Christopher Paolini joined Brandon Sanderson in a conversation about their two upcoming books, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and Rhythm of War, Book Four of The Stormlight Archive, and along the way they discussed switching from fantasy to science fiction, and the particular challenges that come with writing massive books.

Sanderson started the chat off with a compliment to Paolini, telling him that he was about 20 percent through To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, and “It is enormous, which is always a big plus in my book.”

Christopher Paolini: It’s the biggest published book I’ve done—you’ll laugh at it cause you write quite a bit beyond this, but it’s 309,000 words. A big boy.

Brandon Sanderson: Enormous!

Paolini added that “The goal was to do an entire series in one book. I’ve done the multi-book series with over a million published words, and I think you hold the record for the biggest of the big series at the moment—but I wanted to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end in one volume. It was a personal challenge, and I thought it was going to save me time instead of writing a series, but it took me nearly ten years to write the darn thing anyways!”

BS [laughter]: Is there any A Fire Upon the Deep influence on this? That’s a book you’ve read?

CP: That is a book I’ve read, and I also had the enormous pleasure of meeting the author, Vernor Vinge, in an airport, between cons. I also enjoyed Rainbows End.

BS: I get a little bit of that! It’s really a cool book—I’m loving all the names, unless I’m completely off base, these are all little inside jokes? I’ve caught some aliens—

CP: Mm-hm.

BS: I’ve caught some science fiction author names for some of the names of planets and space stations, I’ve definitely caught some Dune here and there, little nods. I think it’s really cool.

CP: I threw everything and the kitchen sink in. I wear my influences on my sleeve with this book. This is my love letter to the genre of science fiction, and hopefully it shows some growth as an author, as a technician of storytelling. Of course it’s also frustrating, and I’m sure you appreciate this—this book is coming out and hopefully people will see some growth as an author on my end, but then I’ve learned so much from this already that I’m like, “I need to write the next thing!”

BS: I’ve read a lot of your books, and this is by far your best technical writing so far. I’m loving the book. I can see the influences, but it doesn’t feel derivative in any way. It’s its own thing. This is a big departure in a lot of ways for you.