Iain Banks on Sex in SF

"Of course sex is important in science fiction. If you're going for a rounded feel, then yeah, it's silly to ignore it. And you should try to get some humour in there too, if you possibly can. There's far too much of that po-faced – M. John Harrison calls it autistic – science fiction around that is too obviously what we expect from SF. If you're going to look for something more rounded then let's give it the feel and flavour of a real civilisation. To do that, cynicism and sex and complexity has to be in there. In The Algebraist, I wanted a very complex society, as well as a very hierarchical one. That was why I spent three months working on the plan of the book – not so much on the structure but all the back story had to be completely marked out. I had to give the whole civilisation a full body scan.

"During that scan, I was so conscious that sex was necessary that it is actually referred to in the text: Fassin thinks it's an archetypal thing - like kids borrowing their parent's car. And it's not as though the characters in The Algebraist are all virgins, or even pretending to be. The Dweller thing is really quite bizarre though. I did think of talking a bit more about Dweller sex but they spend most of their time as males. They've actually tended to come across as gay quite often, especially when they're talking about their tailors – 'He has a good mirror-side manner, but will it translate into a flattering fit, that's the question!'"

© Sandy Auden 2004

China Miéville on reading to improve your own language...

"The writers I like are, for example, M John Harrison. He's magnificent linguistically but he has a much more sparse style than I do. Then there's Mervyn Peake, at the lusher end. And someone like Cormack McCarthy is also tremendously impressive. I like that kind of brutish poetry of language. And I also like the pulp writers Hodgeson and Lovecaft but here it's a different thing. They use, by any reasonable standards, a clumsy language but it's one that has a kind of inadvertent poetry so it's slightly different.

"I think if you read Lovecraft his language is tremendously overwritten. It 's gushy and not very well done. If Lovecraft were to obey the rules of decent prose and calm down with his ridiculously overdone adjectives, it would make for better prose but it would somehow have less power. I always think of Lovecraft as an idiot savant The poetry of his language being kind of accidental so he's created this register that is simultaneously cack-handed but powerful and it wouldn't have the power if it wasn't for the cack-handedness.

"Someone like Cormack McCarthy, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing when he uses language. I don't think Lovecraft does. So that's what I mean when I make the distinction between those who are linguistically self-conscious and those who are linguistically enjoyable but cack-handed.

"And then there are others where I don't like their language at all but I like their vision. For me, the example, would be William Hope Hodgeson's book The Nightlands It seems to tip over too far and linguistically degenerate so that the language becomes a block on the vision. When you read it, it's for the vision not the language It's not about saying that a visionary writer like Hodgeson can do no wrong linguistically - The Nightlands is good evidence that they can do wrong - but that there's a line somewhere and that to me is something I'm very interested in."

© Sandy Auden 2004

Clive Barker on Abarat: Days of Magic: Nights of War

The ever-popular Clive Barker is back in US best-seller list with both the first and second volumes of his new series Abarat.

Aimed at the Young Adult market, Abarat is the story of Candy Quakenbush who is swept from her home in Chickentown (by the Izabella sea) to the fantasy world of the Abarat archipelago, where each island represents a different hour of the day. In this second volume, Days of Magic: Nights of War, Candy and her friend Malingo are still being pursued by the Criss-Cross Man, a servant of the evil Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight.

Rescued from the sea after almost being captured by Criss-Cross, Candy and Malingo travel to the Carnival Island of Babilonium with the crew of the Parroto Parroto. Here the two friends are separated – Candy carried to the beast-infested island of Scoraie and left to fend for herself; and Malingo becoming captain of his own ship and embarking on a quest taking him far across the archipelago. Seemingly distanced, they are destined to meet again under dire circumstances...

Barker has written for the younger age group before, with Thief of Always, so what did he consider to be the most important aspects of books for teenagers? "It needs to be plot driven," he said. "I don't spend time being very descriptive, I don't have big chunks of description ever, because as a young reader myself I'd think, 'Aah, this is a description bit here, let's get on to the action.' I preferred it when description became a function of action – that way the action would be going on while you were learning something about the environment."

In Abarat, Barker's characters are at the heart of the action, but it seems they might not actually want to be there. "It's always fun when you have plenty of plot and the action's bubbling along and then a character - that you have very clearly in your head - drives the narrative a little off course because he or she is simply isn't going to play by the plot. A writer who has invested in character the way I do tries to listen to those changes of direction. 'You wouldn't do this would you?' I'll ask them. And they say, 'No, I wouldn't. Don't make me do it!' It can be something too violent or too loving or too complicated and it's certainly made me change things. You can fall in love the characters too, and that also makes a difference. Malingo was so much more fun to write than I thought he would be and so was John Mischief. I also love writing Mater Motley, the whole bitch of her. So in a way, you end up playing things favourably for some of them, you know."

As the characters, favoured or not, take you deeper into the Abarat story, you can't help but wonder if Barker is up to something with his naming conventions. "I will absolutely say mea culpa," Barker said. "I love playing with names. I'll play and play and play and only at the last minute will I say, 'That's the right one!' Names are really important and quite often they're the first thing you know about a character. I have two or three ring binder folders, three inches thick, packed with pages of words and invented names. Or just sounds that I like, sometimes. Naming the numerous John Michief's was fun cause I wanted each one to have a different feel to it. And Christopher, of course, has Christ in it and then it goes to dead meat. So you get a very complicated mixture of feelings out of the name Christopher Carrion.

"I very often break words down into their constituent meanings and play with them too. One of the islands is called The Yebba Dim Day – Dim day, it's 8pm in the evening, it's the dim part of the day. It doesn't matter if the reader doesn't get that stuff but if they do, at least they know I've been thinking enough about this to give the reader the extra bit of fun."

The Abarat story has been so inspirational for people that Disney had already agreed to making the movies of the books before the first volume was written. "Disney are doing a live action movie," said Barker. "Like Harry Potter, with a great density of CGI, which is much more to my tastes, to be honest, than an animated movie. I love animated movies but I don't believe there's anyway to make Abarat work in animation. Disney are taking books one and two of the quartet to make the first movie; then, assuming everything works, they're using book three for the second movie and book four will be the third movie. So they're turning a quartet into a trilogy.

"No release dates have been decided yet because they've only just had the script delivered. John Harrison, who did the first-rate adaptation of Dune for the mini series, has written the script and Disney are excited about it too. I don't know how long it will take, but I wouldn't mind if it took a little while because it gives me more time to get on with the next books."

For more information about the author, check out CliveBarker.com.

© Sandy Auden 2004

Stephen Donaldson on writing The Last Runes

The Runes of the Earth, the first volume in Stephen Donaldson's continuing adventures of Thomas Covenant, is released today.

Opening a four book sequence called The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Runes of the Earth begins ten years after Covenant's death. Dr Linden Avery believed she would never see the Land or Covenant, her beloved, again, but Lord Foul has stolen her adopted son and there is more at risk than the boy's life alone. Lord Foul is unmaking the very laws of nature, an action that could lead to the destruction of everything. And then Linden starts to receive messages: 'Find me' and 'Remember that I'm dead'. The Land is in turmoil and Lord Foul has plans for them all…

It's been over twenty years since Stephen Donaldson has written about Covenant but the author insists that he hasn't missed his character at all. "Whenever I write something, I commit myself to it pretty much totally," Donaldson said. "So all of the books that I’ve worked on since The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant have each filled my head completely. There hasn’t been room for me to miss Thomas Covenant."

Moving back into Covenant's life hasn't been out of the ordinary either. Donaldson said: "My emotions when I started The Runes of the Earth were the same as they've always been whenever I’ve started on a new story: anxiety and self-doubt modulating toward excitement. Fortunately, slipping back into the style, characters, and world of Covenant was easier than I thought it would be. I suppose that the six previous books gave me a solid foundation on which to build."

Donaldson apparently has a shelf where his story ideas sit until he's ready to take them down. Covenant had been on the shelf for some time but Donaldson kept retrieving the other stories, either side of Covenant. Then those stories ran out and Covenant sat there on his lonesome, stopping the other story ideas from arriving. Donaldson admitted that he might have postponed The Last Chronicles for a few more years if it hadn't blocked everything else. "I’m human, after all," he said. "Facing my fears isn’t easy. But I like to think that I wouldn't have procrastinated much longer. The real advantage of all these years of experience is that I’m better at facing my fears than I used to be."

"Unfortunately (for me, anyway), my fears have only grown as I’ve worked my way deeper into the story. Each new book in this last quartet will be significantly more emotionally demanding, and difficult to write than the one before it. The Runes of the Earth was a big challenge; Fatal Revenant will be an even bigger one. And let’s not even mention books three and four. I can only assume/hope/pray that writing each book will make it possible for me to write the next one."

Part of the problem is the level of complexity. "Everything is proving to be far more complex than I had originally thought," he said. "My ambition, after all, is to end up with four books which tell a complete, organic story, and which simultaneously unify all ten volumes into one vast whole. So I have to find ways to tell this story - The Last Chronicles - which also expand and develop the previous six books. Not an easy task.

"I am sure that all my years of experience are paying off though," he added. "The problem is simply that my ambitions have grown as fast as - or faster than - my experience and skill. I’m a far better writer than I was once, but I’m still being stretched to my limits."

Why does he think Covenant has proved to be so enduringly popular? "I believe that readers either love what I do or hate it for the same reason: the direct - and raw - emotion of what I write grabs some readers by the throat, and alienates others. I’ve spent very little of my writing life being either 'ironically oblique' or 'omnisciently detached.' Instead I write my stories as if they were happening to me, right in front of the reader: my goal is to have the reader experience those stories in the same way. Some people find this threatening, or even offensive. Others are thrilled by it. And for those readers who are thrilled, there are very few other writers who offer a comparable intensity of engagement.

"Judging by my mail, and by the postings on my web site," he finished, "my readers have spent twenty plus years appreciating this aspect of my work, and wishing they could get more of it. Indeed, what I hear from readers suggests that they are even more eager for more now than they once were. They’re older now, and value books which make them feel engaged more highly."


For more about the author, check out Stephen Donaldson's website.

© Sandy Auden 2004