Ian Edginton takes War of the Worlds another step beyond

Writer Ian Edginton and artist D'Israeli are working on a sequel to Scarlet Traces for Dark Horse Comics.

Scarlet Traces (reviewed here on TAO) is conspiracy story set in a Victorian world after the Martian invasion had failed and the Martian technology has been adapted to the Victorian way of life. It's a world where houses are kept warm by heat-ray machines, and horses have been replaced by many-legged mechanical vehicles.

It's a rich and colourfully written world, ably supported by D'Israeli's expressive artwork but how did Edginton develop the post-Martian invasion culture in the UK?

"Taking it all the way back to basics, Scarlet Traces began about thirty odd years ago when I was about eleven," said Edginton. "The first science fiction novels I ever read where John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids and H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. The influence of those books has stayed with me to this day. There's a certain kind of informed Englishness to them that really appeals to me. It's what I like to think of as 'pipe and slippers Gothic'. There's a subtly understated intelligence that assumes the reader has a brain and can work things out for themselves, they don't have to be spoon-fed.

"There's also a deep, dark vein of cold, chilling horror that's dealt with in such a matter-of-fact manner as to be unnervingly callous. I remember the part in War of the Worlds where the Martian war machines scooped up the helpless, hapless humans dumping them in a metal basket/cage to face a grisly fate. More than anything, that notion of helplessness really haunted me. We all like to think we'd be heroes in such circumstances when in actual fact we'd be running and screaming with the mob.

"The one thing that struck me after finishing War of the Worlds, was whatever happened to all the machine machinery? I filed that query away at the back of my mind until, years later, I was trying to think up a new project for Matt Brooker (aka D'Israeli) and myself. Cooking up Scarlet Traces was one of those wonderful, rare occasions when everything fell into place within a matter of days, if not hours. Once you began with the concept that industrious Victorians such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel would reverse engineer the Martian technology, the story began to grow and evolve by itself. Even so, we're talking about a steam-based culture trying to solve the mechanical mysteries of space-faring technology, so I reasoned out that somewhere, somehow, there had to be a primer – a Rosetta Stone for decoding the mysteries of the Martian.

"I remembered the frightening image of the fleeing Londoners being gathered up and thought: what if the Martians were like vampire bats? Once I had the answer to that question, the plot positively gambolled along!"

One of the reasons the Scarlet Traces world works so well is because it has a solid set of rules. "Matt and I decided right from the start that this should look and feel like a fully realised world," Edginton said. "It should be fantastic but not go beyond the bounds of its own internal logic. Matt and I would constantly bounce ideas back and forth. I'd come up with just a throw-away, off-the-cuff suggestion about what a machine or building would look like and Matt would come back with a selection of beautifully realised designs.

"Although it's never said – mostly because I didn't have room – there are no horses in England anymore because I had a bacteriological by-product of the Martian's decomposition kill them all off. By necessity they had to invent something to replace the horse, hence all the multi-legged carriages, again derived from the Martian tech'.

"One of the other things I'm very pleased with is the imagining of post-invasion London. There is a wonderful book by Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde called London How it Might Have Been which shows the sketches and designs for marvellous flights of architectural fantasy that were proposed for the city.

"We used this book as a springboard for the look of the London in Scarlet, although Spymaster Davenport Spry's base at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich was actually based on the real plans for a vast mausoleum/monument to Sir Isaac Newton which would have contained the great man's house and observatory! You just can't write stuff like that!"

The story that runs through this fantastic world is a dark and cautionary tale. Definitely not one for lovers of fluffy, feel-good yarns. "It all comes down to helplessness again," Edginton said. "Just being completely overwhelmed by events. I knew that people would think that they could see the cliché coming from a mile off. The dashing hero would save the day because Scarletwas written very much in the Boy's Own tradition of John Buchan's Richard Hannay and Sapper's Bulldog Drummond. People have told me that they really didn't like the ending, it unsettled them, which is exactly what I was after. I'm a nasty little sod at heart."


Edginton's other project with artist D'Israeli is Kingdom of the Wicked, also from Dark Horse Comics.

Kingdom follows the life of struggling writer Chris Grahame, who finds himself being sucked into the imaginary world he created as a child; renewing his acquaintance with his childhood toys, including teddy bear Fuzzbox. While the real Chris Grahame faints from overwhelming headaches, the imaginary Chris discovers that his childhood world is in a state of siege and is in the process of being over-run by The Great Dictator. Chris joins forces with Fuzzbox and his army but soon realizes that the evil is even closer to home than he originally thought…

There's a certain gritty realism to Chris's childhood in Kingdom that makes you wonder how much of Edginton's own childhood was mixed into the story. Edginton answers the point with honesty: "My childhood wasn't exactly a bed of roses and my room at the top of the house was definitely a sanctuary," he said. "I read a great deal, mostly books culled from second hand shops because we were quite broke most of the time. It made for an interesting and eclectic reading list, ranging from R.F. Delderfield and A.J. Cronin to William Burroughs and Colin MacInnes.

"I think losing myself in literature at the time does have parallels with Chris's journey. It was my armour against very unpleasant times. At the risk of sounding all new agey, in hindsight, I can see that writing Kingdom was very cathartic. I've been asked a few times if I would like to write a sequel but there isn't one to be written. The story's told, it's done."

Did he have a teddy bear like Fuzzbox? "You know, I didn't think I did, then I remembered I had this old Teddy, I still do actually, it's in a trunk in the loft, with a load of old annuals and schoolbooks - talk about life imitating art or is it the other way around? He doesn't have a name and is missing some stuffing and part of an ear. It's strange, the subconscious plays a big part in Kingdom. Things forgotten. Things remembered."

Kingdom is a double-threaded tale set in both Chris's real life and his imaginary world, and the two stories interleave into one smooth narrative. "That was more a technical exercise than anything else," Edginton said. "Once the outline for Kingdom had been approved, I broke it down into four chapters and then broke each chapter down into individual issue pages. I wrote the page numbers 1-24 in a note book and scribbled a brief, one line summary of what was happening on each page alongside them. That way I can see how everything flows, what to change and what to leave, so by the time I came to write the script, the bulk of the groundwork's already been done and I could concentrate on the dialogue and character.

"Sometimes it can be tricky when you're writing the script as other, occasionally better ideas will occur to you and you have to decide whether to go with them or not, which may entail tearing the whole thing down and starting again. I can be a bloody nightmare to work with at times. I won't let a script go until I'm really happy with it but the problem is if you keep reworking and reworking, you just get stuck in a loop. A couple of times I've had Matt or Steve call me and say 'Step away from the computer and give me the script!'.

"Other times, there's simply too much story for the book and you have to pare things back. The horse idea in Scarletis an example of this, also we did plan to have a female character play a part - Robert Autumn's love interest, snake-breeder and markswoman Lady Charlotte Hemming - but it slowed the story down. Now she's the protagonist in the sequel Scarlet Traces: The Great Game. She not exactly the same character but she seemed too good just to discard."

The sequel will also be a collaboration with artist D'Israeli (Matt Brooker) and the two seem to work together with ease. "When I'm writing for Matt I always have his style mind. I know when to write certain pages quite panel heavy and when to step back and let him run with whatever he's got in mind.

"We'll talk a project through in detail in the early days, I'll throw in ideas for visuals and Matt will suggest certain dialogue or scenarios. At the end of the day I'll always defer to the artist simply because they have a better visual eye than I do, it's their job. We have established a sort of visual short hand where I'll say that a certain page or panel is like a scene from particular film. It might not be to convey the film's action but more the mood and tone. It's the same when I'm working with Steve Yeowell, Steve Pugh or Mike Collins."

Scarlet Traces: The Great Game will be out in summer 2005 from Dark Horse but what else can we look forward to seeing from the Edginton imagination? "I've got another two issues of my Hell House adaptation coming out from IDW," he said, "and I've just finished the third series of the pirate yarn 'Red Seas' for 2000AD, drawn by the inimitable Steve Yeowell.

"I'm also working on a superhero book, along with several mini's featuring cowboys, Vikings, vampires, dinosaurs and demons. Oh, and there's a romance story too, which I'm really looking forward to getting cracking on."

For more information about Scarlet Traces, visit the Dark Horse Comics website.

Are Shorts No Longer Fashionable?

Not only has Pete Crowther been in the publishing business for more years than he'd care to discuss, but he's seen it from a number of different angles. He's a published author, an accomplished editor and, running the award-winning PS Publishing company, he's also seen the gritty end of the publishing game.

His latest publishing venture will be a short story magazine, tentatively entitled Postscripts and scheduled to start rolling off the presses in 2004. I caught up with him to quiz him about his motivations for the project and ask some hard questions about the short story market.

Sandy: You've already got a hectic schedule with PS Publishing. Why did you want to start a short story magazine as well?

Pete: I believe passionately in the short story - not simply as the consummate literary length it is but also as a means of enabling newer writers to practise and hone their craft. Thus, when I was approached to lend whatever support I could muster to the Arts Council of England's push to save this much maligned artform, I thought it made a lot of sense to apply actual funds rather than simply a few kind words . . . and my proposal to the Arts Council said as much. Yes, I have more than enough on already. But some things just have to be done and if nobody else is going to do them then I'll have a go myself. Life is far too short to spend it sitting on the sidelines twiddling your thumbs while you wait for someone else to do what's needed.

The early issues of the magazine will have familiar names in them but, as we move forward and the magazine picks up a following and a readership (my fingers are crossed), we'll be opening up the doors to everyone to try us with their work. That, after all, is the main reason for the whole thing. Right now, only a few weeks after announcing the magazine (though discussions have been going on for around eight months), we've bought stories from Ramsey Campbell, Jay Lake, James Lovegrove and Peter Hamilton. In addition, Harlan Ellison called me to promise either a story or a guest editorial for one of the first couple of issues and I've just discussed a guest editorial theme with Bob Silverberg. We're also hoping for work from Steve Baxter, Graham Joyce, Mike Marshall Smith, Gene Wolfe, Ed Gorman and many, many more. My thanks goes out to all these folks for their support and their willingness to give, once again, of their best for one of my projects.

Sandy: What sort of stories will be included in the new magazine?

Pete: The easiest way to answer this is that they'll be Pete Crowther stories - no matter whether their setting is on- or off-world, or now, soon or then; whether they feature astronauts, aliens, monsters, serial killers, hoodlums, knights, ghosts, elves, cowboys, housewives and husbands, business tycoons, vampires or werewolves.

They will not be gratuitous in terms of violence, sex or language though, if a particular story calls for someone to get harpooned up the backside while engaged in cunnilingus, leaping from the bed exclaiming 'Oh, my fucking arse!' then that's fine. I don't expect too much of it, however, so would-be contributors be warned: the inclusion of excessive gore, profanity and sexual titillation purely for their sakes alone is not my bag.

I believe we all read across the genres - I do and pretty much everyone I speak with does. Okay, we may be fans of one particular area - be it SF or fantasy, police procedural or ghost story - but we dabble in other areas as well. At any one time, my bedside table may feature books by Ramsey Campbell, Paul McAuley, Ed McBain, Steve Erikson, John Updike, Alice Hoffman, Anne Tyler and Martin Amis, plus various Vertigo and Alan Moore graphic novels and runs of comics featuring Archie and Carl Barks's ducks. In time, I hope that Postscripts will reflect that range of subjects, though alas, there'll be no Donald Duck stories because Carl's gone on to that great Disneyland in the sky. Everything else - and I do mean everything else - will be fair game: if it appeals to me then it'll go in; if it doesn't, it won't. Simple as that.

Sandy: It seems from the sales figures for various genre short story magazines that the market has been declining. Why do you think short stories are less popular now, than they used to be?

Pete: I'm sure there are a variety of reasons and with each person those reasons show themselves in different percentages. But I'd guess that the constraints placed by the pressures of 21st Century life on leisure time (not to mention an easy mind) have more than played their part.

A short story is, to all intents and purposes, a little novel. Each time we begin a story we're faced with new characters, new settings, new relationships and so on. The start of a story (and this is also relevant to a long story – a novel or novella) requires a greater mental application on the reader's part than the rest of the story will demand. So it stands to reason that a 150,000-word novel needs less concentration than a collection of, say, thirty 5,000-word stories. With the novel, the reader has only the one 'getting-to-know-the-layout' session while the collection has thirty. Thus, if an individual takes in 5,000 words a day, the novel-reader simply returns to a familiar setting for twenty-nine of those thirty days - whereas the collection-reader must 'endure' a completely new scenario and cast of characters every time he or she picks up the book.

The concepts of a job for life, buying a home and the security of a pension at the end of one's working life have all but disappeared completely, and this has caused a major drain on our concentration and has affected not only the stability of relationships and starting a family but also the very idea of forming a relationship in the first place. When I started my working life, all of these things were a given: if you didn't screw up repeatedly or steal from the company, then your job was there as long as you wanted it. And when you wanted to buy a house you just went to a building society and put your name down (house prices in those halcyon days didn't vary much from decade to decade, never mind from year to year . . . or even week to week, as they're now doing in some parts of the country). Similarly, you knew that, when your time came for the gold watch presentation, you'd have a pension from the firm, plus a pension from the state. And there was no pressure on you to take work home.

Now all of that has changed and it's changed dramatically. Not surprisingly, it's had an effect on our reading habits.

If you go back to the 1950s and 60s, you'd be hard-put to find a book over 80,000 words, whether it was a collection or a novel. But then, as the world changed, the books themselves changed. Now it's not uncommon to find books of a quarter-million words. Even then, they can be individual volumes in one huge story that spans two or three million words. And that makes life easy for the people who are pooping themselves on a daily basis, worrying about whether they'll have a job next week, whether they'll ever be able to buy a property, whether they're putting enough money into personal pension schemes to prevent them from starving when they retire (if the state will ever let them retire, of course), whether they and their partner will ever have enough income to allow them to start a family, whether the company would mind them taking one evening off from either (a) doing paperwork at home that they couldn't manage during their usual eight-hour day and/or (b) studying for exams that will enable them to take even more work home in the future. These people want to escape into familiarity, be it on the bus, on the tube or in bed. They don't want another sodding world to unravel every time they pick up their book, and God forgive me, I can understand that. But, to me, it's lazy. Reading is like physical exercise: the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Now, I am most certainly not slagging off all the multi-volume fantasy epics. Like anything, there's good and bad in all fiction and I never hammer down on something just because it's long or because it's another volume in a continuing series - though I do feel that some writers over-milk their cash-cows. But hell, if folks enjoy them then that's fair enough.

But, for me - and I have always felt this way - the short story is The King. The short story requires incredible levels and standards of storytelling and prosemanship (is that a word? who the hell cares!) and I have read thousands (and no, dear Irate of Tunbridge Wells, I'm not exaggerating: I do mean thousands!) more memorable short stories than I have read memorable novels. Look at Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, James Tiptree, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and on and on and on. And that's only in our field. Then there's James Joyce, H. E. Bates, John Updike, Katherine Mansfield, H. G. Wells, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Saki, Ed Gorman, W. Somerset Maugham, Erskine Caldwell, John D. MacDonald, John Cheever. . . and then, of course, Chekov, Dickens, Pritchett, Singer etc.

But I honestly don't think it's all gloom and doom. I believe that the short story as an artform is enjoying something of a resurgence. It's not a big resurgence but I do believe it's there.

In her Introduction to Nigel Kneale's Tomato Cain (1950), Elizabeth Bowen had this to say and I think - and hope and pray - that it's just as relevant now. 'Within the last few years, readers have become less shy of the short story. That this form of fiction is also a form of art had fairly long ago been recognized; what is more important, from the point of view of popular favour, is that the high potential of entertainment in a good collection of stories may now be seen. There exists, too, a growing body of people who no longer turn to a book in search of 'escape,' but are genuinely interested in writing - who value craftsmanship and react to originality. To such readers, the short story - in its present rather fascinating position, halfway between tradition and experiment - must particularly appeal.'

I doubt that anyone could say it better than that.

Sandy: So why do you think your magazine will succeed in such a demanding environment?

Pete: I would never - ever - refrain from attempting something that I consider to be worthwhile simply because it wasn't commercial. This is why I published Tracy Knight's The Astonished Eye and Robert Wexler's In Springdale Town and why I'm publishing Adam Nevill's Banquet For The Damned - because they should be available out there and the fact that they're all relatively unknown writers doesn't matter one jot to me. If something's worth publishing then I'll damn well publish it. I spend a lot of time editing anthologies for exactly the same reason: because it's a worthwhile occupation.

The short story has become virtually an endangered species and it falls to somebody to address the decline you speak of. Many are called, of course, but only a few stand up to be counted: it's probably fair to say that those are spearheaded by the ubiquitous Steve Jones and Marty Greenberg, both of whom have steadfastly and earnestly promoted the short form over several decades, but there are many others: Andy Cox with The Third Alternative and the magnificent Crime Wave; Ellen Datlow with Omni, Scifi.com and Year's Best Fantasy And Horror; David Pringle with Interzone, Gordon Van Gelder with Fantasy & Science Fiction, Gardner Dozois with Asimov's and on and on.

With my first anthology, Narrow Houses, appearing in December 1992, I'm something of a Johnny-come-lately but I have just as much passion for the form as any of those folks. But you ask why I think it will succeed and the simple fact is that I don't know if it'll succeed or not. It will require me to put the best stories I can find into it and, at least as importantly, it'll need a lot of people to get off their backsides and buy the magazine or, even better, subscribe. And while they're at it, they should also be subscribing to as many of the other magazines I mentioned as their pockets will allow.

History is chock-full of the most amazing pieces of short fiction, a lot of which have been turned into wonderful movies or TV specials: Du Maurier's Don't Look Now and The Birds, Hemingway's The Killers, Dickens's The Signalman, Barker's The Hellbound Heart to name but five that spring immediately to mind. Let's pretend that we're having this discussion six or seven decades ago, before most of those stories were written: can you imagine our allowing them not to be written by standing back and sentencing anthologies and magazines to the trashcan simply because there's not enough money in them? It would be obscene. Well, I believe there are people out there that will rival the very best work we've enjoyed from Dickens and Hemingway, Barker and Campbell, LeGuin and Tiptree, Updike and Amis, Clarke and Asimov and all the rest of them. And with a little help from like-minded people, I aim to provide them with an outlet while, at the same time, providing an outlet for our favourite novellists to take a break and produce a few tales before beginning the long-haul demanded by the production of their next blockbuster.

So, will it succeed? Well, it's anyone's guess and I've already said that, if it looks like failing then I'll walk away from it. I will not allow the magazine to hamper the PS imprint and I'm only too well aware of other equally honourable attempts falling by the wayside. But I have to say that I think it will succeed, simply because I have faith in the reading public to respond favourably to a dependable vehicle for the very best in short fiction. Let's just hope I'm not proven wrong, for all our sakes.

Sandy: Pete Crowther, thank you very much.