Interview:Peter Dickinson on “Troll Blood”
- Tell us a little about “Troll Blood.”
Twenty plus years ago my wife, Robin McKinley, was asked to write a short illustratable story about a mermaid. She had no ideas so since we were living then in a small English village, we walked down to the village pub to see if we could dream up some kind of a plot over supper. By the time we’d finished eating we’d come up with half a dozen possibilities, and before we got home we had a grandiose plan to write a sequence of four collections of stories about the mythical creatures if the four elements, each of us contributing three stories per book. It took longer than we expected as our stories kept (particularly in Robin’s case) turning into full-length novels. The Water volume took us seven years, and Fire another seven. Then PEGASUS, which she’d started for the Air volume, expanded into a sequel; and . when it showed signs of becoming a trilogy we decided to bite the bullet and let me publish my Earth and Air stories as a single separate volume, which will be coming out under the auspices of Small Beer Press later this year. By then TROLL BLOOD must have been sitting in my bottom drawer for several years.
- What was the inspiration for this story, and how did you come to write it?
I don’t like the word “inspiration”. Of the fifty-odd books I’ve written I don’t think more than half a dozen began with any kind of “Wow!” moment. Usually I’ve had a vague feeling that there might be a book there and have sat down at my desk at the regular time of day and written an experimental page or two, and with luck other pages have followed naturally. I probably did that with TROLL BLOOD — needing to write a story about trolls — there aren’t a lot of usable earth creatures — that phrase slipping into my mind — someone with troll blood in his/her veins — how did it get there? — and we’re off!
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
Read some books. I don’t remember which ones. Most of the apparently scholarly stuff about the burnt manuscript I made up.
- Some authors say that their stories are personal to them. If that’s true for you in this case, then how so?
I don’t understand this question. I can’t imagine any worthwhile writer being happy about the idea that somebody else could have written one of his/her stories.
- Would you say “Troll Blood” is typical of the kind of story that you write?
Well, I’ve written a good deal of fantasy of various kinds, but a lot of other stuff as well.
- What are you working on now?
Nothing new. I’m almost eighty-five and the wells are empty. I’m currently getting my pre-digital books into a form in which they can be published on-line.
“Troll Blood” appears in the Sept./Oct. 2012 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Ken Liu on “Arc”
- Tell us a little bit about “Arc.”
Lena Auzenne, the protagonist, is an artist who works with plastinated bodies (like the Body Worlds exhibits). Then she learns about a new medical procedure that puts the aging process on hold. For her, the two become inextricably entwined in her life.
- What was the inspiration for this story, and how did you come to write it?
I wrote this after reading Sonia Arrison’s _100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity …_ (the book has a very long, search-engine-friendly subtitle which I’ve cut short here for the sake of aesthetics). To simplify somewhat, the book is a discussion of the many implications—social, legal, psychological, and otherwise—of the longevity revolution, when many individuals in the West will be able to live long past the age of 100 and stay healthy and vigorous for the bulk of that span. It’s very interesting; I recommend it.
A second source of inspiration comes from US Patent 4205059, “Animal and Vegetal Tissues Permanently Preserved by Synthetic Resin Impregnation,” and US Patent 4302157, “Method for Preserving Large Sections of Biological Tissue With Polymers.” These are the “plastination” patents issued to Gunther von Hagens of Body Worlds.
I saw a kind of parallel between making death appear like life and stretching life out to defer death — both seem to be about suspending time. And I wanted to write a story to explore them.
- What research, if any, did you do for “Arc?”
Besides following up on some of the scientific sources cited in Arrison’s book (I try to always go to primary sources), I watched some videos on the plastination process.
I really think YouTube may be one of the greatest research tools for a writer.
- Many, if not all, of your stories have an emotional poignancy to them, and I was wondering if you could speak to that at all; perhaps why/how you find yourself drawn to write serious material.
Some of the thematic shifts in my work no doubt have to do with the births of my two daughters. Being a father has changed my emotional center of gravity, made me pay attention to things I haven’t thought much about before, and altered the way I feel about what is meaningful in my life.
Since I use writing as a way of thinking, it’s probably inevitable that my recent fiction would reflect my changing thoughts.
- What might you want someone to take away from reading “Arc?”
It’s a cliché in fiction for someone offered a chance at immortality to either suffer terrible consequences or to refuse it — indeed Arrison ridicules this pattern in her book. The notion that death gives life meaning is a failure of imagination.
So I rewrote this story many times, trying to get Lena to be content with living forever, but the story just would not work.
In the end, Lena decides to shape her life into an arc, because giving our lives a pattern is what we mortals yearn to do. We want to make our life into a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
(This is not to say that this is the only kind of story that can be told. I’ve since tried to write another story where the heroine, faced with the same choice, chooses differently, and I think I succeeded. But that required a very different kind of character from Lena.)
Whether the narrative drive _should_ be how we think about our own life is something I invite the reader to think through with me.
- Is this story personal in any way to you in its subject matter or in the writing of it, and if so, how?
While writing the story, I wondered if my daughters will indeed live to see the human race conquer death. And I realized that I was okay with possibly belonging to the last generation to die. Lena and I are not so different, after all.
“Arc” appears in the Sept./Oct. 2012 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Jeffrey Ford on “A Natural History of Autumn”
- Tell us a bit about “A Natural History of Autumn.”
“A Natural History of Autumn” is a supernatural horror story set in Japan, specifically on the Izu Peninsula. It’s also a noir story in that it’s about love and betrayal, double crossing with a pulpy twist. It’s a story about autumn and a monster story, featuring a mythic Japanese creature known as Jinmenkin.
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
This story is an homage to those aspects of Japanese literature and film that have inspired my writing over the past 30 years. I wanted to try to emulate some of the effects of these works in the story — those aspects of them that ignited my imagination when I first came upon them. For one instance, the character of Riku is loosely based on the protagonist of Kurosawa’s film, “Stray Dog.” The structure of the story is reminiscent of the film Matango, a flick my brother and I, back in the day, would comb the TV guide for possible showings of in a savagely butchered form on 2 AM Saturday night fare from channel 11 or 9 out of New York City. This film was then known to us as — “Attack of the Mushroom People.” I did my best in the scenes that try to capture the autumn to emulate the subtlety of Tanizaki’s description in his short novel, The Reed Cutter. It’s difficult, though, to boil particular aspects of the story down to specific instances of influence. There are too many and they are too pervasive — from Mothra to Morio Kita’s Ghosts to Miyazaki’s amazing animations to Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo — The Iron Man. My process is a kind of mash-up of American noir and Japanese influences and obviously has inherent limitations in that I’ve only ever been able to access those aspects of Japanese culture that have been translated into English — a meager scratching of the tip of the iceberg — but since Tanizaki was greatly influenced by Western writers (Murakami by Kafka, etc.) as were a host of other great Japanese writers, I see it as a dialogue of literature that has been ongoing for a very long time. Just for fun, here’s a list of my top ten favorite works of fiction (at this moment) from Japan. No doubt the list will change next week. F&SF readers have more than likely read a lot of these. Hopefully they will find something here that might interest them, and if they are kind enough perhaps they will post a few I haven’t mentioned so that I can check them out.
The Woman in the Dunes — Kobo Abe (there are at least a half dozen great ones by Abe, but this is a near perfect novel).
Strangers — Taichi Yamada (the creepiness of this book is so idiosyncratically quiet it’s startling)
Shipwrecks — Akira Yoshimura
Diary of a Mad Old Man — Junichiro Tanizaki (as with Abe, so many great ones)
The Stories of Edogawa Rampo
Inspector Imanishi Investigates — Seicho Matsumoto
After Dark — Haruki Murakami (as with Abe and Tanizaki, the hits keep coming. Not to mention remarkable short stories).
Kusamakura – Netsume Soseki (off the hook)
“The Hell Screen” — Ryunosuke Akutagawa (the only short story on the list, not that the literature doesn’t hold armfulls of other great ones, but this has to be one of the best horror stories ever written. For a new translation of it, check Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s anthology, The Weird. )
The Ring — Koji Suzuki
The Reed Cutter — Junichiro Tanizaki (this short novel’s evocation of autumn was key to my story).
- Would you say that “A Natural History of Autumn” is typical of your work, or is it out of the ordinary from what you usually write?
It’s hard to say what’s typical of my work these days. When I just look back over the last five or six stories I’ve written for publication, I can’t find any two that are similar. In that sense, it’s not typical, or it is typical in that it’s not typical. It’s definitely not typical in that I have never written a story set in Japan before and probably never will again. It is typical in that I have written supernatural stories containing weird creatures with undercurrents of noir and/or pulp.
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
Any time you decide to set a story in a different country, especially one you’ve never been to, with characters from a different culture, it’s a real dicey affair. The potential for screw-ups grows exponentially as you push further into the story. The research was extensive on this one — internet and books and checking things with a Japanese friend who’s a translator. Still there are gaffs and they are all my own. I caught some before publication, and the F&SF copy editor caught two (one of which I corrected and the other couldn’t as I felt it was too much of an intrusion on the plot for such a very minor detail). I read this story aloud before it was published at the ICFA conference in Orlando, and a Japanese woman in the audience came up to me after the reading and pointed out another issue with a piece of furniture I mentioned. I have no doubt an adept eye might turn up more. Ultimately, the research on the story was very gratifying to have done. I learned a lot. The song that is mentioned as coming on the car radio in the story is “Just You, Just Me,” an old standard I listened to every night while writing it. The version I listened to was by Pianica Maeda, a Japanese musician. It used to be on youtube, but as soon as I finished the story, they took the video down for some reason. Too bad.
- Some authors say that their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, then in what way was “A Natural History of Autumn” personal?
I agree that all stories are personal to some degree and this one is obviously no exception, but beyond the fact that it is an homage to my Japanese influences I can’t think of another. The feature that both Riku and Michi have on their phones that turns the screen into a flashlight is an app my son put on my phone, so there is that. This story, though, has fast driving and running — two things I’m allergic to.
- What are you working on now?
There are a number of projects I’m into at the moment, but only one I care to talk about openly. I am writing a pulp serial in installments on my livejournal, Crackpot Palace – http://jeffford2010.livejournal.com/ The story begins in a Noir vein but will eventually evolve into a science fiction/horror/dark fantasy whim wham about transdimensional invasion. It’s called The Companions of Fear. By the end of this week, there should be close to 20,000 words. It’s broken down into nice bite size installments. Check it out.
Also, I have some stuff coming out or out right now.
My new short story collection, Crackpot Palace, 20 stories with story notes for all but one story, from Morrow Harper Collins, is out now in either trade paperback or e-book format.
I have a story, “The Drowned Life,” in the Oxford Book of American Short Stories new 2nd edition, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, which just came out.
There are new stories coming soon in a number of anthologies — Dark Faith Invocations, edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon for Apex, After, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for TOR, Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for TOR, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, edited by John Joseph Adams for TOR.
“A Natural History of Autumn” appears in the July/August 2012 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Michaele Jordan on “Wizard”
- Tell us a bit about “Wizard.”
“Wizard” is about the reckless courage of adolescence and the unknowability of the future . My, that sounds pompous! But it is as simple a description as I can manage. Rachel is fourteen, and as crazy as any other fourteen-year-old. The future she dives blindly into is as unknowable as I could make it.
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
I started with an image that popped into my head: Rachel (although I didn’t know her name yet) standing stunned on a street corner, staring at a great-looking guy. Kids get desperate crushes all the time, as I remember all too well, and they can act very goofy when it happens. In my original mental image, Rachel dropped an armload of schoolbooks, but almost immediately upon writing that down, I realized that she had to drop something a) more valuable to her than school books, and b) easier to pick up again. By then, I had started to do some thinking about the great looking guy, wondering who he was. I didn’t know, and eventually figured out that I could never know because it was that moment of seeing something so desirable and yet incomprehensible, so intimately alien, that I was writing about.
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
On this one, thankfully, none. That’s a refreshing first for me.
- A lot of stories have been written with wizards as the subject matter. How were you able to find a fresh take to write about in this well-worn area?
It’s not so much that I achieved a fresh take, as that I never really sat down to write about a wizard. That was just a label I added on later to describe (very inadequately) what he was—as if I knew what he was, anyway.
- Is there anything you might want a reader to take from “Wizard’?
There’s no single articulate idea that I was trying to communicate. Rather I was trying to pass on an image, with all its emotional connotations. I would like to hope that readers will find themselves coming back to the story, teasing at it, wondering about it. But I don’t care that much what they end up deciding it means.
- What are you working on now?
Most of my energies right now (barring the occasional short story when a picture crawls into my mind) are going into my next novel Jocasta and the Indians which is about two thirds done. It’s a light-hearted steam-punk romp (but with excruciatingly authentic Victoriana, barring the bold heroines, and their shiny toys). It’s very satisfying because I’ve done a lot of dark work recently, and really needed something more cheerful.
“Wizard” appears in the July/August 2012 issue of F&SF.
Interview: Matthew Johnson on “The Afflicted”
- Tell us a bit about “The Afflicted.”
“The Afflicted” is a story about where we draw the line in feeling compassion. Old people around the world have developed a disease somewhat similar to Alzheimer’s in that it gradually takes away their memory and self-control, but it also makes them aggressive and uncontrollable. Kate, the protagonist, is a former retirement-home nurse who now works in the camps that have been set up following the outbreak, caring for all of the people who are presumed to be infected but haven’t yet gone “end-stage,” as well as protecting them (and herself) from the ones that have. When she stumbles on someone who isn’t supposed to be there, she’s forced to question her assumptions about herself and the people she cares for.
- What was the inspiration for this story, or what prompted you to write it?
I wrote “The Afflicted” at about the same time as my story “The Last Islander,” and the two were a study in contrasts: “The Last Islander” came from an offhand comment I made on a panel at a con back in 2010 and took a year and a half to write after that, whereas the first draft of “The Afflicted” was done about two months after I stopped in the middle of chopping garlic, took my notebook out of my pocket and wrote “Alzheimer zombies.” It sometimes takes me a while to find the dramatic situation in an idea, but in this case I had the setting, characters and basic plot all in place by the end of that evening.
- What kind of research, if any, did you do for this story?
I mostly did research on the practical aspects of the story, about nursing in remote areas and in old-age homes. A lot of details in the story, from the “camp ice cream” to the behavior and ailments of some of the characters, come directly from true stories in those settings.
- The zombie genre has been well-tread by other authors, especially in the past ten years or so. What made you want to tackle this area of sci-fi, and how were you able to find new ground to cover as a writer?
I think what sets “The Afflicted” apart is that it’s meant as a criticism of the zombie genre. There’s no mystery to the basic appeal of zombie stories, but I think a lot of the time they’re a guilty pleasure, and not in a good way: we enjoy having characters that the protagonist can kill without guilt or compunction, so that we don’t have to feel any by extension. This can make a story as meaningless as a first-person shooter, but there’s a moral concern as well. In most stories, not only is it not wrong to kill a zombie, it’s wrong not to kill a zombie, and characters are admired and praised for their willingness to kill infected friends, lovers and family members before they “turn.” In “The Afflicted” I made the “latent” period a lot longer than it is in most stories to bring those moral questions — When do we stop feeling compassion for someone? When do we stop thinking of someone as human? — to the foreground.
- Some authors say their stories are personal. If that’s true for you, then in what way was “The Afflicted” personal to you?
It’s not based on direct experience, fortunately, though I do think that how we treat old people is one of the things future generations may view the way we see slavery and bear-baiting today. The ideas in the story, though, have a lot to do with my work doing media education, because a lot of the same questions get raised when we’re looking at media violence, cyberbullying, and media representations of crime, poverty, disasters and so on.
- What are you working on now?
My story “The Last Islander” is out right now in the September issue of Asimov’s and I have a collection of short stories, “Irregular Verbs,” coming out from ChiZine Press in early 2014. Right now I’m trying to get back into a writing routine after a brutal year at my day job, doing research for a novel tentatively titled “The City of Dreaming Spires” and trying to find a home for my second book, “Fire In Your Heart,” about a world where God is not only demonstrably real but periodically comes down to Earth to judge everyone for their sins. Interested parties can get semi-regular updates at my website, www.irregularverbs.ca.
“The Afflicted” appears in the July/August 2012 issue of F&SF.
