Interview With Julie Czerneda

An interview with Julie Czerneda
By Derek Newman-Stille

I want to thank Julie Czerneda for being willing to do this interview and for her enthusiasm for these questions. I am truly honoured that she took the time to participate in this interview. Ms. Czerneda’s work was an incredible source of inspiration to a friend and colleague of mine at Trent University, Ellen Bentzen. Julie Czerneda’s incredible ability to be equally comfortable in both the worlds of the sciences and humanities informed a lot of my discussions with Ellen about the interconnectedness of science and humanities discourse and I am hoping that this interview honours Ellen’s memory.

Julie Czerneda is a former biologist and current author of both Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is a prolific author in both genres as well as a prolific editor. Her SF works include works such as the Clan Chronicles, Species Imperative, and Esen and Her Web series

Spec Can: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself to start this interview?

Photo of Julie Czerneda map-building by Roger Czerneda.

Photo of Julie Czerneda map-building by Roger Czerneda.

Julie Czerneda: I was born on an air force base, spent my childhood in the Maritimes, then my teens on the shores of Lake Ontario. Met my other half (Roger) at the University of Waterloo, in Calculus class (but didn’t realize it until we were chem partners), married, then went to the Universities of Saskatchewan and Queens to study the evolution of chemical communication in fish. After working for a while at the U. of W. (life can indeed be circular), produced offspring and began writing biology textbooks, in that order. While in the midst of a successful career as an author/editor in educational publishing, someone (Roger) thought I shouldn’t write science fiction as a mere hobby but should actually show someone. Years later, having been introduced to fandom, conventions, and many folks of the Best Sort, my first novel was indeed bought by Sheila Gilbert of DAW Books, and I’ve been doing this for a living ever since. Yes, my life is insanely fun and I’d not change a thing.

Spec Can: You were a biologist before becoming a Science Fiction and Fantasy author full time. What was the transition like? How do you straddle the worlds between academia and fiction authorship?

Julie Czerneda: Thursdays. Seriously. While I still earned my living from non-fiction, I wrote fiction on Thursdays, and only then. I remember loving Thursdays. But that came later, once I was actually trying to finish something to, as mentioned above, show someone.  I also used different desks. Where I worked on physics curricula or designed exams was there. Where I worked on imaginative, go with me or not, story-telling? Way over there. With posters of Godzilla and a subwoofer of unusual size.

From the beginning, to me, biology and science fiction differed in degree, not substance. Biology filled me with wonder and curiosity.  All science does. The universe does. Reading science fiction did that. Writing it? Ah, there was the legal, moral, and fun way to answer my own questions. I was hooked.

Spec Can: In what ways can biology inform Science Fiction and Fantasy? How much do you rely on your repertoire of biological knowledge when you create your fantastic worlds?

Julie Czerneda: Every way and in everything and all the time. Firstly, what I write, the stories I tell, come from what interests me. So there are cool real bits of biology everywhere in my stuff. I couldn’t make up the weirdness of real life. Secondly, I recognize the trust a reader places in me when they pick up one of my stories. They have a right to expect that I’ve done my homework, and what needs to be credible is. (Plus research is something I adore.) Last, and not least, the more I know about something, the more questions I have and the more intense my exploration of that idea will be.  For Species Imperative, I spent five years reviewing biodiversity, salmon research, and the evolution of distinct populations before writing a word. I remain very proud of the result.

Spec Can: What do you enjoy most about doing research for your novels?

Julie Czerneda: Ah, research. It’s like that first cold beer on a hot afternoon. So satisfying yet potentially distracting.

What I enjoy most is learning stuff. Any stuff. Particularly stuff I’d never thought about knowing before, although more about the familiar is fine with me too. Having to do research for a new story? Really? Does anyone think that’s anything but joy?

For my latest book, the fantasy A Turn of Light, I spent wonderful hours and days and months delving into pioneer history, which was new to me. Antique lamps and razors. How to grease a barn door track or  how freshly milled flour feels to the skin. For every piece I set out to learn, there’d be so much more I hadn’t expected. How recent in our history it was to have clean light for work at night. How new a concept to have separate bedrooms. The names of tools and how very old some are.  I’d read letters written two hundred years ago and catch myself nodding with agreement or laughing, for the voice I was hearing in my head could have been that of any of my peers or friends.

The distracting part? Research can seem like progress when, on its own, it’s merely an investment. It’s what you do with it that matters. Once I have enough stuff in my head to feel confident, I focus on the writing and avoid more research unless I need something specific. Case in point, Turn. I was well into the writing when I came to a scene where I needed to put something personal in my character’s hands that would show who he is now but also something of what he’d left behind. Reading what a military kit of the era should contain gave me the essentials. An hour’s pouring over images of antique razors, mirrors, and other personal items provided a sense of the real things. (Plus I dug out my Grandfather’s bristle brush.) I found links to descriptions of hard soaps and small ornate mirrors. The little scene that resulted is one of my favourites and does everything I could have asked, with significant charm.

There’s one small downside. I can’t stop myself from spouting fabulous new facts at supper. The month I studied the history of cod fishing may go down in infamy in our family. They still bring it up. (As they should. It’s fascinating stuff!)

Spec Can: Why do you write speculative fiction? What drew you to it?

Photo of Julie Czerneda by Roger Czerneda

Photo of Julie Czerneda by Roger Czerneda

Julie Czerneda: Curiosity. I turn over rocks. I long to see over hills. When I was 10 I read my first SF book (Andre Norton’s Star Ranger, now called The Last Planet) and realized there was fiction that did the same. I was hooked and never stopped.

Spec Can: What experience first told you “I need to be a storyteller”?

Julie Czerneda: Oh that. There was an actual moment. Thinking back, I believe it was late one Saturday afternoon in January. My Dad had bought me the first two Tarzan novels, but only gave me one. I devoured it only to be infuriated by the ending. The weasel of a cousin gets everything! I stormed into the kitchen and complained to my parents, something I’d never done before. Rather than give me the next book, in which all is made right, my Mom, with a perfectly straight face, suggested I use her huge Underwood manual typewriter to “fix it.”

I did.

What Power!!!! I was a storyteller from then on.

Spec Can: Ecologies – flora and fauna – play an important role in your work. What important role can ecological knowledge play in the works of SF authors?

Julie Czerneda: Two, I feel. One is the obvious, that when world-building one should consider the life of a place. The other? Because nothing lives in isolation, an ecological approach gives a writer the opportunity to fit the puzzle together. To have alternative points of view and unintended consequences. All the intricate and messy ways things happen.

Spec Can: A Lot of your work involves meetings between diverse species. What important role do you hope to convey to your audience about cultural diversity and perhaps ecological diversity?

Julie Czerneda: The more the merrier! Or, in the case of living things, the more stable and resilient the community. It’s interactions that interest me. The interface between any two or more creatures is full of change and adaptation and lovely icky bits. In storytelling — and real life — I’d rather toss a problem at a group of people (or whatever I have in mind at the moment) who’ll each have a different approach to a solution, if they see it as a problem at all. That’s the joyful surprise of it all.

I also have no problem letting my love of wild places show. Some writers love food or detailed descriptions of hardware. For me, it’s passages like those in Species Imperative that exist for no reason other than to show how much ours or any world with life risks losing if life itself is endangered. I heartily and passionately include us in there, by the way. I’ve never distinguished between the human fauna and all the rest. We’re part of the living landscape, simply a little too clever for our own good sometimes, but not always. Sometimes, we get it just right.

That was the long answer. The short? Diversity is, to me, a sign of robust health and a source of possibilities, regardless of where I find it.

Spec Can: Can SF and Fantasy have a role in changing people’s thoughts about the environment?

Julie Czerneda: On their own, I doubt it. We pick what we want to read, so someone who reads my stuff, for example, will already be someone firmly a fan of slime. And nature. And messy compromise.

That said, there are always stories that catch a wider audience. The film Avatar was exotic and new to non-science fiction readers (read Andre Norton’s Judgement on Janus for a familiar one), not to mention gorgeously made, so its message had to have an impact.

I don’t write fiction with a message or intent to change anyone’s mind. I do it for the story. If someone nods along to that story, I take it as a sign we’d enjoy each other’s company. What I write is who I am.

Spec Can: What pedagogical role can Science Fiction and Fantasy have to open up new questions about the environment?

Julie Czerneda: I believe, passionately, that science fictional thinking is a crucial survival skill. We all need to ask questions, to speculate about possible consequences in an imaginative, yet as close to real fashion as possible, and to become able to assess incoming  information in a critical, not cynical manner. Imagination is of immense use, too often undervalued. We who live and breath SF rarely appreciate what a strong and active muscle our minds have developed. I’d like everyone to have the same advantage. To ride society’s changes, rather than be swept away. To decide where and how technology best fits our needs, before it’s in our homes.

Another aspect is science as a human activity. There are works of science fiction that do an admirable job of making science accessible, relevant, and, best of all, something people do.  The X-Files drew a host of young women to forensics and other sciences who might otherwise have gone elsewhere. Fringe is another show that comes to mind.

Spec Can: Communication plays an important role in your work. How can SF teach us to communicate better, and – especially – to listen better?

Julie Czerneda: The issues involved in communication between organisms who may not even share the same sensory equipment, let alone intentions, fascinate me. They form the foundation of my Web Shifter series, in fact. Tremendous fun. In this case, I’m using SF to explore and investigate.

As for our own communication? We’re a chatty species. We should chat about the science and technology that matters to us as easily and well as any daily topic, but few do. I’ve had success using science fiction with students to get them “talking science.” SF provides useful vocabulary, presented in context.  Story dialogue gives examples of conversations centred about science as something immediately important to the characters.  With a bit of care to choose age/experience-relevant SF, the playing field levels off. Students who’d otherwise struggle with English become just as passionately outspoken as their peers, and they do it about science.

Spec Can: As an occasional university instructor, I am most interested in how SF can be used in a university environment. Could you share some strategies and ideas with us about SF in higher education?

Julie Czerneda: Interestingly, one of the uses I’ve been involved with has been SF as part of science courses for non-science majors. The emphasis is on science in society, with science fiction basically used to deliver the big science ideas within the context of consequence and change. The desired outcome is to instill a questioning, curious, and aware attitude in these students, rather than a breadth of science knowledge.

I’ve also worked with a professor who, for many years now, has used science fiction as an integral part of his first year astronomy course. Students take what they’ve learned about the science and apply it to alien world-building as an SF writer would do it. I’m proud to say this class has been using Beholder’s Eye (my second novel) as part of this process.

Going back to your earlier question, the University of Wales offers degrees in science fiction and communication, with an enviable employment rate. We need people who can bring science to life, who can clearly express complex ideas in meaningful ways to a varied audience. SF? Does it all the time.

Spec Can: What is the most exciting moment you have experienced where you saw the impact your authorship had on a student’s knowledge and excitement about science?

Julie Czerneda: It’s always exciting, seeing that spark take hold. But the best moments haven’t been exciting. They’ve been powerful. I’ve sat, spellbound, in the midst of kindergarten students so caught up in imagining they lived in a space station that they began to sway as if weightless. I watched a group of noisy grade 8 students grow quieter and quieter as they worked through a science fiction scenario about limited resources, only to burst into tears when they realized that their character would sacrifice herself for her younger brother; my eyes were no drier than theirs. The shared experience. The power of imagination. The swell of emotion no less real for coming from a story. Those are the moments.

Spec Can: What is the importance of imagination and a sense of wonder for our world?

Julie Czerneda: What we can’t imagine, we can’t create, so there’s one. What we can’t imagine, we can’t prepare against or for, so that’s another. Imagination is essential to our survival, as individuals and as a species, and has been for eons. The sad thing is that it can atrophy from lack of use or be stunted by those who’ve lost their own. The best? The more it’s used, the stronger it becomes. I’m a believer.

As for a sense of wonder? That’s how imagination connects in the most positive sense to the world around us. That’s how we know we belong.

Spec Can: What important role can curiosity play in creating a better future?

Julie Czerneda: What technology is to science, I suspect curiosity is to imagination. The hands at work. The application. The impulse to look beyond, because there might be more, turned into the act of looking. That make sense? Curiosity, to me, demands an open yet questioning mind. When you talk to post-adolescents, curiosity sounds like something kids do, but it’s primal and important to all of us. Children are curious in order to investigate and learn. Society has a tendency to assume the curious should become scientists or explorers or artists, but I think everyone should be, in every aspect of life.

None of which answers your question, does it? Questions of privacy and personal space aside, I think we’d be better off for more curiosity in our citizens. Where you see people encouraged to be curious and ask questions for themselves, is where you see improvements being made.

Spec Can: Your work seems to bridge the gap between the sciences and the humanities. In what way are these disciplinary boundaries artificial? How can we do more to evoke scientific interest in people focused on the humanities and vice versa?

Julie Czerneda: I’m a lumper. When I started university, I did my utmost to combine biology, physics, and geography. (With other stuff.) My schedules blew up with conflicts every term because those were supposed to be separate. Once I accepted that I’d have to stick to biology, not being a Time Lord, I resisted specialization to a ridiculous extent. Everything mattered to me; everything connected.  (And it’s all so amazing …)

I understand the need to compartmentalize in order to focus, but even today, nothing pleases me more than blurring those edges. Nothing, in my opinion, does science a greater favour than the healthy mixing of disciplines. In my non-fiction science writing, I wrote in every science, but it was applying my work within the humanities, describing the people who work in science and the interactions among science and society that stands the test of time (and curriculum changes) best.

It’s about listening and respect, really. Good manners rule. Everyone’s work or field is personally important to them as well as to society. Terms like “soft” or “hard” science were never useful. Yes, there’s rigour and reproducibility, but there should also be room, because any human endeavour is an art, for observation and discourse around what doesn’t lend itself to measurement. The payoff? Synergy.

One of my fondest experiences of that in action was with a group of psychology graduate students. I’d been asked to bring my SF-self to the table, to help them develop testable hypotheses. They knew their field but were having trouble reaching out from it into new ground. What I brought to the discussion was a well-oiled imagination and curiosity, as well as an awareness of experimental design. We had a blast. They developed great ideas and I came away with some of my own.

Spec Can: Your work alternates between Science Fiction and Fantasy and you excel equally in each. Is it tough to alternate between genres? Are these genre categories that separate?

Cover Art for A Turn of Light by Matt Stawicki

Cover Art for A Turn of Light by Matt Stawicki

Julie Czerneda: ::blush:: Thank you.  I enjoy both and yes, tough describes it. But in a good way.

For me, both as an author and editor, they are different and separate. Even as a reader, I look for work that is clearly one or the other as well. Every so often I’ll read something that blends all manner of genres into a great story. Some authors can do that and I’d never suggest they stop. But it’s not an approach I’d find satisfying for myself. There’s too much risk of losing what’s special about each. Let me explain.

I take pleasure and pride in what makes science fiction a speculation about the real world, by asking that one “what if …” then building a story framework that lets me play with an answer, while keeping as much of what we know factual and true to life. I’ve no problem inviting a reader to play along with FTL and aliens, but I won’t mess with anything more and there’s always a science question at the heart of my plot. What if life evolved this way or that? How might biological imperatives affect technological civilizations? Who might we become in the future? What cost is too high or risk too great, when manipulating genetics? I love how science fiction gives me insight into these and any other questions I might have. Imaginative, yes, but in a sense, imagination with gloves on, respectful of what we know. The setting of a science fiction story must be solidly built, its plot and premises credible enough that the ultimate answer presented will be accepted by the reader. That’s when, in my opinion, it works best.

Fantasy, on the other hand, takes those gloves off. It must. Its questions are every bit as important as science fiction’s, but they are no longer about the world outside, but the one within. What makes us tremble in dread or exclaim with joy? Who do we want to be? Who are we now? How far could we rise — or fall?

To examine those sorts of questions, fantasy shakes us from this world, the one we’re so comfortable and sure about, and drops us into one with new rules. Here be dragons. In an science fiction story, explain their presence to me or I’m gone. In a fantasy? Oh, in a fantasy, I’m wide-eyed with wonder and eager to fly too.

Some stories give us clear warning of those new rules. Gates, as in Andre Norton’s Witch World series. Lewis’ wardrobe. Step through and nothing will be the same. Or no warning at all. Preconceptions must be abandoned as the fantasy weaves the strange and different around the willing reader. That interplay is when, to me, fantasy is at its best.

As for what’s tough about working in fantasy as opposed to science fiction? Certainly the editing is pure joy. I’m happy with my personal “this is science fiction/this is fantasy” radar, and have thoroughly enjoyed editing anthologies of one or the other.

The challenge was writing my own. I’ve admired authors who do both well. C.J. Cherryh. Patricia McKillip. For many years I contemplated trying fantasy, because I love reading it, but didn’t see myself as having the skill. To create a wholly new world for readers, a convincing fantasy world, takes a daunting command of language and exceptional writing craft.  To be blunt, I find starships and slime pretty easy. Readers meet me more than halfway, so I just blurt out the ideas as a story and we’re all happy. But an immersive, wondrous fantasy world, where everything has to be created, including the rules? That was a huge undertaking.

Before that point, I had to find out if I could even tell a readable fantasy story. Every so often, rather quietly, I’d write one. For those curious, my first was “’Ware the Sleeper” in 1998, published in Battle Magic edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. My novella Gossamer Mage: Intended Words came out from Baen’s Universe in 2008. The gloves were definitely off.  (I’ve done a couple of horror stories, not willingly; friends made me. I’m proud of them but that’s not what I am.) A funny aside to my efforts to figure out fantasy: I wrote an okay-I-suppose story called “Peel” for what I thought was an SF anthology. Turned out I hadn’t read the invitation properly and it should have been fantasy. As an experiment (and because I was embarrassed beyond words) I rewrote the story. To my astonishment, as a fantasy it was much better — powerful and dark and second person to boot.  You can read that one in In the Shadow of Evil edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers.

I apologize for being long-winded here, but you’ve struck a chord with this question. You see, my first fantasy novel, A Turn of Light will be released in stores about the time this interview goes up, and writing that book was the most difficult, time-consuming, and terrifying task I’ve ever done, as well as the most rewarding. It’s made me a better writer without doubt, but the numbers behind it appall even me. I wrote the first paragraphs over twenty years ago. I deleted well over 400K words during the writing process. Three years to write, during which I worked daily on it and couldn’t touch anything else. A final word count of epic proportions, but I’d made up my mind at the start to write a complete story. If I was going to commit fantasy, I was going all the way.

Having had some utterly wonderful early feedback about Turn, not to mention it being picked up by the SFBC and Audible.com, has eased some of my anxiety, but not all. Don’t get me wrong, I love this story and believe in it. I’ve put everything I had into it. But at the end of the day, I’m a biologist turned science writer turned science fiction writer. Starships or slime, I’ll stand up to be counted. Fantasy? I enjoy and respect it. Can I write it for others to read?

That’s up to my readers to discover.

Spec Can: What is distinct about Canadian Speculative Fiction? Is there anything distinctly Canadian about the worlds and characters you create?

Julie Czerneda: I believe I have the first alien pick-up hockey game. Ties of Power. I wrote it in a rink while watching our offspring play, hence the authenticity of the cold seat. I’ve named starships after our astronauts. In the Company of Others. There’s a distinct possibility that beer occurs at least once in every book I’ve written and I’ve set portions of a trilogy in Canada. Species Imperative.

That said, I have an American publisher, so my words lack “u’s.” (I make a conscious effort to avoid the ones that would bug me, like colour and behaviour, but honour and armour are less easily avoided. I can live with that.) I would like to point out that my American publisher, DAW Books, treats its Canadian authors (we are legion) extremely well and we try to do the same in return. Of course they do well by all their authors, but we Canucks are something of a club and proud of it.

On a more serious note, and “u’s” aside, how could my work be anything but Canadian? for that’s what I am. My stories lack villains. I like resolving incompatible-seeming goals. I value diversity and expect everyone to queue nicely, even if they can’t quite get along or smell funny. Weather’s often an issue. The endings I prefer don’t have winners and losers, but change and accommodation. I’m optimistic, not solely a Canadian trait, but something being Canadian makes me determined to share.

As for Canadian SF?  We have wonderful, imaginative, thoughtful, ground-breaking authors all across this country. If I had them in a room, I’d give them each a beer (or beverage of choice) and force them to wear a pin that says “World-class Talent” for an hour. Of course they’d take it off outside the door. Yes, being Canadian makes it slightly naughty to tell anyone how great we are, but there is a way around it. I sincerely hope we learn to talk more about each other’s great stuff. You there. Reading this. You’re GREAT! Now get back to your own writing.

Spec Can: Do your characters ever take you to places that you didn’t intend to go? Do they take on personalities of their own?

Julie Czerneda: No to the first bit. My characters are very much my creations and serve the story. I don’t start writing until I know how they would react in any given situation. I’m always aware of the need to convince my readers these “folk” are real and if a character doesn’t fly as he/she/it should, to me that indicates a problem to be fixed.

That said, I love how a story, through its characters and plot, develops momentum and direction once there’s critical mass. The notions my “hindbrain” comes up with when I’m in the shower or about to doze off delight and sometimes surprise me, but I consider that still part of my process.

As for personalities? Oh yes, if I’ve done my work properly, characters develop personalities that resonate for me and hopefully for readers. I adore Esen. I have my Mac moments. I wouldn’t want to face such difficult trials as Aryl or Sira or Aaron  but I assuredly know their natures and trust they can and will face them. Jenn Nalynn, my latest, is different again and I can “hear” her laugh. Such are the end results of the craft, of putting enough into each character that they are believable and, I hope, as admirable/vile/adorable/or annoying as I intended.

What does amaze me is how readers respond to minor characters. I expected the main characters to take hold of a heart or two but not that my walk-ons would have their own fans. These days, I take such great glee in adding details where I know they’ll be appreciated.

Spec Can: What is your favorite mythical creature and how has it inspired you?

Julie Czerneda: “I was never a unicorn or fairy type. Dragons called to me. Power, attitude, age. Those are the ones I like. Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy remains a favourite. The early Pern novels. There’s a YA I remember very fondly from long ago and have tried to find again, about an injured dragon whose wing is darned with spider silk. If anyone can tell me the title/author, I’d appreciate that. I’ve waited until my latest novel to put forth my own version. Ironically, though I once daydreamed about having dragons on one of my book covers, I produced a dragon who couldn’t be.

Spec Can: What current projects are you working on?

Julie Czerneda: If I could write more than one book at a time, I’ve readers who’d be happy. I’ve six novels contracted with DAW at the moment: the concluding trilogy of THE CLAN CHRONICLES, another Esen story (yay!), a new standalone fantasy, The Gossamer Mage, and, much to my delight, a sequel to Turn called A Play of Shadow which I truly hope won’t take as long to write. It shouldn’t. I’ve some confidence now about that fantasy stuff.

I’m also making notes for some other projects. I’ve questions, you see.

Spec Can: Are there any other ideas or thoughts that you would be interested in sharing with your readers?

Julie Czerneda: Whether it’s fantasy, science fiction, or answering thoughtful and thorough questions such as these, what you read is me. Give A Turn of Light a try, even if you’re unsure about fantasy. I hope, if you do enjoy the story, that you’ll read the acknowledgments at the back of the book as well, for DAW’s given me several pages to talk about this book, my journey through it, and to thank the very many people I owe.

Now? It’s time for a new story to come to life in your hands, dear readers, and for me to settle back and create the next.

Hmmm. Where was I? Right … Winter stretched its icy fingers across Marrowdell in the early hours before dawn, crisping leaves and polishing the commons pond with a skin of ice. It breathed traces of snow over the crags and into crevices, snow that, like rain, avoided the Bone Hills altogether. It sighed at the rising sun and retreated, for now, leaving the air sparkling with frost.

What can I say? I’m Canadian.

I want to thank Julie Czerneda for doing this interview and sharing her incredible insights with Speculating Canada. I am hoping that her insights about the environment and ecology as well as the importance of a good imagination will help us to speculate a new and better world for tomorrow.

To read more about Julie Czerneda’s work, please visit her website at http://www.czerneda.com . Her website also includes sources on teaching the sciences through SF, so if you are a teacher, there are incredible resources that you can bring into your classroom.

Dissolving Selfhood

A Review of Brett Savory’s In and Down (Brindle & Glass, 2007)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover photo for In and Down, courtesy of the author

Cover photo for In and Down, courtesy of the author

Brett Savory’s In and Down is a truly horrifying novel, not necessarily because of the haunting images of bodies, clowns, and flies, but because it reminds the reader about the fluidity of identity – that we are not fixed, unchanging things, but are rather constantly changing, malleable, and the core of our being is not unique or sacrosanct. In a world that focusses on the uniqueness of individuals and the rights of personal freedom, Savory questions the idea that there is even a “personal” let alone freedom.

Savory’s novel focusses on the life of Michael, a boy who feels unloved or at least not loved in a way that feels right. He is alone in a male-centred world where masculine performance is valued more than the actual personality of an individual. He characterises male school behaviour as a mixture of bragging, threats, and awkward silences. Home life is characterised by a father who says nothing of consequence and sounds only like the motor of a truck, less focussed on words and more on displays of power and authority. Masculine culture seeks to make him into a figure who is detached, and stuck in a state of suppressed emotions.

Michael is a boy who is full of questions living in a world where males are taught to question and enquire about nothing, a world where acceptance of norms prevails and nothing should shake that foundation. He is in danger of uncovering dangerous secrets.

Michael knows he has been filled up with other people’s views, ideas, thoughts, opinions, biases, hates, wants, needs… he has been hollowed out by others who want to replicate themselves through him, making him into a mirror for themselves. He tries to dig out the little shards of everyone else’s identity that have buried themselves in his inner being, finding himself under the detritus of human cultural expectations. His fundamental self has been whittled down by others, leaving him to debate what is of him and whether there even can be a “him” left. He is cast into a surreal dream world, where barriers between reality and dream blend, mix, and distort one another and he is surrounded with imagery that reminds him of the dissolution of identity: masks, crumbling plaster forms that reveal a different self beneath, carved wooden people, rotting bodies that reveal new features and faces beneath the desiccated shell. Nothing in his world is stable, and even he, himself, dissolves into a place of questions, consumed by his need to find himself.

Brett Savory takes readers to a place where reality and dreams meet, touch, and dance together in a carnivalesque display of the Weird. Readers are invited on a surreal voyage into the imagination of a disturbed child and a disrupted and sick world and are reminded of the hollows within them that are waiting to be filled with the identity questions of others.

You can find out more about Brett Savory at his website http://brettsavory.com/ . To check out In and Down, you can visit the Brindle & Glass website at http://www.brindleandglass.com/author_details.php?contributor_id_1=1940

Five Stages of Grieving Yourself

A Review of Corey Redekop’s Husk (ECW Press, 2012)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover Photo of Husk, courtesy of the author

Cover Photo of Husk, courtesy of the author

Corey Redekop’s Husk is a visceral, body novel with philosophical ponderings on existence. Redekop’s protagonist is a queer-oriented zombie actor, trapped in consciousness as his body deteriorates around him. The reader is put into the position of experiencing death and resurrection into a desiccated body and Redekop captures the feel of that experience – the emotional, physical, and psychological upheaval that would accompany the shift into a new form of bodily existence. His zombie protagonist, Sheldon, pines over the simple things that his body used to be able to do like sneezing, breathing, and yawning and he becomes obsessed with these lost experiences and the feeling that they were linked to his human experience.

Sheldon is a zombie, an Other, who pines for and grieves for his humanity. He fights the sociopathic impulse to feed on friends and family and the dissociation from the human experience that comes with his new state of being and the switch to viewing human beings as food. He struggles to make connections with others despite the rise in hunger when he approaches human contact. He has to re-train his mind and body to adapt to this new existence – to the loss of human contact and to the deterioration of his body.

As a horror actor, he is met with the idea that identity can be performed. Even on a Reality TV show, he is asked to perform his queer identity for an audience, play it up so that the audience can see that he fits with their stereotypes. But, his new body and change in existence forces him to come to terms with reality and see the falseness of social performance. Despite having to play human and adapt to human customs (and the little taboo against cannibalism), he sees existence more clearly. He watches as his agent spin doctors his zombieism into a sensationalist sales experience, marketing him for the masses, and sees the hollowness of that performance and that she is perhaps more sociopathic in her desire to make money and gain power than he is in his desire for human flesh.

Despite the deeper philosophical implications of exploring the mind and the body as a site of the mind as well, Corey Redekop infuses his work with humour, recognising the interrelationship of horror and humour, the little bubbles of laughter that arise when one is truly terrified, and the exaggeration of emotional experience that comes when one faces true horror. The horror of the novel amplifies its humour and the humour of the novel boosts the feeling of fear and revulsion.

The underlying horror that Corey Redekop evokes in this novel is not the fear of being consumed by the zombie (as is often the case with many zombie books and films), but rather the existential questions – the fear of being trapped in a state of awareness within a rotting body, being disembodied from consciousness and having no way to interact with the world around you.

To read more about Corey Redekop, you can visit his website at http://www.coreyredekop.ca/ . To get a copy of Husk for yourself, visit ECW press at http://www.ecwpress.com/

“SuperNOIRtural” Reading Questions

Some Book Club Discussion Questions for Ian Rogers’ “SuperNOIRtural Tales

Cover photo for SuperNOIRtural Tales courtesy of the author

Cover photo for SuperNOIRtural Tales courtesy of the author

Which is the most terrifying of the Black Lands creatures to you and why does it scare you?
-Did you like Ian Rogers’ use of traditional monsters or the new monstrous creations he created?

Which of the stories would you adapt into a movie and how would you adapt it?
-Who would star in it?
-Who would you get to do the soundtrack?
-Who would direct it?

What did you think of the chemistry between Felix Renn and his ex wife? How did this work for the narrative?

The people of Ian Rogers’ world live in perpetual fear about the Black Lands. What would it be like to live in a state of perpetual anxiety about the intrusion of another world?

“The Influence” brings with it certain powers, but it also makes one more noticeable to the Black Lands creatures. Would you risk the dangers of “The Influence” for the potential powers? Why or why not?

Which was your favorite of the SuperNOIRtural Tales, and why did you enjoy it so much?

Were the SuperNOIRtural Tales more horror or detective fiction? How so?

In The Brick, Jerry Baldwin sells haunted houses. If you were given the chance, would you move into one of the houses he sells? Why or why not?

What role do government cover ups play in these tales and how does the government of this world think that hiding things from the public will be of benefit to them?

Upcoming Interview with Julie Czerneda on Thursday February 28

I first encountered Julie Czerneda’s work through my friend and colleague Ellen Bentzen, who was, among other things, a

Photo of Julie Czerneda by Roger Czerneda

Photo of Julie Czerneda by Roger Czerneda

limnologist (a biologist focussed on the study of lake ecosystems) as well as a brilliant teacher and friend. Ellen and I had often talked about the link between science and the arts and the mutual need of science and the arts to support and be in conversation with each other. I was therefore extremely excited when Julie Czerneda said she would be willing to do an interview with me and I am excited to share her insights with all of you readers about the links between speculative fiction writing and science.

In our upcoming interview on Thursday February 28, Julie Czerneda reveals to readers how she balances a life of scientific academic research and science fiction and fantasy writing, reminds us that life itself is weird and well suited for speculative fiction, shares her joy and excitement at the prospect of doing research for a novel and learning something new, and the importance of biology in science fiction writing, the importance of diversity (both ecological and cultural). She reminds us of the importance of curiosity, imagination, and communication for creating a better tomorrow.

Here are some teasers from the upcoming interview:

Julie Czerneda: “From the beginning, to me, biology and science fiction differed in degree, not substance. Biology filled me with wonder and curiosity.  All science does. The universe does. Reading science fiction did that. Writing it? Ah, there was the legal, moral, and fun way to answer my own questions. I was hooked.”

Julie Czerneda: “What I write, the stories I tell, come from what interests me. So there are cool real bits of biology everywhere in my stuff. I couldn’t make up the weirdness of real life.”

Julie Czerneda: “The more I know about something, the more questions I have and the more intense my exploration of that idea will be.”

Julie Czerneda: “It’s interactions that interest me. The interface between any two or more creatures is full of change and adaptation and lovely icky bits. In storytelling — and real life — I’d rather toss a problem at a group of people (or whatever I have in mind at the moment) who’ll each have a different approach to a solution, if they see it as a problem at all.”

Julie Czerneda: “Diversity is, to me, a sign of robust health and a source of possibilities, regardless of where I find it.”

Julie Czerneda: “What I write is who I am.”

Julie Czerneda: “I believe, passionately, that science fictional thinking is a crucial survival skill. We all need to ask questions, to speculate about possible consequences in an imaginative, yet as close to real fashion as possible, and to become able to assess incoming  information in a critical, not cynical manner. Imagination is of immense use, too often undervalued. We who live and breath SF rarely appreciate what a strong and active muscle our minds have developed.”

Julie Czerneda: “I’ve sat, spellbound, in the midst of kindergarten students so caught up in imagining they lived in a space station that they began to sway as if weightless. I watched a group of noisy grade 8 students grow quieter and quieter as they worked through a science fiction scenario about limited resources, only to burst into tears when they realized that their character would sacrifice herself for her younger brother; my eyes were no drier than theirs. The shared experience. The power of imagination. The swell of emotion no less real for coming from a story. Those are the moments.”

Julie Czerneda: “What we can’t imagine, we can’t create. What we can’t imagine, we can’t prepare against or for. Imagination is essential to our survival, as individuals and as a species, and has been for eons. The sad thing is that it can atrophy from lack of use or be stunted by those who’ve lost their own. The best? The more it’s used, the stronger it becomes.”

Julie Czerneda: “Curiosity, to me, demands an open yet questioning mind. When you talk to post-adolescents, curiosity sounds like something kids do, but it’s primal and important to all of us. Children are curious in order to investigate and learn. Society has a tendency to assume the curious should become scientists or explorers or artists, but I think everyone should be, in every aspect of life.”

Julie Czerneda: “How could my work be anything but Canadian? for that’s what I am. My stories lack villains. I like resolving incompatible-seeming goals. I value diversity and expect everyone to queue nicely, even if they can’t quite get along or smell funny. Weather’s often an issue. The endings I prefer don’t have winners and losers, but change and accommodation. I’m optimistic, not solely a Canadian trait, but something being Canadian makes me determined to share.”

Julie Czerneda: “Being Canadian makes it slightly naughty to tell anyone how great we are, but there is a way around it. I sincerely hope we learn to talk more about each other’s great stuff. You there. Reading this. You’re GREAT! Now get back to your own writing.”

I hope you enjoy our upcoming interview on Thursday February 28, and if you are unfamiliar with Julie Czerneda’s work, please check out her website at http://www.czerneda.com and I hope you enjoy her work as much as I have.

“Above” Reading Questions

Some Book Club Discussion Questions for Leah Bobet’s “Above”

Cover photo of Above courtesy of http://www.leahbobet.com/fiction.html

Cover photo of Above courtesy of http://www.leahbobet.com/fiction.html

The “Monster”, “Sick”, “Freak”, and “Cursed” people in this book experience severe discrimination. How might their experiences relate to or reflect those of other groups in our society that are stigmatised or discriminated against?

Matthew or Teller is a story teller. Why are stories so important in this novel and how to they help a group of outcast people to find themselves and build a community?

This novel was full of smaller stories about each character. Which one appealed to you most? Why was it so appealing?

The characters in Safe were able to choose their own names. Why is this important and what do their chosen names say about them?

Trauma is an important factor in this novel. How are the characters shaped by their traumatic experiences?

Matthew or Teller’s experience of “home” is a space that is cramped, rank, and unexposed to the sky. How does our upbringing influence our ideas of homeliness?

Why is the telling of stories so important? How do Tales relate to ideas of secrecy and trust?

What did you think of the Whitecoats? Why might scientists and doctors be frightening for some people?

What ideas of “normal” did you question by the end of this book?

How has this book changed the way you view the medical profession?

Empowering the Freak

A Review of Leah Bobet’s Above (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2012)

Cover photo of Above courtesy of http://www.leahbobet.com/fiction.html

Cover photo of Above courtesy of http://www.leahbobet.com/fiction.html

By Derek Newman-Stille

Leah Bobet’s novel Above focusses on a group of people who have taken up residence in the sewers. Chased from society above the ground and called “Freak”, “Monster”, “Sick”, and “Cursed”, they retreated beneath the city to create their own society, free of discrimination. Their most feared opponents are the true monsters of this world, the Whitecoats, medical practitioners and scientists who are focussed on controlling, managing, and normalising their bodies. They capture those who have different bodies and force them into their own ideas of what normal bodies should be like, cutting them, medicating them, breaking their bones, and locking them up until their bodies start to look more like what society considers to be the “normal” body shape.

Characters with crab arms have them cut off and prosthetic human limbs forced uncomfortably into their stumps until they regain their shape. Characters with lion feet have them broken and re-shaped into a human-like foot shape, forcing them to walk in an uncomfortable and painful manner. But, a group of people escaped from the medical facilities above and created a community called Safe that was built on the foundation that no one should ever stare, no one should humiliate others, and everyone should have a safe place to be themselves.

One of the cornerstones of their community is the shared trauma they endured and the importance of sharing community stories. A central figure in the community is the “Teller” (who narrates this novel), a person who gathers the collective history of the people who form the community, hears their stories, and observes the events of the community, saving the stories that have brought them together and continue to shape them. The Teller functions as a mixture of a historian and counsellor, creating a safe space for people to share the stories that brought them trauma. By telling stories, the people of Safe create their own community narrative, separate from the normalising narrative of Above, and the medical documents that try to write their story for them. They become masters of their own stories, taking words away from others who would use them to oppress them.

But, part of every community is the stories that are not told, the stories that are edited out, considered taboo, and Matthew, the Teller, is forced to keep certain stories hidden and secret. These stories, like anything that is repressed, begins to haunt them, resurfaces from the collective unconscious of the group and harms the community, disrupting it. A community member who was removed and edited out of the collective history returns, bringing shadows of the past that haunt the sewers, snippets of memory that attach themselves to others, forcibly reminding them of what they have tried to forget.

Characters are forced out of Safe and into Above, the city that was the site of their truama. They are forced to see the world around them again and see things from the city above with new light… and new shadows.

You can find out more about Leah Bobet at her website http://leahbobet.com/ . To explore this book and more by Arthur A. Levine Books, you can check out their website at http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

A Review of Ian Rogers’ SuperNOIRtural Tales (Burning Effigy Press, 2012).
By Derek Newman-Stille

Cover photo for SuperNOIRtural Tales courtesy of the author

Cover photo for SuperNOIRtural Tales courtesy of the author

I was so excited to see that Ian Rogers had collected a number of his Felix Renn Black Lands novellas into one volume and published it as SuperNOIRtural Tales. I had reviewed his novellas Temporary Monsters (https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/performing-the-monster/), The Ash Angels (https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/spectres-spooks-and-supernatural-s-a-d/ ), and Black-Eyed Kids (https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/when-death-is-better-than-continuing-fear/) and was happy to see that they were brought together with extensive new materials on the Black Lands and a new story titled The Brick into this fantastic volume that blends the supernatural with a detective noir novel.

Ian Rogers twists and warps the natural world in his Black Lands stories, taking normal experience, normal reactions, and normal people and placing them into contexts where they are forced to face trickles of the weird drifting in from otherworldly portals from the monstrous Black Lands. This is a world where children, for generations told that the monsters that they imagined under their beds are now real and are taught how to cope with the monstrous in their school. A world with governments like ours who are coping with a populace afraid of invisible, sudden, and unexpected threats and are coping (much like ours) by keeping details secret and doing horrible things in their belief that they are preserving the public interest. Where in our world, government secrets, the policing of people, and militarism are focussed on issues like ideas of global threats like nuclear militarisation, the spread of viruses, environmental degradation, and ideas of border security, the borders of Ian Rogers’ world are that of the Black Lands, a realm of the monstrous where everything is potentially a predator, where secret agencies cover up public dangers, where disappearances could be related to the supernatural or to those who might be considered a public threat, where military groups are sent into the ‘enemy territory’ of the Black Lands, and where the Black Land portals can be considered a spreading taint that can appear without warning. Like in our world where the permanent, nascent fear of catastrophe has permeated aspects of social and political life, the Black Lands is highly politicised and represents the anxious currents of the world surrounding unknowable threats.

But, like in our world, the nascent anxiety of potential danger becomes a background noise, fearful whisperings in the dark, and people in the world of the Black Lands novels learn to ignore the reality of the monstrous threat that stands a thin reality line away in order to cope and live normal lives. They know that the world as they know it can change at a moment’s notice, that constant interruptions to the world that they view as normal are possible, likely, and increasing, but they cope with the low-level anxiety in order to maintain their thin conceptions of a normal world.

Rogers plays with the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary, illustrating how ordinary people can learn to cope with the introduction of the Weird into their everyday lives.

In the newest Black Lands story in this volume, The Brick, Ian Rogers focusses the idea of disruptions interrupting the norm on a place that most of us most associate with safety, security, and normal existence: The Home. Felix Renn is brought into a case involving a girl who disappears suddenly from her home, and, in his search to find her, encounters a real estate agent friend who specialises in buying and selling haunted houses. The house becomes an unsafe space, its insecurity and lack of safety exposed: Ian Rogers ‘Weirds’ the home, disrupting the safe blanket of domesticity that has become the foundation for Western modernity. Houses become things that can attack people, that can kill, that can be possessed… and even the bricks of the home itself can become infused with the ‘Weird’. They can be tainted spaces, infused with the miasma of the Black Lands.

Even people in The Brick can become tainted, contaminated by exposure to the Black Lands in a syndrome that has been labelled by society as “The Influence” and dubbed by Health Officials “Black Lands Syndrome”. The body, the most fundamental particle of our identity structure, can be changed, touched by darkness, and can become unfamiliar…. and more frightening…. the monsters can sense this taint and some like to keep their privacy enough to hunt the people who have contaminated THEIR world…

You can explore more about SuperNOIRtural Tales at Burning Effigy Press’ website at http://www.burningeffigy.com/ . To find out more about Ian Rogers and his other books, check out his website: http://www.ian-rogers.com/ . And, to feed your love of the Black Lands, there is even a Black Lands website at http://theblacklands.com/