Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 106

by Sam J. Miller

  I’ve been paying attention to Thoreau very closely with the idea he’ll teach me some things. I think I’ll be lost at sea—or lost in the mountains—because I won’t know how to write non-fiction. It makes me feel a little trepidation, but in a good way. I’m excited. I really want to do it. It’ll happen sometime.

  When you were a teenager, you read historical novels and mysteries rather than science fiction. Have you considered writing in these genres?

  No. I really feel devoted to science fiction. I think it’s got something special that the other genres don’t have for me. My love of the historical novel gets expressed in things like Years of Rice and Salt (2002) and Galileo’s Dream (2009), or in treating the future as though it’s a historical novel, like in the Mars books.

  I also feel like very often that the detective novel provides a plot that is congenial to me. Quite a few of my plots are similar to detective story plots. Not all of them, but often enough that I find it fun and comforting. I still read mysteries and historical novels. I have favorite writers in both of those genres.

  I do have one thing to add. I used to tell people that I ran into science fiction when I went off to college, and that it was Asimov and Clifford Simak that turned me on to it. But what I’ve been forgetting is how blown away I was by Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time when I was twelve. It blew my mind, but it seemed to me to be a freak of nature. I didn’t comprehend that it came from a genre. I thought that this one woman was just so spectacularly imaginative that she told this unique story. I loved it but I didn’t know its context at all. I didn’t go seeking out science fiction, because I didn’t know it existed, and it was segregated in my library, and I was almost entirely a library reader. But when I was eighteen and found science fiction, I think A Wrinkle in Time had set me up for it.

  Referring to writer Peter Dickinson, you and your wife coined the term “Dickinson moment,” to describe that point in a novel where you’re not going to stop reading until you’ve finished the book. Do you ever strive to build Dickinson moments into your own novels?

  I wish. That would be a good thing. I have never set out specifically to do it, so I can’t be sure if I have or not.

  Thinking about it and rapidly passing through my books, I’m not coming up with one that has a clear Dickinson moment. What I will say is that I wanted the last chapter of Years of Rice and Salt to move really quickly compared to any of the previous ones, so you could feel you were sliding down the last pages and towards the end. It was such a long book.

  But that’s not really what my wife and I mean. I think of it in terms of suspense. There’s a point where you’re too excited to know the end, where there’s too much danger involved and you simply have to go on. When people read Red Mars, they think they know the end of the novel because the first chapter is an in media res and John Boone gets killed. After that it goes back in time and the reader gets extremely comfortable thinking that the murder of John Boone will always be in the future. At the end of chapter five you cross that point again, and chapters six, seven, and eight are very action-packed and full of incident. Many a reader has said to me that they were so startled to break into the area of the unknown, where they didn’t have any future for the story and were back in that ordinary sensation of not knowing what comes next, that they read through to the end. So that’s a Dickinson moment, maybe. But it’s a couple of hundred pages!

  Around the time that Shaman (2013) was published, you commented on the fundamental continuity between modern humans and Paleolithic humans: “Every day we’re doing the basic Paleolithic activities of talking to each other, making our food, dancing, having sex . . . ” Do you foresee a time when we will completely abandon these deep behavioral roots and tilt wholly into the technological sublime?

  I don’t think it’s possible, because we still have the same genome and biological needs. The evolutionary forces that pushed around our brains as social primates are still the same. There will be fundamental pleasures that can’t be replaced by their technologically sublime substitutes. They can’t be augmented or virtualized in any meaningful way without taking away what was essential to their pleasure.

  Ultimately, you do get food and sex, and beyond that play and physical activity. These are all imperatives I think. This is why I flatly disbelieve that uploading our minds would be meaningful. I don’t believe in the Singularity either. So there are a couple of science fiction stories that I think are fantasy. Why people are intrigued by these fantasies is an interesting question.

  I wonder if people are making a very big category error, and it’s sort of common to all addictions: when you’re doing something that you think is going to give you pleasure, and it’s not giving you the pleasure you’ve been told it would, then you double down and do more of it, thinking that more will be better and will finally get you what you were told you’d get out of it.

  I’m thinking that in our technologically augmented and virtualized lives of sitting and looking at screens, a lot of people are performing the addictive mistake, doing more of it thinking that it’ll make them happier. At a certain point, if you break the addictive cycle and realize the addictive activity is never going to do it for you, you can try something more basic. There are a lot of roads to recovery, that could be viewed as psychological or religious, or simply common sense or whatever. You can start living a primate’s life and pretty soon you’ll find satisfactions.

  I do a lot of weeding in the garden every morning. I have my hands in the dirt, and I’m vigorously and enthusiastically killing plants that I don’t like, or maybe I do like them, but I definitely don’t want them in my garden. So I’m just sitting in the sun on my butt, or I’m standing kneeling over, digging around in the dirt. Well, it’s very satisfying. I don’t think anything I can do on a computer is actually quite as satisfying as that.

  Fooling around with stones, running, throwing things at things, those are all on the Paleolithic list, everything we did to evolve into what we are. You do them now and there are parts of the brain that just light up, like a light’s gone on in a room. Even looking at fire, which is a very basic thing. You look at a fire and a part of your brain is just going, “Right on,” and loving it. Terry Bisson says that sitting in the dark looking at a movie with other people is just looking at a fire, which is why it doesn’t matter if a movie is good or bad, you’re still enjoying it—it’s an artificial fire. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it makes me laugh. It might be true.

  On the subject of your garden: About ten years ago you relocated your writing spot there, and you write there every day regardless of the weather. What effects has this had on your writing, besides reinvigorating you?

  I write in my front courtyard, near my garden, and under a tree. I’m not sure about the effects of that. It’s a good question. I would say that because I love it so much, it has allowed me to reconnect with novel writing as something that is very joyful. I don’t have to tie myself to a desk and make myself do it, being very antsy and wishing I was somewhere else doing something more physical. Being outdoors seems to be enough physicality to allow me to just sit there and write, and I’m happy to put in however many hours a day it is, without feeling like I’d be happier if I was running or playing frisbee golf or if I’d gone to the mountains. Moving outdoors simply made me happier. I think this is showing in the books.

  It’s very weird, I’m sitting in the same chair in the same spot every day, so I know where the sun is at its winter solstice and summer solstice. I’ve seen the birds come and go in their migrations, and I’ve seen the trees leaf out and lose their leaves in the annual cycle. I’ve been out with the rain falling around me like a bead curtain, because my tarp is only eight feet by twelve feet overhead, so I get a little damp but not too damp. The worst part by far is the heat of summer here in Davis, which slow roasts me. It’s important to work in the early morning when it’s still cool.

  I’ve become very stubborn about it, even superstitious. If I’
m writing a novel, I’m writing it outdoors in my front courtyard. It’s a sign to me that it’s time to work, and that the work is fun.

  Has your approach to novel-writing changed in any fundamental way over the last quarter century?

  Sure. There’s a big break between Pacific Edge (1990) and Red Mars, where I decided to shift styles and forget about the 1980s magazine style, or Heinlein style, of hiding exposition and slipping it in in half-phrases here and there so that you read as if you’re reading contemporary literature in the time the book is written. I decided that was actually bad for several different reasons I won’t go into now. But when I wrote Red Mars I decided to shift styles, and that sustained me for a while.

  When I finished the Science and the Capital books I became very intent to make my narrators characters that were different from me and had narrative styles that were particular to them. I started doing characterization by way of narrator much more intensely than I ever had before. It makes those novels peculiar kinds of first person narration. Galileo’s Dream is told by Cartophilus, a minor character in the story. Shaman is told by “the third wind,” a kind of spirit that knows everything about the Paleolithic, and Aurora is told by the ship’s computer. 2312 is a kind of Wikipedia—hard to know how to characterize that! Anyway I’ve gotten more interested in questions of who the narrator is, and how they’re different from me, and how can I show that.

  Essentially with each novel I’ve tried to think, “How would the form best fit the function that I want?” I’ve tried to do something different and interesting each time, in formal terms. I hope to continue with that. My new novel is turning out to be lots of fun. The work is coming right along. Many hours in the courtyard. This seems like a good phase.

  About the Author

  Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is the co-author, with Robert Silverberg, of When the Blue Shift Comes, which received a starred review from Library Journal. Alvaro’s short fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Analog, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, Apex and other venues, and Alvaro was nominated for the 2013 Rhysling Award. Alvaro’s reviews, critical essays and interviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Strange Horizons, SF Signal, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Foundation, and other markets. Alvaro currently edits the blog for Locus.

  Tripping the Light Fantastic:

  An Interview with Pan Haitian

  Nick Stember

  When I arrived in China I spent a lot of time trying to find local examples of my two passions: comics and science fiction. Although everyone I met seemed far too busy learning English, preparing for their college entrance exams, hanging out in internet cafes, or (the most popular option in Harbin, where a typical winter day is an average of -18 °C and the sun sets at 4pm) drinking, I soon discovered that comic books and science fiction magazines could be found tucked into the odd corners of the local bookstores and, most accessibly, at newsstands.

  Back in 2007, it was easy to find a newsstand, even in icy Harbin. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the ones I remember best were red, with a white curving roof designed to look like an open book. Encased in a rainbow-hued cocoon of shiny shrink-wrapped magazines, the doors of the newsstands opened outward, becoming make-shift shelves. Inside one would invariably find a smiling newspaper vender, swaddled in a discarded PLA jacket, working his or her way through a plastic bag of un-hulled sunflower seeds. A red payphone would be placed on the counter, next to a battered looking crockpot filled with tea eggs and an assortment of beverages. Sometimes they would have a cooler parked alongside to sell ice cream as well (unplugged of course in the winter), but for me, it was all about the comics and science fiction.

  Although my rudimentary Chinese served me well at the roadside BBQ shacks and Korean bibimbop joints of Harbin, the classes I took at HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology, named after MIT in a fit of aspiration) did little to prepare me for the science-heavy jargon and made-up words which pepper your typical science fiction story. After trying to battle my way through one or two stories, dictionary in hand, I gave up. The stack of magazines I collected over that first year in China followed me back to the States, though, where they spent several years collecting dust in Portland before my parents, looking to downsize, packed them up along with the detritus of my childhood (Legos, Magic 8 Balls, mutilated action figures, etc) and delivered them to my doorstep in Vancouver, BC.

  Opening them today I find an assortment of all the big names, at least two of whom have already graced the pages of Clarkesworld: Xia Jia and Chen Qiufan. This month another big name in Chinese science fiction joins them: Pan Haitian.

  In China, Pan Haitian is known for mixing his science fiction with a heaping spoonful of fantasy and mythology (conveniently enough, in Chinese, the term for “science fiction,” kehuan is used as an umbrella term to include “fantasy,” huanxiang). Joel Martinsen has described Pan’s work on the Novoland project as, “an attempt to build an indigenous fantasy universe,” with an early novella Yanshi Chuanshuo [The Legend of Master Yan, Science Fiction World, 1998] adapting a classic tale from the Lieh Tzu into a modern fable about a man who builds clockwork automatons. Humor also plays an important role in Pan’s stories: a 2010 story by Pan depicts the famous early 20th century intellectual Lu Xun as a demon hunter facing off against his real life rival, Liang Shiqiu. Another story, “The Story of a Pig in the Springtime,” is a comic fantasy about pigs surviving the Wenchuan Earthquake only to take over the world.

  Pan is also extremely active in the Chinese science fiction and fantasy community, having worked as an editor of the influential magazine, Jiuzhou Huanxiang [Odyssey of China Fantasy] since it was founded in 2005. His previous work includes the 2001 collection Dajiao, Kuai Pao! Run Dajiao! Run! New World Press] and four novels set in the Novoland universe: Baique Shengui [Ghost Sparrow, Spirit Turtle, New World Press, 2006], Tie Futu [The Iron Stupa, New World Press, 2007], 24 Ge Mei Miao Tiantang 24 [24 Second Paradise, serialized in China Fantasy, 2009-10], and Anyue Jianglin [A Dark Moon Rises, Hunan Art and Literature Press October, 2012]. “Hunger Tower” is Pan’s first work to have been published in English.

  As an editor, writer, and philosopher you wear a lot of different hats. In respect to each of these roles, explain the significance of your magazine, Odyssey of China Fantasy.

  China Fantasy has changed a great deal from when it first began, as a forum for fantasy short stories, to today’s China Fantasy magazine. Step by step we’ve broken free of the self-imposed limitations of the China Fantasy website and have been working hard to help Chinese fantasy find its own voice.

  Our editorial board uses a variety of themes: every month we destroy one Chinese city, or ask all of the male science fiction and fantasy writers to describe a future matrilineal society, or to imagine a Chinese superhero who is actually just an everyday joe from the lowest levels of society . . . they are all very involved in the magazine. We are always looking for new writers and new readers who “get” us, because we’ve already figured out where we stand: create the new by destroying the old.

  These themes have given birth to a sister publication, Jizhou Quanmin Huanxiang [National Fantasy], which we dressed up like zombies for and also sold apocalypse survival kits. We even put up a reward for a knock-off ark program like the one in the movie 2012 . . . our goal is to bring down science fiction from its lofty heights, and erase the line between reality and fantasy. We want to use thought, action, graphics, models, data, and diagrams—things outside of literature to express science fiction and fantasy concepts. Once we got started, we quickly found ourselves overwhelmed with material. It’s my hope that we can reach you in your real, everyday life.

  What do you think it really means to be “Chinese?” How is it different from being, say, “American?”

  Obviously, it’s more than just cheongsam dresses, the limestone karst scenery of Guilin, the canal cities of the Yangtze delta like Wuzhen, conical hats, Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching, kung fu and all these symbols.
Because Americans use the same symbols when they film movies like Transformers or Mission Impossible in Shanghai.

  As I understand it, to be Chinese you have to include the contemporary ideology of China today—Chinese people’s way of thinking, their philosophical outlook on life, their way of looking at the world. More specifically, it appears in the choices that characters make in a work, in their attitude towards new things. It can affect the entire thrust of a story.

  Personally, I think Chinese people can’t escape this kind of awareness. Even if we were to write a story that was set five hundred and fifty thousand light-years away, in a time when national boundaries had been completely erased, the actions the characters would take; walking, lying; all the different monsters they would run into trying to destroy the universe; deep down, they would all really just be the Chinese people that are all around us right now.

  If we say we are “Chinese,” doesn’t that mean that “Chinese science fiction and fantasy” is a special kind of fiction that is somewhat different from “real science fiction and fantasy”? What is the difference between the two?

  It’s good to be special. It’s like how Japanese science fiction and fantasy, or Czech, or British all have their own special qualities. For some of them you can tell the difference right away. I think we need to work to preserve this special-ness, even if it means that we get ignored or marginalized by mainstream science fiction and fantasy. But who says that the only standards for criticism out there are the standards of the American Nebula and Hugo awards?