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Charles Stross(continued) Interview by Alyce Wilson Well, I like the idea that you've expressed that, as a writer, you can't be in a vacuum, as far as your knowledge of what other writers have done. You said yesterday at a panel that you shouldn't, maybe, write a hacking novel without knowing cyberpunk. Well, rather if you try to write without being aware of cyberpunk,
you will either come up with something wildly original or make huge
mistakes and write cliches. And you don't want to do cliches. There is a fair amount of research that goes into writing something. I will confess freely to being a slacker and a bit too willing to cut corners in my research. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to write as many books, perhaps, as I do. It does seem, though, you have a thirst for knowledge [...] in a number of different fields. Yes. You've got to have, in effect, a magpie's interest in stuff [...] if you're going to write science fiction that isn't part of a recognized sub-genre with fairly tight, rigid guidelines, such as Napoleonic navies in space. Because if you're trying to project a believable future, there's a lot of -- futures are gnarly, because there's a lot of stuff that goes into them. Yes. I mean, a healthy understanding of the past, for one thing. Yes. History is an amazing resource for a science-fiction writer. You can just strip-mine it wherever you want. What strikes me interesting, as well, is that you consciously make efforts to reference other writers. You were saying [at a Philcon panel], "This is a little bit like P.G. Wodehouse," and this is a little bit like Roger Zelazny and this and that. And what it makes me think of is when I was reading "Singularity Sky," I was thinking, "You know, this is almost a post-modern science-fiction novel." You may have heard that before; I don't know. But you're deconstructing cultural and political beliefs. You're making references to... There's some serious pot-shots at traditional space opera. Exactly. It's a genre-busting sort of effort. Would you care to comment on that observation? Yes. As I said, we're in a dialogue with other writers in the field. The dreaded word "intertextuality" raises its head at a certain point. Science fiction has a history now: its own conventions, its own deep thinkers of the past, its own dead alleys. And I'm writing science fiction to people like myself, I guess, who are aware of where it's been and read a lot around it, and who will get the in-jokes, although I'm also trying to make sure that it's a fun read for people who don't. I was also struck by your use of humor. I've done a whole lot of -- put it this way. The Atrocity Archives is not straight horror; it's also extremely funny. Humor runs through most of my work. There's probably a lot less of it in the Merchant Princes stuff. The real world is funny. Humor is a defense mechanism we use for dealing with the real world when it gets a bit too much. And humor is a part of everyday life. I don't think it needs to be set aside and turned into something either distilled to the point where you're laughing the whole bloody time through the book or excluded from serious narrative, either, Why do you think the U.S. embraced your writing before the U.K.? Because I deliberately tried to sell it to the U.S. Bigger market? Bigger market. I was fairly clear on the goal that I wanted to be able to be a full-time writer, so that I could devote my time to writing. And if you're going to do that, you really need to focus, to some extent, on making money. I didn't want to compromise on the artistic side of it. But if you're going to be in an artistic niche, you'd better be in the biggest available artistic niche. Now, it happened that I was looking for a literary agent and happened to strike pay-dirt very, very well, indeed, in 2000, when I discovered my current agent, who was previously an editor with a major New York house, was leaving to join an agency. I figured she knows the business, but she doesn't have a back-list of important authors who are ahead of me. So I was actually her first acquisition as an agent. You'd already had the short stories and published Singularity Sky... I had short stories that had been published. I had a contract on offer from a small British publisher for Singularity Sky. They went to us before they could publish it, but in the meantime, it got her attention. She handled the contract side [...] and then she resold it to Orbit in the U.K. afterwards, which is why I'm a couple of years behind schedule in the U.K. Because she's based in New York. She focuses on the U.S. markets first, anyway. But as far as the British publishing market is concerned, I'm actually
seen as an American import, in business terms if not in literary terms.  |
