“”These days, I can quantify my remaining decades. I can measure them out in life-events. I can gauge my value as a man by who I’ve loved, who has loved me, and by the ones I didn’t love nearly enough.”
-Michael Rowe, “Ghosts” (Postscripts to Darkness, http://pstdarkness.com/2014/08/08/ghosts-by-michael-rowe/ )
A review of Toni Pi’s “The Marotte” from OnSpec # 95, vol 25, no 4
By Derek Newman-Stille
Cover photo from OnSpec # 95, courtesy of http://www.onspec.ca
The world looks very different after you are dead, particularly if you wake up in the body of a Marotte, a fool’s staff. From Lord Conjuror to the toy of the court’s fool, Vod is able to gain a new experience and way of looking at the world and his court when death causes his change of office.
Set up as part of a political intrigue, Vod is better suited to carry out an investigation of the court when he is linked to the largely ignored fool. There is a benefit in being treated as a joke in that no one expects you to actually be challenge the expectations of the court.
As a fool’s marotte, Vod learns more about the court, about himself, and about notions of selfless, self-sacrificing love. He is able to discover that the court fool, Cherchenko, far from being foolish, is complex, intelligent, and completely in love with him. Constrained by social position and the homophobic culture in which he is embedded, Cherchenko was forced to keep his love for Vod secret, burying his affections until Vod has become a spirit, disembodied and distanced from his rank and any cultural expectations around sexuality. He is able to be more free and open with a spirit than he had been with the man. Cherchebko’s love for Vod literally called him back from the grave, summoning him forth into Vod’s wand, stolen and disguised as the fool’s marotte.
Toni Pi explores the role of the fool as a social outsider, like most social Others, both invisible (ignored and disregarded) and hypervisible, constantly noticed for his Otherness. Cherchenko uses his status as someone who is disregarded to engage in political intrigue, knowing that he won’t be taken seriously or viewed as a political player, but that invisibility also meant that Vod, while alive, ignored the fool, disregarding him as all of the others did. It is only in Vod’s new position as ghost, without his body and status and everything that lets him disregard those on the fringes that he is able to really see into the fringes, to see the relationships that exist outside of his previous sphere of attention.
To read more about OnSpec, visit their website at
http://www.onspec.ca/
To discover more about the works of Toni Pi, visit his website at http://www.writertopia.com/profiles/TonyPi
“Well, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. Love is a little different for each of us, isn’t it? And a little different each time, too. Like me and you, like this, this unique togetherness.”
-Sean Moreland – The Rosy Boa” in Pavor Nocturnus: Dark Fiction Anthology (January, 2014 online at http://pavnoc.com/?p=419 )
A review of Sean Moreland’s “The Rosy Boa” in Pavor Nocturnus: Dark Fiction Anthology (January, 2014 online at http://pavnoc.com/?p=419 )
By Derek Newman-Stille
Sean Moreland creates a fierce, almost painful intimacy with the reader in his short story “The Rosy Boa.” The reader is drawn into a conversation, sharing pains and desires with the text, folded into its papery arms, and kissed on the ears by the black tongue of dialogue.
Moreland invites the reader into the world of queer desire, a young man who has fallen in love with another young man in a small town of the 1980s. Like many queer youth, his life is a mix of fear of rejection and the desire to get away from all of the homophobic hate and the persistent threat of violence at home and in public. His desires are stretched between a want for a normal life and a deep drawing toward a potential love interest. The protagonist is perpetually guarded, mediating his feelings for fear of their reception, but he is hyperconscious of every touch of body to body, unsure if these moments of contact are embedded with meaning.
Like many queer youth in a small town, the protagonist is hyper aware of the levels of surveillance that gossip and the vigilant enforcement of normalcy have written over the community – everyone is watched, and everyone’s normalcy is policed. He feels watched in his neighbourhood, forever in fear and needing to manage and shape the perception of others about him – for queer youth, a small town is a horror story, a place of threat, observation, and control. Yet, his queerness also puts him in a position outside of the mundane, separate from every day life.
When the protagonist is able to visit the house of Cyan, the young man he loves, both are able to indulge in an escape from the norm through costume, wearing an antique feather boa that lets them both dance and play, yet this act of play is heightened by one of fear as darkness rolls in and strange sounds appear. In this place of heightened feeling, the protagonist is able to discover more about himself, opened to the world, where transformation and change are possible and where categorical meanings are disrupted. Love and fear meet in a place of desire that is a “mad mix of heaven and hell”. This heaven and hell create an intimacy beyond the mundane, the normal, the unquestioned. Hunger and desire play together at the edge of fear… and death does not know gender.
You can explore this story online for free at http://pavnoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Pavor-Nocturnus-Dark-Fiction-Anthology-Vol.-1.pdf
A review of Jo Walton’s Among Others
By Derek Newman-Stille
Cover photo courtesy of the publisher
SF has a pedagogical value – it teaches, it shares experiences, and it opens the mind to new horizons. Outsiders and social outcasts are often drawn to SF as a means to explore a world that seems strange and alienating to them – reading the alien as a way of understanding themselves. Jo Walton’s Among Others explores how young Morwenna, a girl with a disability, and far more clever than others girls in her year, explores the world through pages of SF books, living in a conversation between reality and the fantastic. SF becomes a tool for her to navigate her life – learning about diversity, philosophy, love, utopian ideas, politics, sexuality, and gaining deeper context for human existence. Yet, SF books also have a power about them beyond learning about magic – as a girl who can do magic and can see fairies, SF becomes a tool for magic, using the pages and phrases of her books as protection from spells around her. SF books are more than themselves, deeper, and beyond the ordinary.
Morwenna has always been able to see fairies, and at a young age tried to shape them according to the precepts of Fantasy books, Tolkeinising them and limiting their reality to what she hoped would be the case. As she ages, she begins to learn about the nature of fairies for themselves, rather than trying to put her ideas upon them. They are extensions of the landscape, extensions of place and space for a girl who is having difficulty finding her place.
Morwenna’s mother seeks to use magic to rule the world, changing it to suit her, but Morwenna debates the nature of magic, questioning its use and the morality of changing the world. Magic works in subtle ways, changing the world in ways that could be debated or disregarded. Spells change the conditions of things to cause the desired things to come about – a leaf dropped in a toxic puddle can transform a wasteland of industry into a garden, but not instantly as it occurs in many fantasy novels. Magic in Walton’s world just sets the conditions whereby things can be changed, causing the closing of a factory and the abandonment of an industrial area so that nature can reclaim it. Magic suffuses Morwenna’s life, but it is subtle, changeable, and debatable.
Pain and loss have shaped Morewenna’s life – the pain of her damaged leg, the loss of her twin, and the continued ostracism of her peers. The temptation to use magic to better her life is all around her, yet her moral structure prevents her from using it. When she does a spell to find a community and is suddenly asked to join a Science Fiction book club, she worries that she has taken the will from her compatriots and made them like her. She fears taking agency away from others and becoming like her mother.
Morwenna sees more than others do, aware of the depth and context of the world. She not only sees the magical world, but notices things in her world that others ignore and disregard. She sees differently than those around her, fascinated and interested in things that others wouldn’t give attention to, and finds the topics of other people her age uninteresting and pedantic. With so many fascinating things in the world, she wonders why they would focus so much on petty gossip.
Told through a series of journal entries, Among Others is a tale of self discovery and loneliness in which SF provides not only tales to entertain, but lessons to live by and fuel for the magical world surrounding Morwenna.
To read more about Among Others, you can explore Tor’s website at http://us.macmillan.com/amongothers/JoWalton .
“I wanted a place that was iridescent, that lit without burning. Being in love is sort of like that, when it’s real. When it’s true.”
-Leah Bobet – Above (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2012)
An interview with David Nickle by Derek Newman-Stille
I was pleased that David Nickle was willing to do an interview here on Speculating Canada and particularly that he shows such a strong interest in the ability of Speculative Fiction to open social questions, challenge taken-for-granted notions, and encourage readers to think for themselves.
Author photo courtesy of David Nickle
Spec Can: To begin our interview, could you tell readers a little bit about yourself?
David Nickle: Well let’s see. I’m the son of a landscape painter and a highschool teacher, have grown up in central Ontario and near Toronto, and I make my living as a political reporter in Toronto. It’s fair to say that some of this influences my fiction, although I would only get myself into trouble trying to explain precisely how.
Spec Can: How much do you feel your Canadian identity influences your writing?
David Nickle: It doesn’t, a great deal. I’m not a big reader of Canadian literature, at least as its defined under the CanLit Protocol. I certainly pay attention to my environment—a lot of my fiction, particularly my contemporary horror fiction, hinges on a sense of place—but really, the canon that I’ve followed has been the usual mix of British and let’s say North American influences in the general sweep of fantastic fiction. So the H.P. Lovecraft-Richard Matheson-Robert Bloch-Stephen King lineage is something that shows up in my work. I also have paid heed to mainstream writers like John Irving and George Orwell and Timothy Findlay.
Really, my Canadian identity has for many years as a writer, contributed rightly or wrongly to my sense of being an outlier. Coming of age as a writer, I was constantly faced with the notion that as a Canadian speculative fiction writer, my fiction either ought to deal with humanity cast against a hostile environment—Susanna Moody in Space as it were—or preach non-violent, anti-individualist solutions to problems that an American writer might just shoot full of holes with a space blaster. Canadian specfic writers of a certain age either embraced or bore the weight of that particular critical conceit.
In general, though, I don’t think that I’ve been particularly preoccupied with those themes. I like to think that my writing, like my identity, is fundamentally my own.
Spec Can: What do you see as distinct about Canadian Speculative Fiction?
David Nickle: That’s a big question, in that I think that Canadian speculative fiction has come over the decades to occupy a vast range of subject matter and theme. To that end, I think that it might be too big a question.
What really makes Canadian speculative fiction distinct, I think, is that its writers are all covered by universal health care such that they can practise their craft and their art without fear of an unexpected blood clot or cancer diagnosis bankrupting their families. And so there are a lot of us at work here, many of us able to do that work full time, because of that.
Spec Can: What are some of the questions that you hope your work will evoke in the minds of readers?
David Nickle: I’d like readers to question themselves, I guess, and the reality that they believe they inhabit. One of my cherished memories from childhood came at around five years old, when I recall considering the fact of my existence. I had, as all little kids do, experienced myself as being at the center of the universe: without me, there was nothing. But I remember slowly working it through, using all the existentialist tools that my Montessori education had provided me: that in fact, I was finite. I had been conceived in 1963, and born in early ’64. Prior to that, although the world had chugged along, I had had nothing to do with it. When I died, as I understood that people did, it would chug along further, once again, without me. As I considered this, I didn’t cry, or become angry, or turn to religion. I just became very quiet, and thoughtful, with the realization that there was more to things than I would ever, fully, be able to know. And if there was a real centre of the universe, it sure as shit wasn’t me.
That’s what I want to evoke in my work—the quiet and terrifying wonder of the unknowable void.
If I can evoke that in a five-year-old, all the better.
Spec Can: Your work deals with a lot of diverse bodies. Can you tell us a bit about your interest in the body and in diversity?
David Nickle: Hmm. There are a number of ways to parse that question. In terms of ethnic/gender diversity, I like to think that my work is as diverse as the best of them, but it’s not a conscious choice. I’ve grown up and lived for the most part in and around Toronto—and the city contains a pantheon to diversity. You can’t take two steps in this town without encountering people from all parts of the world and from across the gender/sexuality map. Toward that end, you’ve got a choice: either engage, or hunker down in your own ethnic/sexual/gender enclave. I’ve never been for the latter.
Cover photo of Eutopia courtesy of http://davidnickle.blogspot.ca/
So far as the body goes, now: I’m going to parse the question such that we’re talking about some of the body horror that I’ve dealt with in some of my fiction (my first solo novel Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism comes to mind as particularly squicky in that regard). I like body horror as a writer (less so as a reader) because it is a pretty literal and direct route to getting under a reader’s skin. From the time we hit puberty, the spectacle of our changing bodies is a constant preoccupation, and I think a universal. So when we talk about change, and that mysterious and unknowable void I was talking about earlier, depicting a gestating parasite or an eyelid that opens unexpectedly in a lover’s forearm… well, it’s an attention-getter.
Spec Can: What can Speculative Fiction do that “realist” fiction can’t?
David Nickle: There’s a troubling premise embedded in that question for a writer like myself—which is to say, one who tries to write contemporary horror fiction: namely, that speculative fiction and realistic fiction exist in separate silos.
For my purposes, they don’t. I can’t write about the incursion of the strange and supernatural into a world, without that world functioning for the most part according to realistic rules. So realism is an invaluable tool for me, and I wouldn’t be able to get to the speculative elements in my fiction without it.
That said, I think that the injection of the speculative into the firmament of the real enables us to transcend the moment-to-moment realities of life on Earth. I like to think of most of my speculative elements as the metaphor in a story made real. But it also allows the reader to feel a moment of scary transcendence that while possible in realistic fiction, is much more difficult to attain.
Spec Can: You collaborated with Karl Schroeder in writing The Claus Effect. What is it like to collaborate with another author? What were some of the benefits and drawbacks?
David Nickle: I’ve collaborated twice with Karl, and once with Edo Van Belkom (on our Stoker-winning short story Rat Food). Each project was a little different. Karl and I wrote two Santa Claus stories together—The Toy Mill, which won us an Aurora Award, and The Claus Effect. Edo and I did one nasty little short story that got a fair bit of attention back in the day and, I like to think, created the genre of epicurean rodent stories that culminated in Ratatouille.
In all three cases, the biggest benefit was that it was just a lot of fun. We riffed off each other, and tried to find middle ground between our individual styles, and so in an effortless and enjoyable way, stretched as writers.
The drawback is, I guess, the drawback of any attempt at sharing in a project: the end result isn’t your own, entirely, and you have to recognize the fact that at least half of the good bits, you had nothing to do with.
And really, egos aside, that’s not much of a drawback at all.
Spec Can: In The Claus Effect, you tackle the issue of over-consumption around the holidays. What inspired you to write about the figure of Santa Claus and, in particular, the concept of greed surrounding the holidays?
Cover photo courtesy of the authors
David Nickle: That theme—over-consumption around the holidays—wasn’t, weirdly, what got us into the character. It was really the image of Santa Claus, as this great figure of corruption hiding behind a red suit and a funny beard; the notion of malevolence hiding, not very well, in the most benevolent of places. We also both really enjoyed the idea of taking hold of this treacly and corrupt Victorian notion and, well, turning up the volume.
Spec Can: What mythologies or ideas of the mythic influence your writing?
David Nickle: I’m influenced by a lot of things: the Bible, Greek and Norse and Central American mythology. The Cthulhu Mythos.
Probably the mythology that most influences me, though, is the collection of ideas, conceits and dreams that come together in the 1970s New Age movement. There are some who might scoff at the idea of New Age crystals and Transcendendal meditation and astral projection and aura-reading as a mythology—both people who think it’s hokum, and people who’ve built their lives around it. So be it. Having grown up with that as a big part of my household, I find that when I’m looking at supernatural/paranormal explanations and premises, I go there first. At least for now.
Spec Can: What role does the figure of the outsider play in your work? Why do outsider figures work so well in speculative fiction?
David Nickle: I’ll deal with the second part first. I think outsiders are useful in spec fic for entirely technical reasons: they provide a viewpoint that allows readers to enter a strange and complicated world, and learn about it from the ground up. Outsiders can function variously as students, as critics, and as disruptive elements. They make the story go around.
In my own work? I’m not consciously aware of the outsider as a particular trope in my stories, other than for the aforementioned reasons.
Spec Can: Many of your stories deal with the idea of love turned monstrous or distorted (i.e. The Sloan Men, The Inevitability of Earth). What can horror fiction tell us about ideas of love?
David Nickle: Well first off, I don’t want to be down on love. It is the sweetest thing, and getting it right is akin to getting your life right.
When it’s going right. I think that because of the potential payoff—a life of happiness and fulfillment—we sometimes dive at things that look a lot like love but are really nothing more than traps. That is where horror fiction comes in—because horror fiction is, on its most basic level, all about the trap.
Spec Can: Your short story Janie and the Wind deals with issues of domestic abuse. What can Speculative Fiction do to call attention to issues of domestic abuse?
David Nickle: I think that speculative fiction can do a lot to illuminate domestic abuse issues—although I’m not sure that I really did, in Janie in the Wind. In that story, the truly abusive relationships come about when the Wendigo enters a fellow. And that is a bullshit excuse that has been around for far too long: that the “devil made me do it” or some variation.
I think speculative fiction does what any good fiction does when dealing with hard, real issues like domestic abuse: it establishes a sense of empathy and understanding that journalism or other methods of inquiry cannot.
Spec Can: Your work has a dream-like quality. How do dreams influence your work?
David Nickle: Dreams themselves don’t influence my work very much; I’m not the kind of writer who wakes up from a fitful night and writes down the odd dream I had, as source material for a story. But I think that all fiction, all stories, follow a dream-logic. Because fundamentally, they’re waking dreams, and just as sleeping dreams are a kind of cognitive narrative that we impose on thoughts and memories, so are the waking dreams that are fiction.
Spec Can: Are there any other thoughts or idea that you would be interested in sharing with readers?
Cover photo for The ‘Geisters courtesy of http://davidnickle.blogspot.ca/
David Nickle: Oh, ask a writer with a book coming out for parting thoughts, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to sit through a plug for the next book.
In this case, my next book is coming out this spring/summer from ChiZine Publications. It’s called The ‘Geisters, and in brief, it looks at some of the socio-sexual implications of active poltergeists in an age of internet kink, while doing its best to scare the nose off readers. It’s also another Fenlan story (Fenlan being my little south-western Ontario answer to Stephen King’s Castlerock and H.P. Lovecraft’s Arkham). Like many of the stories I’ve set there, it’s all about love gone monstrously wrong.
I want to thank David Nickle for this fantastic interview and his incredible insights and keen observations about horror, love, the figure of the outsider, coming of age as a writer in Canada, and Canadian Spec Fic in general. I am excited about reading his new book The ‘Geisters when it comes out this summer. You can explore more about David Nickle by visiting his website at http://davidnickle.blogspot.ca/ .
“They’d fought as any couple fought – over work, over money – but he’d always taken heart in the fact that the fights, framed as they were by the banalities of life in the city, had always been about their love for one another. “
-Helen Marshall Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine, 2012)
In our upcoming interview, David Nickle discusses coming of age as a writer of Canadian Speculative Fiction, particularly non-violent, anti-individualist storylines and a general sense of outsider identity that permeates the lives of many Canadian Spec Fic authors. He wants readers to question themselves and their reality, challenge their preconceptions, and experience those moments of “scary transcendence” that are embodied in Speculative Fiction.
Author photo courtesy of David Nickle
David Nickle shares aspects of his personal life, insights into Speculative Fiction, society, love, horror, and collaborative writing.
Here are some teasers for our upcoming interview:
David Nickle: “A lot of my fiction, particularly my contemporary horror fiction, hinges on a sense of place”
David Nickle: “My Canadian identity has for many years as a writer, contributed rightly or wrongly to my sense of being an outlier. Coming of age as a writer, I was constantly faced with the notion that as a Canadian speculative fiction writer, my fiction either ought to or possibly does deal with humanity cast against a hostile environment—Susanna Moody in Space as it were—or in preaching non-violent, anti-individualist solutions to problems that an American writer might just shoot full of holes with a space blaster.”
David Nickle: “That’s what I want to evoke in my work—the quiet and terrifying wonderful of the unknowable void.”
David Nickle: “I like body horror as a writer (less so as a reader) because it is a pretty literal and direct route to getting under a reader’s skin. From the time we hit puberty, the spectacle of our changing bodies is a constant preoccupation, and I think a universal.”
David Nickle: “I can’t write about the incursion of the strange and supernatural into a world, without that world functioning for the most part according to realistic rules.”
David Nickle: “Probably the mythology that most influences me, though, is the collection of ideas, conceits and dreams that come together in the 1970s New Age movement.”
David Nickle: “I think outsiders are useful in spec fic for entirely technical reasons: they provide a viewpoint that allows readers to enter a strange and complicated world, and learn about it from the ground up. Outsiders can function variously as students, as critics, and as disruptive elements. They make the story go around.”
David Nickle: “But I think that all fiction, all stories, follow a dream-logic. Because fundamentally, they’re waking dreams, and just as sleeping dreams are a kind of cognitive narrative that we impose on thoughts and memories, so are the waking dreams that are fiction.”
Check out our interview on Friday, February 15th.
If you are not yet familiar with David Nickle’s work, check out my review of The Claus Effect at https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/big-red-suit-scare-a-midwinter-cold-war/ and explore David Nickle’s website at http://davidnickle.blogspot.ca/ .
An Interview with Noah Chinn by Derek Newman-Stille
Noah Chinn is the author of Bleeding Heart Yard (about werewolves, witches, and
Author photo courtesy of Noah Chinn
romantic curses) and Trooper # 4 (a post-apocalyptic adventure). Noah Chinn tends to play with ideas of comedy and humour while dealing with issues of disaster and destruction… and he brings some of that humour to this interview. I hope you enjoy laughing in the apocalypse with Noah Chinn as much as I did. If you have not already read my review of Bleeding Heart Yard, you can check it out at https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/bewitched-beloved-and-between-worlds/
Spec Can: To begin our interview, could you tell readers a little bit about yourself?
Noah Chinn: Hmmm… I could just give you a boring standard mini bio, or I could give you some interesting highlights that make me sound like a rock star. What to do, what to do? Yeah, let’s go with the latter.
I’ve bicycled across Canada and eight other countries (including Japan, England, France and Germany). I’ve hiked a few mountains, including Fuji and Snowden, as well as a few in B.C. I lived in Japan for three years teaching English, and England for five years running a bookstore. I proposed to my wife on the stage of the Lord of the Rings musical (with an Elvish ring no less). I had a long running comic strip online and in print, and now have two novels published with a third on the way. I got caught up in the middle of a riot once. Sometimes I babysit a ferret.
Spec Can: Your story Trooper # 4 is a post-apocalyptic narrative. What got you interested in writing about apocalyptic themes?
Noah Chinn: I wonder if the appeal of post-apocalypse is an urban-centric phenomenon. How many people raised on prairie farms are fans of Mad Max? Some of us daydream about how we could survive in such a world, while others just like being taken out of their comfort zone. It’s not just the threat of death, after all. It’s all the things you take for granted being taken away.
They also say that there are only three types of stories: man versus nature, man versus man, man versus himself. Facing a post apocalypse usually means dealing with all three.
But really my attraction to those stories is the personal challenge. The idea that if you keep your wits about you and learn the rules, you can adapt and survive any imagined hell. The real question is, do you keep your humanity in the process?
Spec Can: People often suggest that those who read apocalyptic narratives are negative in some way. What do you think are some of the characteristics of those who read and write apocalyptic narratives?
Noah Chinn: I’m not sure people who read apocalyptic narratives are necessarily negative. Granted there are a lot of stories where the prospect is bleak once the story ends. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – holy hell. Great book, but you don’t exactly expect the human race to survive long afterwards. We’re pretty much doomed.
But sometimes the stories are about overcoming, surviving, and the possibility of rebuilding. And sometimes it’s about the world changing. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, is a good example. Homo Sapiens might be at an end, but we’ve also become something else.
And then there’s World War Z by Max Brooks, probably my favorite of the Zombie genre. In that case it’s not only about the end of the world, but fighting to take the world back, and dealing with the new reality in a rational way. In that sense it’s quite positive.
Spec Can: What is the apocalyptic theme that fascinates you most and what is so interesting and exciting about it?
Noah Chinn: I think some people (especially in film) mistake fatalism and hopelessness with being exciting. To me it sucks the tension away.
Where’s the fun in being thrown into a hell you CAN’T possibly survive or fight back against? Where the enemy is unstoppable and invincible? That was always my problem with the War of the Worlds movies and films like Independence Day – they always had the aliens utterly invincible (baring a convenient fluke that allows us to learn more about them) until the germs get to them (or in Independence Day, a virus, heh). If the story was aboutescaping, that could work, but it’s not.
What made HG Wells’ novel superior, in my opinion, was that the Martians were vastly superior to us, but NOT invincible. The scene where the HMS Thunder Child destroys two Tripods makes you realize the Martians aren’t invulnerable, but we are still so vastly outmatched that the end result is still the same.
That tiny bit of hope adds to the hopelessness of the situation, which has far more tension than constant failure. And it keeps the reader thinking about “but what if they try this” instead of just giving up and waiting for the characters to keep running away. I think the movie Aliens succeeds in a similar way. Sure, you can shoot them, but they can be anywhere, they’re smart, and there’s always more of them.
So to me what fascinates me most is trying to find the solution to the problem – whether it’s the survival of the species or just the main character. If it’s just about counting down the minutes till you kiss your ass goodbye and praying for a deus ex machina type miracle, then it’s just not as interesting to me.
Spec Can: How can apocalyptic themed novels raise social awareness about current social issues? What can readers learn by reading apocalyptic narratives?
Noah Chinn: It depends on who is handling it and what kind of story they’re trying to tell. Some stories are big into metaphors and symbolism, and sometimes have the fall of civilization tied in with various social elements. Sometimes a story has the survivors represent different facets of humanity, and the story is a microcosm of society.
To bring up some of the books mentioned earlier, World War Z does a very good job of dealing with a lot of contemporary social, cultural, political, medical and even military ideas to explain not only how the end comes about, but how different countries cope with what’s next. But it’s not doing it through symbolism.
I Am Legend essentially shows how the last man on earth ends up becoming the boogeyman of the next civilization. In many ways the story reflects the nature of revolutions in the real world, and how the old regimes are vilified.
My own take on it in Trooper #4 is of a far more personal and internalized nature. I’d rather not say more than that. Spoilers, y’know.
Spec Can: What role does curiosity play in creating a better future?
Noah Chinn: Curiosity is one of the reasons we are who we are. We ask ourselves questions and we try to find answers. Sometimes we make things better, sometimes we make things worse – but even when we make things worse that same curiosity gives us the capacity to try and fix it.
The other reason we are who we are, I believe, is storytelling because we’re the only species that can imagine a different reality than what we’re in, and not only communicate it, but get others interested in it as well. And at some point someone might try to make it happen. Nobody would have bothered going to the moon if nobody was curious about it, or told stories about how to get there or what we might find.
Spec Can: Trooper # 4 features a woman who has lost her memory. Why is memory loss such a popular topic in fiction at the moment? What fascinates us so much about losing one’s memory?
Noah Chinn: Is it? I must have forgotten that….
On the one hand it’s an easy gimmick. Few writers if any have their characters fleshed out before they start writing them. The process of writing is in part the process of finding out who your characters are. And if they have no memory then everything’s as much a surprise to them as it is to you. It also conveniently locks away information that the character might otherwise have that you don’t want them to know until a later time. But that’s me being half heartedly cynical about the writer’s stake in the game.
From the reader’s angle there is genuine curiosity about solving a puzzle. Memory loss on its own isn’t that interesting except from a scientific standpoint. But in a story the memory loss is almost always somehow connected to the story. Why they lost their memory might be central to the plot, or what they forgot is key to unlocking a mystery or saving the day. It also makes anyone and everyone involved in the story unreliable – especially the person who lost their memory.
Spec Can: Your novel Bleeding Heart Yard is partially about a man who discovers his “true love” but is cursed to be unable to communicate with her apart from swearing. Why are supernatural narratives such great places to explore ideas of love and relationships?
Noah Chinn: Probably because it gives the characters something unusual to overcome, and can be metaphors for something else entirely. Twilight is supposed to be about abstinence, for example. And I think most people can relate to the idea of putting your foot in your mouth when trying to talk to a boy/girl you like, so a curse like this lets you ramp up that effect in every possible way.
Spec Can: Why is the theme of the curse popular? How does it speak to modern readers?
Cover photo of Bleeding Heart Yard, courtesy of the author
Noah Chinn: A curse is something imposed on you, something out of your control. You can point a finger at who did it, but you can’t really do anything about it. I think we all feel cursed now and then – bad stuff happens and we think “What did I do to deserve this?” as if we actually DID do something, instead of just the random nature of the universe. It taps into our paranoia of someone or something that has it in for us. But it also gives us a target for our attention, rather than a vague sense of bad things happening, you have something specific and defined. In an odd way, it brings order to that chaos, which means there’s a chance to do something about it, instead of just swinging at shadows.
Spec Can: What myths of the monstrous and magical do you draw on when you write?
Noah Chinn: Whatever is handy. Whether you’re using something that’s existed for millennia or inventing something new, the truly important thing is consistency. Monsters , magic, and myth all have to follow rules. They can be broad rules, but they need to be there so you know what the limits are and work within them (or, if you break them, come up with a reason explaining how and why).
Spec Can: What is different about Canadian stories of the supernatural from those of other nations?
Noah Chinn: I honestly can’t say. We apologize more?
Spec Can: What werewolf myths do you create and how are they different from the werewolves of other authors?
Noah Chinn: In Bleeding Heart Yard I wanted to have a creature that wasn’t exactly a werewolf, but something that werewolves could have been based on – as well as a number of other mythical creatures. The species in the book has a couple of key powers and vulnerabilities that make it broadly applicable to everything from werewolves and vampires to rakshasa and wendigos. But in actuality they are simians that simply evolved along different lines from humans in a parallel world where magic is strong.
Cute little coincidence: the year after Bleeding Heart Yard came out Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter published The Long Earth, which has a similar idea (tying the creatures to elves and trolls instead) as well as the notion of parallel worlds one can jump to one at a time (which is also in BHY). In my case the ideas are simply touched upon, whereas in The Long Earth they are the full focus of the story.
Spec Can: What can Speculative Fiction do that “realistic” fiction can’t?
Noah Chinn: Depends who you ask, but the most obvious answer is you’re not constrained by reality to get your message across. You could write a story about banning books in a realistic fiction story set in modern day, sure. But what if you wanted to take it further to get your point across? It would be of hard to write something with the impact of Fahrenheit 451 without creating a society in which all books are banned. You need to think not only of why, but what form that world would take, how people live their lives, the consequences of that culture on people’s behavior, and so on. You need to create a world that doesn’t exist, but you can believe could – even if only for the duration of the story.
Spec Can: Are there any other ideas or thoughts that you would be interested in sharing with your readers?
Noah Chinn: Eat your Wheaties and drink your Ovaltine. Don’t do drugs.
I want to thank Noah Chinn for this insightful and humourous interview. There is nothing quite like a talk about apocalyptic themes where you spend most of the time chuckling.
Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy 