murder is a murder, regardless of the age in which it is committed."

The rest here comes from an interview with Fantasy Book Critic. So, it really pisses Goodkind off when when you skim his books:

"Every word that I write is critical. .... To skim and just kind of hit a few words in every paragraph, you miss all the work that I put in to make those characters humans."

And he's also very keen on having "non-fantasy" book covers:

"My goal has always been to change the cover art in a way that represents the spirit of what the book is about."

And .... well, just ouch.

"Take, for example, what we're doing in Iraq. The basic thing we're trying to do is enforce democracy. Democracy is a free-floating concept. There's no goodness [inherent] in democracy. Gang rape is democracy in action. Why should we enforce democracy? Why should we have Americans die so [Iraq] can elect a government who wants to kill us? "