by Jeff Somers
extras
meet the author
JEFF SOMERS was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. After graduating college, Jeff drove cross-country and wandered aimlessly for a while, but the peculiar siren call of New Jersey (a delicious mixture of chromium, cut grass, and indolence) brought him back to his homeland. He worked as an editorial assistant at a medical/science publisher in New York City. In 1995 Jeff began publishing his own magazine, The Inner Swine (www.innerswine.com). He’s created a Web site specifically for this book: http://www.the-electric-church.com.
Look out for Jeff Somers’ The Digital Plague.
it took a nation of millions for me to write this book
When I handed my gorgeous wife, Danette, this manuscript, seeking her usual wisdom and necessary support, she wrinkled her nose and said, “I don’t usually read this stuff, do I have to?” But when she brought it back to me she slammed it down on my desk and said, “This is the one that’ll make you famous!” and, as always, my beloved and cherished wife was right. I couldn’t do anything without her.
When I was a kid and I segued from wanting to be a brain surgeon (too much math) to wanting to be a rock star (too little musical ability) to wanting to be a writer (a terrible, terrible mistake), my parents not only allowed it but encouraged it, and that has made all the difference. Although I suspect my sainted mother has had some regrets.
When I was but a lad with few, if any, impressive credits on my CV and I had the temerity to submit a novel to amazing agent Janet Reid, she not only refused to believe the Internet rumors about me but signed me up despite a typo-riddled manuscript and a noted tendency toward drink. She’s offered nothing but brilliant guidance and affectionate verbal abuse since, both much appreciated.
When fate put me in touch with the ultra-talented Lili Saintcrow and she began editing the original manuscript of this book, she did not flee in horror, trailing lame excuses, as she would have been justified in doing, but instead improved the book immensely. She took such a liking to it that she said, “Hey, let me show this to my editor,” and I’ll always be indebted to her for that act of generosity.
When that editor, the megacool Devi Pillai, received the manuscript she not only bought it, thus making me incrementally richer and more famous than I had been, she also overlooked the many flaws in my personality and worked diligently to raise the book from a mere work of genius to a work of immense genius. Her brilliancies often flabbergast me-I’m supposed to be the smart one.
When my first novel was published some years ago, the editor of my local newspaper (and celebrated novelist in her own right) Caren Lissner cheerfully dispatched a reporter to interview me, and has shown me support ever since, for which I am grateful.
Back in my school days, spent watching TV in a windowless apartment and scientifically testing the limits of human endurance, my friends Ken West and Jeof Vita never made fun of me when I told people I was a writer, though of course they made fun of me for plenty of other things, beginning with the unfortunate mullet I sported back then, and their friendship is still valued today.
At the same time, when few people took me seriously as a writer, I went over to my old friend RA’s house and found the first cover of my magazine The Inner Swine on her fridge, which touched me greatly. And she still acknowledges my friendship, which is even more unbelievable.
When I was forced to have my photo taken for promotional purposes, the fantastic Barbara Nitke not only acceded to my strange request to be unrecognizable, but made me look cool as well, a monumental achievement I am eternally grateful for.
When, from time to time, I have suffered the cold sweat of self-doubt and thought, momentarily, that perhaps everything I write is not instantly a classic of literature that will be celebrated by future generations, Karen Accavallo has always been available for a fast, abuse-laden proofreading job on my work, sometimes accompanied by hilarious and accurate insults. Her willingness to wade into the jungles of my prose should be celebrated.
For years, when I needed someone to have a cocktail with, crawling through divey bars and complaining, Misty Vita and Lauren Boland were my reliable cronies and provided a lot of unintentional inspiration and appreciated friendship.
When, a few years ago, clint johns showed up unexpectedly at a reading in Manhattan that did not go particularly well for me, he lied convincingly that I’d been brilliant and I’ve appreciated his wisdom, enthusiasm for words, and cleverness ever since. Finally, over the years there has been, unbelievably, a dedicated group of subscribers and readers of The Inner Swine who have endured questionable grammar, typo-ridden issues, and my own boorish editorial presence with good humor and, more important, crumpled dollar bills in the mail-huzzah for them!
Jeff Somers
September 2007
interview
Where were you born?
Jersey City, New Jersey, one of the hottest places in the universe. Scientists can’t explain it, but Jersey City in the middle of August is almost hot enough to cause a nuclear reaction resulting in a new sun rising out of the charred remains of the Earth. Unless you like playing stickball, I wouldn’t recommend visiting. Although I do have a lot of stickball-related memories.
What is your greatest ambition in life?
To pay off the humongous debts I have accrued in such a short time. Who knew there was a price for my recklessly Herculean binge-drinking? Not me.
You’re on a plane with your best friend and your wife. Who gets eaten first, and why?
Me. Absolutely. Within a few days, too. It wouldn’t take long. First of all, I’m meaty. Second of all, I’m marinated with cheeseburgers and beer-I’m delicious! Finally, I can be talked into anything, so it wouldn’t be long before I was convinced that my purpose in life is to be digested.
When did you start writing?
There was a head trauma when I was about ten years old involving an open fire hydrant, a large red-haired kid, the concrete curb, and my skull. When I stopped speaking in Mandarin and came back to myself, I had the strangest urge to write stories. At first all of these stories were suspiciously similar to The Lord of the Rings, with titles like “The War of the Gem” or “The Lord of the Necklaces.” I’ve been writing short stories and novels ever since-my 2001 novel Lifers was reviewed favorably in the New York Times Book Review. In 1995 I started publishing a zine called The Inner Swine (www.innerswine.com), which has done absolutely nothing for my writing career. Except, perhaps, inhibit it.
What inspired The Electric Church?
Back in 1989 I was reading Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which contained a character called the Electric Monk, a machine whose function is to believe things for people too lazy to do so themselves. It was really just the name that struck me, and I wrote what would be the first version of the book over the following few years. Naturally, I took an amusing concept and turned it into something horrifying. Naturally, I let the first draft sit in a drawer for fifteen years, because that’s what we writers do: We nap a lot.
Where do you live now?
Hoboken, New Jersey, about ten minutes from where I was born. I live in a small house with my lovely wife, referred to in public only as The Duchess, and our three cats. The hierarchy in the house goes: Duchess, cats, me.
Do you have any hobbies?
Is drinking whisky considered a hobby? No? Are you sure? I’m pretty sure it is, at least in some cultures. Aside from that, I sometimes play chess, as long as you consider pushing pieces around the board desperately to be “playing,” and watch baseball religiously.
How do you see your writing career developing?
The usual: Skyrocket to the bestseller lists, flesh-pressing with the famous and infamous, snarky mentions on Gawker.com. Then comes the big day: The Sci Fi Channel buys rights to my book and makes a movie based on it with Richard Grieco playing the lead, directed by David Lee Roth in his directorial debut, and I am an instant ten-thousandaire. Years of a jetset lifestyle will rob me of
my boyish good looks and creative spark, and I’ll finish my days selling personal items on e-Bay to my dwindling population of fans. I will be known as Bathrobe Man by the neighborhood kids because I will always be wearing the same tattered bathrobe.
What would you change about the world if you could?
There would be more used book stores. There simply aren’t enough cool used book stores in the world. That, and I’d eliminate this ridiculous requirement that we all wear pants all the time.
What song is stuck in your head this week?
“William Holden Caufield” by Too Much Joy.
Notes
1
The title does not have any apparent meaning, and no explanation has ever been publicly offered by the Church.
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2
Squalor consistently refers to humans who have not joined the Electric Church as “insects.” The image resurfaces throughout the work, although it is interesting that Squalor also refers to himself in this manner, usually in the same sentence.
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3
Squalor remains an unknown quantity. Prior to Unification he was a student of some promise, earning advanced degrees in biology and computer science. After the turmoil of Unification, he disappeared from public records for a decade, emerging only after having gone through his own process of cyborg conversion-in short, becoming a Monk-and founding the Church.
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4
There is a sense of contempt for biology throughout the Codex and other Church writings, accompanied by a reverence for technology. The physical body produced by evolution is often referred to in terms of disposability and corruption (i.e. rot, decomposition, impermanence) whereas technology-obviously represented by the Monks’ artificial bodies-is presented as lasting forever. Monks will often stress the eternal nature of their bodies when accosting citizens in the streets.
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5
Throughout the Codex there are many of these binary statements, pairs of options and conditions that Squalor compares, resulting in a very simple and compelling view of the universe-there is good and bad, eternity and damnation, sin and industry.
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6
The Electric Church was granted Recognition as a legal religion, protected under standing order 778, eight years ago.
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7
Throughout the Codex, Squalor shifts from venerating God as the creator and the architect to dismissing God as a fantasy to be ignored, often within the same page or even the same paragraph.
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8
Here is the fundamental concept of the Electric Church: The idea that mankind’s eventual salvation is possible only through our mastery of technological and scientific knowledge. Specifically, the Church preaches that only through centuries, even epochs of meditation and study can salvation be attained-the necessary lifespan being supplied by the cyborg bodies Squalor has designed and built, as well as the process he has devised for transferring a human brain into one.
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9
This is a disturbing passage to many, and is often quoted by those who claim the Church has engaged in violence against innocent citizens who do not voluntarily join or listen to preaching. It should be noted that there is not a single documented complaint against the Church filed by a reliable citizen of standing, and that all complaints from less reliable citizens have been retracted over time.
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10
This text is often quoted at length by Monks when preaching to an individual. It has appeared in several transcripts of SSF surveillance of Electric Church assets.
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11
It is interesting to note that while the impossibility of “attaining” salvation in our normal lifespans is stressed in the Codex, at no point is any mechanism or procedure for attaining salvation after conversion ever outlined. The clear implication is that conversion into a Monk is the necessary first step-in order to attain the time needed-but beyond that there is no hint as to what a Monk should be doing with eternity. The assumption must be that instructions will follow.
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12
This passage appears several times throughout the Codex, reproduced exactly.
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13
Elsewhere in the Codex the idea that only a small number of “souls” are constantly being recycled into new physical bodies is expanded, with lengthy contemplations on the mathematics of reincarnation (explaining, somewhat inconclusively, how a limited number of souls inhabits a population that has-except for the brief period before and after Unifi-cation-grown steadily over the years) and the lack of past-life memories.
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14
Squalor never actually defines what this “singularity” he experienced was, though it is widely believed to be a reference to his own conversion into a cyborg, which (see below) does not seem to have been an experience he expected to survive.
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15
Although there have been exceptions, most studies done on Church recruitment (mainly using SSF field reports as source material) show that the Church targets the criminal class almost exclusively. Citizens that would be termed “upper class” or at the very least legally employed are all but ignored by the Monks. In urban centers, where the Monks are concentrated and numerous, they remain almost exclusively in the plentiful “reconstruction zones” left over from the Unification Riots-downtown Manhattan, for example. Most SSF officers consider the Monks’ activities amongst the petty criminals and marginal citizens of these areas to be of no concern, or even, in some cases, a benefit to the System in that they remove undesirable elements from these areas. No Monk has ever been charged with a crime postconversion.
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16
It is curious that Squalor here berates readers for “imagining” their impact on the world, and yet he clearly states that he is the “patient zero” of the Electric Church’s “singularity.” Although it can be assumed that if you have been chosen by God to perform a task, the rules no longer apply to you.
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17
Prior to his disappearance, apparent suicide attempt, and reappearance as head of the Electric Church, Dennis Squalor in fact worked for the Joint Council in the first years after Unification. Records are under seal, and are scarce in any event due to the frequent disruptions suffered post-Unification before the establishment of the System Security Force, but his name can be found on several disbursement orders from the first and second Council sessions. The nature of the work he did for the Joint Council is not known, though considering his training it would likely have been scientific in nature.
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18
Details are scant, but there is some evidence that Squalor’s suicide attempt was actually conducted by performing his cyborg-conversion technique on himself. It is interesting that he apparently regarded the chance of a successful conversion to be so low as to be virtual suicide.
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19
Rumors persist that not all conversions to the Electric Church are voluntary, although every conversion is well-documented in accordance with System Law, and is accompanied by a signed statement of intent from each convert, including brainwave scan to establish identity. No further investigation has ever been conducted into a conversion, however, because converts are usually people of no family and few means.
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20
The design of the Church’s cyborg “avatars” as they refer to them does not include any sort of sleep-simulation. Current scientific opinion is that the human brain requires some sort of sleep cycle. The Electric Church maintains that their technology removes the need for sleep, and that its adherents suffer no ill effects. It must be noted that no member of the Church has, to date, ever been diagnosed with or complained of a sleep-deprivation-related illness
.
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21
The Electric Church has often stated publicly that it condemns all violence and compulsion, and that all converts are free to leave the Church and live out their immortal existences in any way they wish. No discussion of what immortal cyborgs are to do in society outside the Church is offered, however. No organizations exist to guide or assist former Monks, mainly because there are no former Monks. In the entire history of the Church, there is not one record of a convert leaving the Church.
