The characters in Steelheart are reminiscent of superheroes. What made you go this route? It’s a new diretion for you.
This is all just part of the collective unconscious of pop and nerd culture that I’m a part of, that I grew up with. Certain things fascinate me that I just couldn’t do in an epic fantasy in the same way. At the same time I don’t want people to look at Steelheart and say, “Oh, this is a superhero book.” I wrote it as an action adventure story and it certainly is taking from some of those themes, but the idea is, what if people really started gaining superpowers, what would happen? My immediate thought was, people would abuse them. It would be awful. What would we do if there was someone who was so powerful we couldn’t throw them in prison, we couldn’t punish them? So the story of there being no heroes, of there only being villains is what inspired me.
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