Q: In the first book of The Pearl series, The Ring of Five Dragons, the spiritually-based Kundalan society is introduced as one that has endured 100 years of oppression by the technologically superior V'ornn invaders and is in a crisis of faith. How have the Kundalan managed to retain as much of their identity, culture, and spirit of resistance as they have after a whole century? A: How does any culture manage such a difficult task? By complying on the surface, while resisting in as many clandestine ways as it can manage. On the other hand, the Kundalan have been seriously debilitated, not only by the V'ornn, but by their own overweening thirst for knowledge and power, which took them away from the spiritual teachings of the great goddess Miina. In fact, it would not be too strong a statement to say that they would never have succumbed to the V'ornn invasion in the first place if they hadn't already been spiritually compromised. Q: How far had the Kundalan come in terms of their culture's own technological progress? Was their relative lack of technological development a matter of choice or a lack of opportunity? A: Without giving too much away, the Kundalan had made quite a good deal of headway in the area of technology. So much so, in fact, that technology became a threat to the ruling theocracy, which feared that scientific progress would negate the spiritual influence of the goddess Miina. This fear doesn't seem too paranoid when you consider that the Gyrgon, the V'ornn technomage caste, decided to do away with its own religion and persecuted its priests to extinction. Q: What made the V'ornn so brutal and militaristic? Is their caste system a cause or effect of this? Is the caste system or their brutality, or both, a result of being exiled from their home world? A: Here we have something of the Chicken and the Egg dilemma. In the universe I created - as in real life - nothing's so clear-cut. I think, though, it's likely that the V'ornn society became increasingly militaristic because of the threats of attack and invasion by other races, most notably the Centophennni. When they escaped the destruction of their home world everything changed. They became brutal, cunning, remorseless as a form of self-preservation. But in order to do so, they had to turn their backs on their religion, their spiritual side - their humanity. Q: In what ways have the Kundalan people attempted to maintain or regain control over their religious beliefs during/despite the V'ornn oppression? A: I think, in reality, the Kundalan people have done very little. In this, the V'ornn have been quite successful. They even created a new religion that has seduced many Kundalan away from the teachings of Miina. The real struggle lies with the Ramahan. And it is here, within the last remaining Abbeys, that the battle for the soul of the Kundalan people is being fought. Q: In The Pearl series, magic and science clash on an epic scale and yet the juxtaposition shows that neither is inherently good or evil. Is it simply the people using magic or science who give them meaning? A: To a great extent, yes. But there's another, more important side to the coin, one that in many ways is the core idea on which the entire series rests. Neither magic nor science is an end in and of itself. Instead, each is a means to an end, and neither can be entirely successful without the other. Both societies -- the Kundalan and the V'ornn - are, in their present state, incomplete. Each is cut off from an important side of its culture, and it is the epic saga of the two groping toward being whole that I'm telling. Q: If technology and spirituality ceased to "clash against one another" would the two be able to coexist in a harmonious way? A: Oh, yes, most assuredly so. And in a very real sense, the journey of both Kundalan and V'ornn that I chronicle is the journey of every human being to integrate inside him or her the rational and the irrational, the spiritual and the technological, to live up to his or her full potential, which I think is the struggle we're all engaged in. Q: Some people might say that the clash of the technologically advanced V'ornn oppressors and the spiritual Kundalan society and the way that the American culture clashes with the ancient traditions of the Middle East are parallels. Do you agree? A: I don't think so. It seems to me that the enmity between the West and Middle East is not one of culture, but of religion, extremism, and economics. After all, if it weren't for oil, I doubt we'd be interested in the Middle East at all. Actually, in many ways, the cultures are not so incompatible. After all, we tend to forget that the majority of those in the Middle East are peace-loving and have many of the same values we do. They're as appalled and sickened as we are by the violence of extremists. Q: Many of your fans continue to ask about your earlier novels, specifically The Ninja series. Do you see any common elements or themes within The Ninja series and The Pearl series? A: Well, on the surface, I suppose there wouldn't seem to be any similarities, but it would be a mistake to come to that conclusion. There exists in Nicholas Linnear the dichotomy of his spiritual nature and his violent nature. Do the two negate one another? Of course not. However, his struggle is to come to terms with the two disparate elements inside him, to try and set a course that will reconcile the two. Isn't this the same journey Riane -- half-Kundalan, half-V'ornn -- is on? Q: Do you plan to revisit the adventure of Nicholas Linnear? A: Never say never. Q: It is intriguing that after the Khagggun Kurgan Stogggul brutally rapes Eleana, a Kundalan for whom he feels utter disdain, he then becomes completely overwhelmed by love and lust for her. Kurgan embarks on incredible journeys and goes to great efforts to find and recapture her. Does he really think he's got a chance at winning her love in return or is this just blind obsession? A: Kurgan is totally inward-looking. It would never occur to him to wonder what Eleana feels for him. His only impetus is what he wants, and he will go to any lengths to get it. As to his initially raping her, of course he did. Both he and Anon fell in love with her the moment they saw her. For him, that love -- the love for a Kundalan - was as intolerable as it was undeniable. So he raped her, satisfying both his lust and his urge for violence. But the rape wasn't the end of it, as he supposed. It was the beginning of his lifelong obsession with Eleana. Q: Eleana's son, Sahor, who is the offspring resulting from the rape, has been caused to age from infant to age sixteen in a matter of days by the use of Gyrgon technomagic. Why was it necessary to advance the boy's age so rapidly and by so many years? A: Nith Sahor, who was fatally wounded in his battle with Nith Batoxxx, used Gyrgon technomancy to insert himself into Eleana's baby and, thus, save himself. In doing so, he gave up being Nith as well as being wholly V'ornn. Like Riane, he's part V'ornn, part Kundalan. Since he has plans for the immediate future, he needed to "grow himself' in order to be effective. Q: Kurgan observes a group of Khagggun standing guard over a straggly line of half-naked children who stand shivering, silent, and fearful. It is explained that the children are "the repellent mixed-race progeny of the thousands of Kundalan females who had been raped by Khagggun packs". Kurgan had heard rumors of recombinant gene re-sequencing experiments being performed on the children by the Genomatekks at Gyron behest. What are the Genomatekks hoping to discover? Or is this simply cruel and inhumane experimentation with no real purpose? A: No, the experiments have a very specific - albeit desperate - purpose, but if I were to tell you what that was, it would spoil the coming parts of the story. Q: What occurs at the Temple of Mnemonics? A: If I were a Gyrgon I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Q: The series as a whole raises interesting questions relevant to gender roles. The character Annon starts out in the first book as a young man, but spends the majority of the series inhabiting a young woman's brain and body, even as he remains in love with another woman. How much of human behavior is gender-specific? And to what extent are our ideas of what's appropriate for each gender actually arbitrary conventions? A: I feel uncomfortable with the word "appropriate" as it's attached to gender behavior. You do your thing and, as long as it physically hurts no one, including yourself, it's strictly your business. I don't pass judgment on how others see themselves, and I don't agree with those who do, because what they're doing is saying, "I know what's best. Do as I do, or else." Q: Both the Kundalan and the V'ornn societies seem to have standard roles for males and females, with the rigidly hierarchical V'ornn having more trouble with exceptions. Ironically, the V'ornn rulers, the mysterious and secretive Gyrgon, are themselves hermaphrodites - gender ambiguity personified - and operate under a different set of rules from the rest of V'ornn society. What does the author think about the value and/or the limitations of assigned gender roles? A: Interesting question. Who assigns gender roles? Society as a whole, or the more conservative and rigid members of that society? Why should roles be assigned to gender in the first place? It wasn't in ancient Crete, the last of the great complimentary societies. But that was before the warlike, male God-dominated tribes swept down from the northern Steppes, conquering as they came, changing both culture and attitudes. Q: What is the value of esoteric knowledge, as represented by The Pearl, and what are the potential gains or limitations of the human-like beings to perfect themselves with the aid of such knowledge? A: I think the desire for knowledge is universal, but the greater the knowledge, the greater the danger. If knowledge is power - and it is - then absolute knowledge has the insidious power to corrupt absolutely. This is what happened in the case of the Ramahan and The Pearl. Q: The V'ornn as a culture are very much like Nazis, considering the subjugated Kundalan to be their equivalent of sub-human, yet there are a number of examples of individual sympathetic V'ornn. Even Annon's former friend, the scheming Kurgan, is pitiful at times. Do you believe in absolute evil, or do you feel that almost anyone can be redeemed? On a larger level, do you think an evil culture has to be swept away, or can it be reformed? A: I don't, as a rule, believe in absolutes. Having said that, I don't necessarily think that anyone or any culture can be redeemed. I can't imagine anything redeemable in the Nazis or in any extremist society. But if there is no choice but to fight them, they only bring it on themselves. Ideas are peculiarly powerful things to human beings. You only have to read Nietzsche to understand that. But talking of "sweeping away" a culture smacks of extermination, a concept I personally find abhorrent. As an example, we won the war without exterminating every Nazi. And now we're back again to ideas. Once the idea of Nazism died with its leaders, the desired end was achieved. Q: There's a complex romantic triangle involving Annon's secret Kundalan mother, Giyan, her former V'ornn captor, Rekkk (who is now a figure from Kundalan legend, the Nawatir, and no longer physically V'ornn), and Konara (priestess) Inggres. In a sense, each of these people is loving someone they shouldn't. What is being said about the power of love and our inability to control it? A: Well, I think the very nature of love - the thing that makes it singular and so powerful - is that it's totally uncontrollable. Love tears you asunder and you don't necessarily go back to the way you were. Love is usually depicted as something that's entirely good, but we all know - perhaps have even experienced - that loving someone can have terrible - sometimes disastrous - consequences. One of the themes explored in The Mistress of The Pearl is the many different and unexpected effects love can have.