Questions people have asked me. Some of them a lot. Hence “Frequently Asked Questions”.
Because I need to be distracted from the precise order of catastrophe in the Moment Where Everything Goes Wrong (also known as the Dark Night of the Soul) in book the second. Have thought about it too hard this week.
1. How did you come up with The Gone-Away World?
Partly from my philosophy degree, partly because I am a huge pop science geek and I love pondering the weirdness of the universe. And it is so much weirder than we allow for in our everyday lives. So that was the quasi-scientific underpinning.
Then there was some sociology in there, trying to answer the question I think sociology has really fixed on since WWII – why do we screw up so badly and where do horrible evils come from? I was – still am – fascinated by Stanley Milgram‘s notorious experiment.
You have to understand, though, that it came by degrees over the course of a year. I found a voice for it, a snappy, geeky, digressive voice which is my narrators’s thoughts and feelings. An ordinary mind, but emphatically not on an ordinary day. Except that, honestly, apocalypses do seem to be getting more common, don’t they?
The story came from absolutely basic places. There’s a detective structure, as I’ve mentioned before, and a very simple premise:
World on fire.
Fix fire.
Live happily etc.
Of course, the literal fire is just the beginning. It’s actually more like the standard firebug plot:
World on fire. Put out fire. Find evidence of arson.
Chase arsonist, uncover conspiracy.
Bring villains to justice. New life.
The story is complex because each concept requires a huge amount of unravelling, and an alternative history of the world for the last twenty five odd years. But honestly, it’s not in essence a big thing. It’s layered – and that’s what happened over the year it took to write the first draft.
Will you write a sequel?
No. At least, not now, and probably never. I may write some companion stories if I feel the urge, using characters from the same world. I also loosely connected “All Or Nothing Days”, the short piece I did for the BBC, to The Gone-Away World, as well as to some short stories I wrote in ’98 and ’99 for Interzone. I haven’t sorted out a venue for “All Or Nothing Days” to appear in print, and yes, I should, and yes, I will. I’m also thinking about releasing it as part of a Harkaway eBundle for Stanza or something, but I need to get my head around that a bit more.
What’s next?
Well, right now this minute I’m sitting in a cafe working on the second book, which is – I hope – as weird and fun as the first. No, I’m not telling you about it. That drives my publishers crazy. Sorry.
I’ve also got another short piece out there which I trust will find its intended roost with a literary fiction magazine – a bit of writing which on the one hand is unequivocally Science Fiction, but which is also unequivocally literary. Because, you know, that’s going to make almost everyone scream and howl in fury and hate me, and I enjoy that kind of thing.
(I don’t, at all.)
Is The Gone-Away World Science Fiction?
It must be. It’s up for a Science Fiction award…
Look, I honestly have no idea what that question means. If you mean:
is this a trashy novel in which the heroine wears a silver bikini and gets tied to a mad scientist’s table, and then rescued by the hero before Dr Franzavius can unleash his sexotronic orgasmonster upon her supple curves, and the plucky Earthman then runs his foe through with a lasersabre before defusing a Protonic Detonator?
No. Although if you were actually to read any of those stories, you might find that they were a) vastly more interesting in terms of what they do and try to do than you think and b) kinda awesome in a retro cool/kitsch way.
[Actually, now that I say it, I quite want to write that one... in fact, yeah, wow, I have a totally amazing plan. Wow. WOW. Okay, where's my pen?]
If you mean:
is this a story which rests its narrative environment on a technological deviation from the world we experience, which in turn triggers a radical departure from the way things are, yet at the same time leaves room for familiar problems and wickednesses, which reflects our daily experience in odd ways, but which is basically a roaring yarn and not a pseudo-realist statement of gritty urban sorrow?
Then yes! That would be me!
I think the hard distinction some people would like to make between genre fiction of whatever stripe and literary fiction is either illusory or rapidly breaking down. I think many of these notions depend on marketing, and shelving.
That said, I’m a huge geek. Science Fiction is a much-maligned genre which – as many others do – embraces a wide world of possibility and style, some good, some bad, some brilliant. You will take my copy of Snow Crash from my cold, dead fingers. (After my head is frozen.)
Is The Gone-Away World Post-Apocalyptic Fiction?
Well, yeah, kinda. But I have this thing about that. Post-Apocalypse books have a few features I don’t really see in TGAW…
1. they’re depressing as hell. Mud, grime, loneliness, death in childbirth, zombies…
Well, okay, zombies aren’t always depressing, but kinda.
2. root vegetables. For some reason, grubbing for root vegetables often seems to form a large part of the atmosphere. I do not like root-vegetable fiction, especially not in films. The tendency to make turnip movies in Art House post-apocalypse cinema is particularly egregious.
3. forced-breeding programme drama. As in: “oh, noes, we haz no baybiez! The human race must propogates! Gives me ur weemin! Ai can haz orgy nao?” I have no time for this. It turned me off when it surfaced in Day Of The Triffids and it hasn’t gotten any younger. I have dark suspicions about why it crops up which I won’t go into.
4. did I mention turnips? Yes? Okay. I hate turnip drama. As long as that’s clear.
But yes, the world comes to an end in TGAW. At least twice, actually.
Is there gonna be a movie?
That would be awesome!
No. At least, so far, no one has stepped up. I need to get me some of that Whedon Juice: You Can’t Stop The Signal and so on. (Slogans in the comments section, please…)
I thought originally that I was writing an un-filmable book. Since then, a number of people have hit me repeatedly in the head and said that it would make a great movie and I should shut up. I have begun to see the wisdom of agreeing with them.
But it wouldn’t be cheap or easy, so it needs someone to gun it through. If you know anyone like that, please feel free to alert them to the availability of the rights… I want Johnny Depp for Ike Thermite.
What’s it like being the son of a famous author?
Uh. This one’s always hard to answer because I have nothing else to compare it with. I mean, I’ve never had another dad.
The simple answer is: it’s great. He’s a wonderful dad who is also a wonderful writer.
Are there advantages and disadvantages? Yes. For example…
Advantage: people pay a disproportionate amount of attention to me.
Disadvantage: I’m going to spend my life being compared with one of the best writers presently working in English, whose chronicling and critique of a definitive historical period are somewhat awe-inspiring, and whose approach to writing is in many ways utterly unlike my own.
Do you have to be really disciplined to write?
Yeah, but maybe not in the way you mean. It’s more fun to write than to do most other things, so working isn’t so much of an issue, unless it’s going badly on a given morning and then I’d rather blog about stuff than bang my head against an invisible wall which I will find a way round if I just relax a little.
The discipline is in saying: I love this bit. It is crap.
Or worse yet: I love this bit. It is good. It does not work here and I must cut it.
Do you read your reviews?
Yes. I like to know what’s going on. Also, the people who tell you not to are often the same people who call you to tell you there’s a great one (or a stinker) in such-and-such a paper or on some website or whatever. I think if everyone hated something I wrote, I’d have to stop reading, because it would make me sad.
Back to work.
