The Human Front (13 page)

What is a Big Bad Book? Do you intend to write one someday?

Big and Bad are two separate ambitions. I intend to write at least one and hopefully more big books. One is a space opera that uses as many Golden Age tropes—telepathy, FTL, nearby aliens, sunken continents—as I can rationalise by setting it in the deep future of the universe. My mental working title for it is
Star Princesses of the Lost Galaxy.
The other is a long novel,
Dark Queen’s Day,
an exercise in dark lord revisionism set after the next Ice Age. I’ve been tinkering with plans for that, off and on, for years.

The Bad Book idea comes out of a hankering to write a nonfiction bestseller that’s not terribly rigorous intellectually—a high standard, but one I believe I could strive for, frankly. I’m thinking along the lines of a mashup of
Chariots of the Gods?
and
The Shock Doctrine.
This is in lieu of a pension plan, you understand, so I have abandoned all scruples and I’m wide open to suggestions.

You sometimes call yourself a Libertarian. Does that mean you take long drives with Ron Paul in his Oldsmobile?

Yeah, me and the Doc, we’re like
that
—no. I respect his anti-war stand, but that’s all. And I don’t call myself a Libertarian, in the sense of a supporter of the Libertarian Party or anything like that. My usual handwave for my position is “hard-left libertarian” but in practice I just vote Labour.

Steve Jobs once told me that Glasgow was the Silicon Valley of the eighteenth century. What’s it like today?

Postindustrial, reinventing itself as a tourist attraction, intellectual hub, and shopping centre, with a lot of poverty and long-term unemployment alongside some real development. Silicon Glen with Clearances.

Like many writers (like myself) you moved mothlike from the provinces to the capital. What was that like for you?

The capital, London, was stimulating but overwhelming. I brought to it a stupid provincial left-wing chauvinism about how much more radical the Scots were, and really underestimated how in outer West London I was living in an area with a socialist and trade union history and—in the 1970s—continuing strength that we can only look back on now with amazement. I met my wife there, though funnily enough she grew up not far from me and knew lots of people I knew. Our children’s early years were in Finsbury Park, which wasn’t a bad place for kids to encounter the world.

Then way back in 1989 my wife and I got a hankering to move back to Scotland.

A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?

No, sadly. My parents were both native speakers but they didn’t speak Gaelic in the home, in a more or less conscious decision to have us grow up speaking English.

In a book like
The Star Fraction
(or
Cosmonaut Keep),
are you planting a row of novels, or do they reseed themselves. How far ahead do you plan?

With
The Star Fraction
I didn’t even plan the book when I started it, let alone have sequels in mind.
Cosmonaut Keep,
however, was definitely planned from the beginning as the start of a series. I didn’t plan for it to end up as a trilogy, but by the time I started
Engine City
I was losing my own suspension of disbelief, and decided to wrap it up as decisively and entertainingly as I could.

Are there any other serious writers in Edinburgh besides you and Rowling?

Some few. There’s Iain Banks, Charlie Stross, Andrew J. Wilson and Hannu Rajaniemi just in SF, and Ian Rankin, Ron Binns, Regi Claire, Andrew Greig, Lesley Glaister, Brian McCabe, just to name some mainstream novelists and poets in my own circle of friends (and I’ve probably missed someone and will be dead embarrassed if he or she reads this and notices). Edinburgh’s hooching with serious writers, and there are more coming up.

I love the title of your blog,
The Early Days of a Better Nation.
What does it mean?

It comes from Alasdair Gray’s motto, “Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.” It means what it says!

Favorite single malt? (This is for Stan Robinson)

Jura 16 Year Old is my current favourite, and Highland Park and Talisker are both very acceptable.

Who is Hans Moravec? Is he important and why?

Hans Moravec is a roboticist and AI guru who predicted in 2009 that “By 2010 we will see mobile robots as big as people but with cognitive abilities similar in many respects to those of a lizard. The machines will be capable of carrying out simple chores, such as vacuuming, dusting, delivering packages and taking out the garbage” (
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rise-of-the-robots
).

To which I say: “What?” I mean, has this guy ever
seen
a lizard? But to me Moravec is important because he mapped out the path from robots to the Singularity and then to the Simulation Hypothesis, which is basically that the Singularity has already happened and we’re living in a virtual reality created by our ancestors’ creations. I plundered that whole line of argument for the Fall Revolution books and for
The Restoration Game.
I don’t believe it for a second.

What is the most interesting difference between SF in the USA and in the UK? The least?

The most interesting difference is in the origins of each tradition’s acquaintance with evolution, and how that has affected everything since. In Britain, we had H.G. Wells, who learned his evolutionary biology directly from Thomas Huxley. In the United States, I don’t know who the equivalent of Wells was, but whoever it was seems to have picked evolution up from some Social Darwinist like William Graham Sumner. This is like the difference between getting the gospel from Saint Paul and getting it
from Norman Vincent Peale. To this day, British SF writers see evolution as a vast pitiless process that will eventually doom humanity, and U.S. SF writers tend to see it as a chirpy homily to self-reliance. “Think of it as evolution in action.”—Well, actually, they don’t!

The least interesting difference, in my judgment, is spelling.

You recently took a position teaching writing. Is that a promotion?

I’m not exactly teaching writing—that’s what the course tutors do. As Writer in Residence for the M.A. creative writing course at Edinburgh Napier University, my job is to advise the students about writing and just be there to talk to. I’m not even expected to read their work! I definitely see it as a promotion, and I love doing it.

In your works you seem not so much constructing as punching your way out of an already incredibly rich and detailed future. True or false?

False, I’m afraid. I have to construct my detailed futures quite painfully, though nothing like as painfully as I construct my plots and even storylines. World-building is easy; stories are hard.

What’s next?

A novel provisionally titled
Descent,
which is at the moment in that very stage of painful construction that I’ve
just mentioned. As usual I’ve planned it, made lots of notes, got excited, plunged into writing it, got about thirteen thousand words in and found I hadn’t planned it enough. I always tell myself I won’t do this again, and every time, I do.

What U.S. writer would you most like to have a drink with, besides me?

Howard Waldrop.

I know that Dr. Johnson made it to the Hebrides, with the assistance of Boswell and a donkey. Did he get as far as Stornoway?

Was that Roswell or Boswell? I guess the donkey’s a clue. I haven’t read the book, but I have it somewhere and I intend to at least skim it.

Ever collaborate?

No. Except on the occasional interview.

Your books are often, and quite correctly, praised for their humor. Say something funny.

I have Ostalgia for the Free World.

The Star Fraction
(London: Legend, 1995). Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist; Prometheus Award winner

The Stone Canal
(London: Legend, 1996). Prometheus Award winner

The Cassini Division
(London: Orbit, 1998). Waterstone’s Scottish Book of the Month, May 1998; Nebula Award shortlist 2000

The Sky Road
(London: Orbit, 1999). British Science Fiction Association Award winner; Hugo Award shortlist 2001

Cosmonaut Keep
(London: Orbit, 2000). Hugo Award shortlist 2002

Dark Light
(London: Orbit, 2001). Tiptree Award shortlist 2001; Prometheus Award finalist

Engine City
(London: Orbit, 2002).

Newton’s Wake
(London: Orbit, 2004). Japanese translation, Seuin Award 2006

Learning the World
(London: Orbit, 2005). Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, 2006; Prometheus Award winner

The Execution Channel
(London: Orbit, 2007). Quills shortlist, 2007; Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, 2008; Prometheus Award shortlist, 2008; John W. Campbell Memorial Award shortlist, 2008

The Night Sessions
(London: Orbit, 2008). British Science Fiction Association Award winner

The Restoration Game
(London: Orbit, 2010).

Intrusion
(London: Orbit, 2012).

THE WEB: Cydonia
(London: Orion, 1998).

The Human Front
(Harrogate: PS Publishing, 2001; London: Gollancz 2003). Reprinted in
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection,
edited by Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002). Sidewise Award winner

The Highway Men
(Dingwall: Sandstone Vistas, 2006). Reprinted in
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection,
edited by Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007).

“Moonlighting,”
Sunday Times,
1998.

”Resident Alien,”
Computer Weekly
supplement
IT@2000
,
November 1999.

“The Oort Crowd,”
Nature
406, no. 6792, July 13, 2000. Reprinted in
The Year’s Best SF 6,
edited by David G. Hartwell (New York: EOS/HarperCollins, 2001).

“Undead Again,”
Nature
433, no. 7027, February 17, 2005. Reprinted in
Futures from Nature,
edited by Henry Gee (New York: Tor, 2007).

“Facing the New Atlantic,” in
Scotland 2020: hopeful stories for a northern nation
(London: Demos 2005).

“A Case of Consilience,” in
Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction,
eds. Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson (Edinburgh: Crescent Books/Mercat Press, 2005).

Reprinted in
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection,
edited by Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006); and in
The Year’s Best SF 11,
edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer (New York: EOS/HarperCollins, 2006).

“Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?” in
The New Space Opera,
edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Harvester, 2006 (Hugo Award shortlist, 2008; Locus Award shortlist, 2008)

“Jesus Christ, Reanimator,” in Fast Forward 1, edited by Lou Anders (Amherst, NY: Pyr, 2007). Reprinted in
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Vol. 2,
edited by Jonathan Strahan (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2008).

“MS Found on a Hard Drive.” In
Glorifying Terrorism,
edited by Farah Mendlesohn (London: Rackstraw Press, 2006).

”Lighting Out,” in
disLOCATIONS,
edited by Ian Whates (Alconbury Weston: NewCon Press, 2007). Reprinted in
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection,
edited by Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008). BSFA Award winner

“Wilson at Woking,” in
Celebration,
edited by Ian Whates (Alconbury Weston: NewCon Press, 2008).

“A Dance Called Armageddon,” in
Seeds of Change,
edited by John Joseph Adams (Holicong, PA: Prime Books, 2008).

“iThink, Therefore I Am,” in
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three,
edited by George Mann (Nottingham: Solaris Books, 2009).

“Death Knocks,” in
When It Changed: Science into Fiction,
edited by Geoff Ryman (Manchester: Comma Press, 2009).

“A Tulip for Lucretius,”
Subterranean,
Spring 2009.

“Reflective Surfaces,” in
New Scientist
2726, September 19, 2009.

“Sidewinders,” in
The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories,
edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates (London: Robinson Publishing, 2010).

“The Vorkuta Event,” in
The New and Perfect Man: Postscripts #2
4/2
5,
edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers (Hornsea: PS Publishing, 2011).

“Earth Hour,” a
Tor.com
Original (London: Macmillan, 2011).

“The Best Science Fiction of the Year Three,” in
Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction,
edited by Ian Whates (Oxford: Solaris, 2011).

”The Surface of Last Scattering,” in
TRSF,
edited by Stephen Cass (Boston: Technology Review, Inc., 2011).

“The Aleppo Button” (review)
New Dawn Fades
10. “Balkaniziranje Britanije i druge lose zamisli” [Balkanizing Britain and Other Bad Ideas]
Ni riba ni meso,
Zagreb 1, Spring 1996.

“The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy” (review)
Scottish Book Collector
5, no. 7, Summer 1997.

“The Encyclopaedia of Fantasy” (review)
Free Life
27, September 1997.

“Libertarianism, the Loony Left and the Secrets of the Illuminati”
Matrix
127, September-October 1997. Reprinted as
Personal Perspectives
10, Libertarian Alliance, 1998.

“Science Fiction After the Future Went Away,”
revolution
5, March 1998.

“SF: No Future in It?”
LM
116, December 1998/January 1999.

“History in SF: What (Hasn’t Yet) Happened in History,” In
Histories of the Future: Studies in Fact, Fantasy and Science Fiction,
edited by Alan Sandison and Robert Dingley (New York: Palgrave, 2000).