Space and Time Issue #107 will feature the first part of a two - part interview with legendary fantasy author, Peter S. Beagle. Amongst his many, many credits, Peter is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn.  The first part of the interview, conducted by new Space and Time interviewer Stephen Euin Cobb, centers on Peter’s career and contains many wonderful, personal anecdotes. The second part, which will appear in Issue #108, focuses on Peter’s advice to other writers.

Here’s a little excerpt, to whet your appetite for the whole interview:

SEC: The Last Unicorn has touched so many lives and is one of your most enduring creations.  You wrote the original novel as well as the screen play for the animated movie which was based on the novel.  Why do you think both have become such classics?

PSB: I honestly don’t know, because the reactions are, like anything else, extremely individual. There are people who find things in the book that I wasn’t aware of putting there. They seem to be, like other books and movies I can think of, a kind of touchstone in which people find their own meaning…either it leads them to something else, or sometimes one line — literally — can provoke an entirely different train of thought or understanding. I have any number of encounters with people who tell me that in one way or another the book or movie changed their lives. One of the most touching was a pair of Latino men who told me that the film gave them a safe place to go when they were children, and they needed one at the time because their parents were going through a violent divorce. There’s not a lot you can say to discovering that something you did provided that kind of benefit, certainly without any intention of your own. So it’s all things to all people, I guess, though I honestly can’t say. All I know for certain, all I remember, is how hard the book was to write and how certain I was that I was doing it all wrong.