| Twenty Questions with Ian R. MacLeod | ||||||||||||
| An interview with Kilian Melloy | ||||||||||||
| July 2004 | ||||||||||||
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"The future was a fact that had arrived and had already been forgotten," reads a line from MacLeod's story "Marnie," an entry in his previous collection of short fiction Voyages by Starlight. This is a sentiment that crops up here and there throughout MacLeod's work, in various guises, and bespeaks a wistfulness that contains murmurs of weariness and pungency. In "The Perfect Stranger," included in the same collection, MacLeod's narrator briefly fantasizes about escaping his problems by going into stasis for thirty years, only to come back to reality with the bitter reflection that "the future was a joke. The only guarantees were that the climate would be worse, and that everything apart from wristwatches, computers, and disposable umbrellas would be more expensive." MacLeod does not write about utopias or dystopias so much as about the eternal twinges and melancholy humours of the human creature; and yet, in his hands, the future and the past take on urgent, perhaps seismic, new meanings. In "Verglas," which appears in Breathmoss, issues of technology and exploration may not, after all, sum up the be-all and end-all of human life; if, in fact, the drive to unravel mysteries and tamper with our environment and ourselves is a fundamental part of human character, so too, MacLeod observes, is an appreciation for familiar, atavistic things. Even the primitive and outmoded has a place somewhere in the entirety of the human experience. It's possible to catch glimpses of classical influence in MacLeod's writings. The main character's three mothers in "Breathmoss," for example, loosely conform to the old literary triad of the crone, the mother, and the maiden. But there's no question that MacLeod is at least as keen to re-invigorate familiar themes and forms as he is to break fresh ground in the territory of fantastical literature. The theme of family recurs in ways that might initially seem grotesque -- a young boy builds a model airplane, in one MacLeod story, that becomes possessed by the soul of his dead brother; elsewhere in the MacLeod canon, a family sell their young child to finance a vacation; and again, in still another tale, an old codger finds himself as bemused by his freewheeling grandchildren as he is by his stodgy, reluctant son -- but hope forever finds ways around the psychological scar tissue carried by his characters. Underneath, these are people who want to be good, even if goodness is not necessarily rewarded. Ian R. MacLeod generously took the time, recently, to chat with SF Site about his short fiction. You're a hard writer to categorize -- you seem at home with science fiction, horror, fantasy, and all the nooks and hollows between those genres. In general, however, you seem drawn to the fantastic. What attracts you to the fantastic side of fiction writing? 
The same thing which always attracted me as a young reader. There's that "flavour" which I think anyone who likes
fantastic fiction will know about, even if they find it hard to explain. More broadly, all fiction is about attempting to improve on
reality in some way, even if it's only to make it more grim and grimy, and fantastic fiction is a more ambitious expression of this
desire. Once you're aware of that gateway, it almost seems a shame not to see what lies on the other side.
If my first experiences as a young reader were of SF and fantasy, they were followed in my mid-teens with studying
writers like Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot at school. They meant a lot to me, and I never saw an enjoyment of the
giants of mainstream literature as being anything other than useful to me as a writer. I think that I'd been drawn to more
literary fiction -- by which we're talking about writing which is concerned with style and nuance, and which deals with its themes
in more subtle and oblique ways, and isn't simply aiming to "entertain" -- even before I really knew what it was. I remember being
deeply impressed by how the writer Keith Roberts made colours seem more real and feelings deeper in his best works. That's because
his concerns were at least as much "literary" as they were "genre". Other writers I return to are F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marcel Proust, and
of living writers, I have an enormously high regard for John Updike.
That comes chiefly from:
1) a desire not to bore the reader
2) because I generally find myself wondering what's going on, and accept that as a natural and believable state for my
characters. After all, there are a lot of things in this world which leave me puzzled, but which no one seems capable of explaining to me.
Well, we are machines, aren't we? Otherwise, I suppose it's one of the genre tropes I enjoy paying homage
towards. You're faced with the ordinary -- say a character who seems to have a pet -- and then you think, how can I improve on
that, make it more interesting? Transformation and shifting from human is also something my characters do quite a lot. It's one
of the strengths of the genre that you can explore this area in ways which can be literal, philosophical, creepy and fun -- often
at the same time. I also tend to switch off a bit when I encounter SF set some time in the future which doesn't attempt to address
what we humans will have done to ourselves.
The old saying about there being no plots which weren't explored by Homer is probably true, but literature
is a testament to the varieties of shade and interpretation which can be given to them. As readers, we generally recognize plots
pretty much on a subconscious level, and I think that as a writer, the process is fairly subconscious as well. Later on, I can
analyze what I've done in terms of "this is essentially a story about escape and identity," but at the time I try not to think in
that way, as it could obviously be limiting. With novels, the process takes so much longer and is so much more involved that you do
have to look the plot and themes more consciously in the eye, but I still try not to be too "knowing". It's often the case, especially
when you're toying around with an idea and developing it into something coherent, that what you think is the main theme or plotline
turns out to be a lesser aspect.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I also have to say that I often feel that there's a statue within the stone which I'm chipping away at. Bits of it, often imperfect but nevertheless recognizable, will slowly emerge...
Actually, it's a temptation I find very easy to resist. In fact, I'm more often guilty of not saying enough, and
then having to track back and put in more explanation. To me, the best fantastic fiction should "float". Fairies, spaceships and
vampires are parts of our collective cultural consciousness, and it seems to me silly and nit-picking to ask for realistic explanations
for something like a faster than light drive, which we all know is essentially unrealistic. The exception to this would be when you
have an idea about one of these things which seems fresh enough to make it important to the story. Otherwise, I like to leave these
things in exactly the same sort of background they'd exist in for most of us if they really existed. Imagine if Anne Tyler had to
launch into a technological explanation of telecommunications every time a character in one of her books turns on the television. On
the other hand, if the character happens to be a TV repair man... And, let's face it, most of us have got vague and often probably
quite wrong ideas about how things work anyway. The same reasoning should apply, to my mind, in any kind of writing.
Well, this is a pretty deep and difficult area. In a sense, I do think we are the alien intelligence we wonder
about, because we still know so little about the basic phenomenon of the conscious "I". And then there's the oddness of our happening
to be here, despite all the tiny flips and changes in the expanding universe which could have made us and the current laws of physics
untenable. Basically, I don't know. The universe is certainly a lot stranger and more complicated than the Newtonian scientists of
a century ago would have dared imagine. We're certainly part of all of it, but that doesn't mean we're bright enough to understand it,
or even that what we think we're understanding is actually true in anything beyond the small and superficial sense of a baby
exploring its playpen, or a bee finding the route back to its hive.
There are very few "kings" in life, but a great many "commoners." It's therefore a lot easier for
me (and I'm not a king, either) to write for an audience of other non-kings about characters who exist in more normal roles
in whatever society they happen to be in. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in kings. Nor, at least to some degree, that I'm
not envious of their power and privilege, but it's much more interesting to deal with all of this by being in the bottom and
looking up, at least at the start of a story. Many of my characters end up attaining some sort of fame or status, although I
guess it's mostly not worth the price they end up paying.
I also think that this interest in the normal is a necessary offset against settings which may be strange, and also helps with creating a sympathetic character. Tolkien did this with hobbits. In the field of mainstream literature, serious writers have been moving consciously away from writing about wealth and privilege for at least century and a half. Think of Dickens, Hardy, Balzac, Lawrence, "angry young men" like Pinter... This is a movement which I guess I'm pushing forward in my own small way into fantastic fiction. Otherwise, my choice of protagonists is usually based on the vague idea that I'd like to "do" a certain kind of person, be that gay, female, old, young, etc. As a white heterosexual male, therefore, I often find it more rewarding to try to write about other states of existence. I certainly don't plan never to write about kings and queens; in fact, just making that statement reminds me of just a few of the things it would be fun to do with them...
Essentially, I'm interested in the point where reality and unreality meet. I'm also a writer -- and a reader and
a listener and a viewer -- who loves proper attention to detail. Detail can easily become a huge swam of the totally
incomprehensible if you set your story too far away from normality. So reality, real reality, is the anchor to which I tie my
work. Then, when you have the mundane, the contrast with the weird or the wonderful is all the better.
I do think that men are probably not the way ahead for humanity. Or general psychological emphasis on manual
skills and lack of social ones makes us less well suited to a high-tech world than women are. Then, when you learn how much can
already be done without male participation, so to speak, in reproductive technology, projection forward isn't that
difficult. However, I do think I probably need to redress the excessively feminine balance of the current "Breathmoss" vision, as
I think that, from a broader perspective (and don't forget that "Isabel of the Fall" does describe a world capable of considerable
brutality as well as all-out war) a female society would be more gender-less (think [Ursula K. Le Guin's] The Left Hand Of Darkness)
than gender-specific. When I finally get around to writing more about this future world, this is something I'd very much like to
deal with, possibly from the viewpoint of a male character...
In philosophical terms, I pretty much take that as read. We're born to ask questions and challenge things and
try new approaches. If we didn't, our ancestors would never have climbed down from the trees -- or climbed up into them in the
first place. In artistic terms, I guess we're back to my point about contrast -- and also conflict. You simple can't write a story
which exists entirely within the status quo. It would have no light, no interest, no shade. Having said that, of course, I'm sure
that someone somewhere can point to exceptions, but I'd still argue that they prove the rule rather than overturn it.
I hadn't thought about that in these precise terms, but I think that the answer is probably yes. Institutionalized
hostility to the Jewish race has existed in Europe for centuries, and, in the age of mass politics, it was probably inevitable that
someone would take that a step further, initially for the sake of getting elected. Then, with the sort of power and also the
stresses which are brought to bear by the running of a modern totalitarian state, and its constant need for someone to blame, the
next step tends to follow. But this isn't exclusively about the Jews and Hitler. Look at Stalin. Look, also, at the rising
prejudices which 9/11 has unleashed. Politically, mass hatred and anger are too powerful and tempting not to be exploited.
What seems to have happened is that, sixty years ago, the unthinkable was thought of, and then done on a massive scale. We've now kidded ourselves into believing that the Holocaust was so terrible that it could never happen again. But of course it has, (Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc.) and the more we tell ourselves that we know better, the more likely it is to recur. The so-called Enlightened Despots in Europe such as Louis XIV commonly indulged in a little minority-bashing. The only difference then is that the state was less efficient. Now, we've simply got better at it. The human capacity for denial and self-deception certainly hasn't changed. I do also think that we're essentially a tribal animal, and that anyone outside the tribe we see ourselves as being in is always going to attract hostility when things aren't going perfectly. I know that's not a particularly optimistic view of humanity, but I can't really see how history can support any other view And at the end of the day, no matter how far you choose to travel in a story, you still have to deal with the human condition as it is, even if you also write about how you'd wish it to be.
The outsider is always an interesting role to assume in fiction, and especially fantastic fiction. James Blish
suggested that, once you have an idea for a change in the world, you then ask yourself as you think in terms of creating a story
around it, "Who will this harm the most?" Obviously, and although I didn't actually come at it from that route, a homosexual is
likely to suffer under a fascist regime. The twist in this case is that he doesn't actually suffer at all -- in fact he
benefits -- but he does see all those around him suffer.
I suppose that what I'm foreseeing is a continuation of humanity as it is now, which means that the old
will re-emerge and continue even as the new arises. In this case, I thought in terms of a sort of loose empire which was
more based on Arab standards and themes than it was on Western ones. Islam of a sort survived, for most people as a kind of
background noise — an accepted cultural mode. But I don't see it as a place where people are all in agreement about
religion. On a personal level, I'm pretty hostile to any belief system which decides things for you, especially if that
system pretends to be based on supposedly historic events which probably didn't happen in anything like the way they're
portrayed, if they happened at all. But it's also an area which draws me, and one which I enjoy exploring, and perhaps even
showing a sympathy towards it which I don't personally feel. As a writer, you have to be prepared to promote viewpoints other
than your own. It's part of what makes the process interesting.
The "preference" has changed as years have gone by, basically in terms of my ability to write in one or the
other format. I started writing seriously in my twenties on a big novel, which I actually saw through and finished, although it
remains an apprentice piece. Then I tried another couple of novels, which didn't work out quite so well, and drifted towards
short fiction, which was the area in which I started to sell. Getting back into consistently writing novels from there proved
a hard thing; I got there in the end, but it took many years. Now, it's the idea of writing short fiction which is hard, and I
did in fact take a conscious decision about four years ago that I wouldn't write any short fiction for a while and concentrate
entirely on novel writing. In writing, it's generally the case that you loose old skills as you acquire new ones; things don't
stand still in terms of your abilities. Then, there are only so many hours in the day and so many thoughts and ideas you can
process in your head.
Those are the practical reasons why I wrote novels or short fiction at certain stages in my career. As to which is better, I have to say that I've never been a great reader and enjoyer of short mainstream fiction. There are exceptions, and certain writers such as Tobias Wolf and Raymond Carver whom I admire, but generally short fiction about the supposedly real world doesn't do it for me. I much prefer it to explore a bigger canvas which allows themes and characters to develop. I have, however, always been a great reader of short SF (and horror, and fantasy). In fact, over the years, it's probably been the area of the fantastic genre from which I've obtained the most enjoyment. We're all aware of the arguments that short fiction is the best method of approaching fictions of the fantastic and of ideas, and I do think there's some truth in them. On the other hand, the great majority of novel-length fantastic fiction has always struck me as unsatisfactory in terms of the way it develops its ideas and characters, and handles resolutions. It often lacks the philosophical rigour of good mainstream fiction, and the plot models -- the quest, for example, or the tribal history, or the world-change -- are often relatively crude ones which literary fiction discarded as its main inspiration a century or so ago. I'm not saying that they should have been discarded, but I don't think that, as a whole, the genre has really advanced as good a case as it could have for their continuance.
It varies. I'm more of a romantic than a classical, linear thinker. So it tends to be a feeling and perhaps
a place, and from there comes the rationalization.
My short story "Past Magic" has been optioned for many years -- there's even a full script -- and there have
been a couple of nibbles for my novel The Light Ages, but as yet no one's taken, and to be honest, I think it would prove a
difficult and ambitious project. I'm not sure that my work, which isn't ideas and action based, would transfer into what
currently passes for SF in most of Hollywood. Still, I do think that all the recent movies must have stimulated the public
appetite for this kind of thing and, as with Westerns, you'd like to think that as the years go by a more mature type of
film and fiction will emerge more fully. And there have been good examples in recent years -- or at least brave
attempts: Gattaca, Solaris, AI...
My next novel, The House of Storms, will be out next year. I've just given it its major edit. It's a
successor novel to The Light Ages, in that it's also set in an alternate England which developed under the discovery of a
magical substance called aether. But the time and the characters and the settings are all entirely different, as are the themes
with which it deals -- or attempts to deal.
With that done, I'm returning to a new novel which charts this century -- or a version of it -- from the viewpoint of an woman -- an English/Asian violinist -- who was born near its start. I'm also sorting out a third short story collection, which, along with Voyages by Starlight and Breathmoss, should pretty much cover all my best work at that length, unless I can write some more of it. There's one short story, an unresolved half-idea, which I'd like finish off. It will be interesting, at least, to see if I still have anything resembling the knack...
Kilian Melloy is the Editor at Large for wigglefish zine, and a columnist and reviewer for EdgeBoston.com. Hoping to make a living at this some day, for the moment Kilian is thrilled just to be talking to the creative, intriguing people he has the chance to interview for these and other web publications. |
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