The Science of Herself (8 page)

Instead of answering, Norah asked for directions to the Pelican Bar. She bought a T-shirt, a skirt, and a cola. She drank the cola, dressed in the new clothes, and threw away the old. She bought a ticket on a boat—ten dollars it cost her to go, ten more to come back. There were tourists, but no one sat anywhere near her.

The boat dropped her, along with the others, twenty feet or so out on the sandbar, so that she walked
the last bit through waist-high water. She was encircled by the straight, clean line of the horizon, the whole world spinning around her, flat as a plate. The water was a brilliant, sun-dazzled blue in every direction. She twirled slowly, her hands floating, her mind flying until it was her turn on the makeshift ladder of planks and branches and her grip on the wood suddenly anchored her. She climbed into the restaurant in her dripping dress.

She bought a postcard for Chloe. “On your eighteenth birthday, come here,” she wrote, “and eat a fish right off the line. I'm sorry about everything. I'm a bad person.”

She ordered a fish for herself, but couldn't finish it. She sat for hours, feeling the floor of the bar rocking beneath her, climbing down the ladder into the water and up again to dry in the warm air. She never wanted to leave this place that was the best place in the world, even more beautiful than she'd imagined. She fell asleep on the restaurant bench and didn't wake up until the last boat was going to shore and someone shook her arm to make sure she was on it.

When Norah returned to shore, she saw Mama Strong seated in an outdoor bar at the edge of the market on the end of the dock. The sun was setting and dark coming on. Mama Strong was drinking something that could have been water or could have been whiskey. The glass was colored blue, so there was no way to be sure. She saw Norah getting off the boat. There was no way back that didn't take Norah toward her.

“You have so much money, you're a tourist?” Mama Strong asked. “Next time you want to eat, the money is gone. What then?”

Two men were playing the drums behind her. One of them began to sing. Norah recognized the tune—something old that her mother had liked—but not the words.

“Do you think I'm afraid to go hungry?” Norah said.

“So. We made you tougher. Better than you were. But not tough enough. Not what we're looking for. You go be whatever you want now. Have whatever you want. We don't care.”

What did Norah want to be? Clean. Not hungry. Not hurting. What did she want to have? She wanted to sleep in the dark. Already there was one bright star in the sky over the ocean.

What else? She couldn't think of a thing. Mama Strong had said Norah would have to change, but Norah felt that she'd vanished instead. She didn't know who she was anymore. She didn't know anything at all. She fingered the beaded bracelet on her wrist. “When I run out of money,” she said, “I'll ask someone to help me. And someone will. Maybe not the first person I ask. But someone.” Maybe it was true.

“Very pretty.” Mama Strong looked into her blue glass, swirled whatever was left in it, tipped it down her throat. “You're wrong about humans, you know,” she said. Her tone was conversational. “Humans do everything we did. Humans do more.”

Two men came up behind Norah. She whirled, sure that they were here for her, sure that she'd be taken, maybe back, maybe to Mama Strong's more horrible someplace else. But the men walked right past her, toward the drummers. They walked right past her and as they walked, they began to sing. Maybe they were human and maybe not.

“Very pretty world,” said Mama Strong.

KAREN JOY FOWLER INTERVIEWED BY TERRY BISSON

Do they really put chopped nuts in sushi in Santa Cruz?

It's one of the town's many charms.

There is a rumor that L. Ron Hubbard played a role in your development as a writer. Explain.

My story “Recalling Cinderella” was published in
Writers of the Future
, an anthology funded by Scientology. This was my first publication, though not my first sale; the Scientologists proved more efficient than Ed Ferman, editor of
Fantasy & Science Fiction
. The anthology was made up of winners in a quarterly contest. I did not even place. But Algis Budrys, who edited the volume, liked my story enough to include it. So I would say that Algis
Budrys had an impact on my career but that L. Ron Hubbard found me wanting.

This all happened in that particular period in which L. Ron Hubbard was maybe dead or maybe not dead. There was an extravagant launch party in LA where I met many science fiction writers of whom I was in breathless admiration. The party and my thirty-fifth birthday were on the same day, so I hardly minded turning thirty-five. Many days of sorrow would have been avoided if the Scientologists had also thrown me a big party when I turned forty.

Several of your works I would describe as historicals. Certainly
The Sweetheart Season, Sarah Canary,
and
Sister Noon
. Does the research come before or after the idea?

The research begins long before the writing, years before, but continues throughout. Initially, I just free-read through the period, looking for things I can use, elements that will shape and adorn the story. If I find an interesting setting, well described, I will steer my story into that space for a scene or two. I make decisions about the story I'll tell based on the things I've been able to find.

Later I have specific needs. I might want to know what the residents of the Steilacoom insane asylum ate or what chewing gum looked like in 1871 or how radioactive the atomic ring you could buy from the back of the magazines actually was.

There was a time when approaching the desk of the research librarians at UC Davis was like Norm entering Cheers. “Where everybody knows your name …”

How often do you go to the movies?

About once a week. That's in the winter; we go less in the summer. One of the things that drew me initially to my husband was that we both believed seeing a bad movie was better than seeing no movie at all. Now we're old and cranky and have changed our minds about that—but we both changed our minds together, which is how a marriage must work when the initial contract is so substantially altered.

And suddenly, these days, television is better than the movies—more interesting, more original, more compelling. What science fiction writer saw
that
one coming?

The title of your newest novel is
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
. Why completely? Why, for that matter, all? The title seems to be saying more than simply nonplussed.

All
is, of course, necessary, because, though I am the one raising the issue here, it is most certainly not just me. Not just my narrator and me. Though she has lived an extreme version of being beside herself, still, it affects us all.

Completely
addresses the magnitude of the situation. Everywhere we go, there we are. Surrounded. Us to
the right of us, us to the left. Nowhere we are not once we've gotten there.

The line between us and not-us is a blurry one: that's what the title is trying to say. This is partly because we are incapable of seeing anything that isn't transformed into us by the mere act of seeing it. And partly because we are all part of Darwin's world.

Does that clear things up? Surely it must. Nonplussed is the least important part.

Many of your works have what I would call an exemplary aspect. Is this to add an old-fashioned patina, or is it a natural ingredient of SF? Or do you just think people need fixing?

People need so much fixing. It's exhausting, honestly. And unappreciated.

“Hey! You there! Shape up!”

See what I mean? I hardly have time to be interviewed, there is so much fixing to be done.

You were one of the founders of the famously feminist James Tiptree Award. Why is it named after a guy?

Technically the Tiptree is not a feminist award. In theory it could go to a work of severe antifeminism as long as the antifeminism was interesting, innovative, and original, and not the same old tired claptrap. But little is new in the world of antifeminism. I can't help but feel they are phoning it in.

So feminist works usually end up winning the award.

It's named after SF writer Alice Sheldon, who made up a man, James Tiptree Jr., to write her science fiction stories for her.

“The Pelican Bar” is pretty scary. Where'd that idea come from? Guantánamo?

Definitely Guantánamo. Also Abu Ghraib. But even more directly, from the chain of overseas schools run by the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS), particularly the notorious Tranquility Bay in Jamaica and High Impact in Mexico. I read online a statement that we shouldn't be surprised that Americans are OK with torturing foreign prisoners, because apparently we are OK with the torturing of American children, as long as it happens overseas. That statement was the seed of my story.

What kind of car do you drive? I already know but am required to ask.

Like everyone else in Santa Cruz, I drive a silver Prius. I take it downtown to pick up my sushi with nuts.

In
What I Didn't See,
your short story collection from Small Beer Press, a narrator declares, “The older I get, the more I want a happy ending.” Is that a promise or a threat?

It's a plea.

You have success in both short and long form, stories and novels. Do you go at them differently?

I love writing short stories best. They are so manageable. By the time I finish one, I know how it works, how it's been put together. I feel like a clockmaker.

Novels are just a mess. I never have a sense of the whole; I never am sure what I've achieved or what I've failed to achieve. But I do like spending more time with my characters, which a novel affords. I miss my characters when I finish a novel. I don't miss the ones from my short stories.

Ever been attacked by drones?

No, but they stalk me. I see them out of the corners of my eyes.

Maxwell Lane, your imaginary imaginary
[sic]
detective in
Wit's End,
recommends asking at least one question that won't be answered. What would that be for you?

What happened to Beverly in my story “What I Didn't See”?

What's the deal with all the apes? I was a little surprised when one didn't show up in
The Jane Austen Book Club
. I didn't say disappointed.

You do understand that you and I are apes? Great apes, which takes the sting out.

So both of us have apes galore, only your stories have more bears. Even just articulating that makes me suddenly feel all competitive. Note to self: write more stories with bears. Don't cede the bears to Bisson.

Here's my Jeopardy question: I provide the answer, you provide the question. A: Small boys with big ideas.

Q: What's even scarier than drones?

If you weren't a writer what would you be, as in do?

I would go on anthropological digs and find amazing pottery shards. I would study cave paintings and also elephants in the wild. I would restore old books, damaged by weather and fire. I would sail around the world. I would be such a valuable member of society that you would hardly recognize me.

Is it true that
Sarah Canary
was originally titled
Sister from Another Planet
?

Something
should be titled
Sister from Another Planet
. It would be nice if I didn't have to write it myself, but I am here, waiting and eager to read it. Doesn't this seem like a job for Eleanor Arnason? I think she might be just the woman for it. I would read
Sister from Another Planet
by Eleanor Arnason in a heartbeat.

What do you think California will look like in 150 years?

More salt water, less fresh. Water wars all up and down the state. It's Chinatown, Jake.

One of your favorite plot devices is “nice girl gets falling-down drunk.” Did you steal that or make it up?

It's a standard romcom trope. See
The Philadelphia Story
,
The Sure Thing
,
The Cutting Edge
, countless others. The woman cannot admit her true feelings until she gets drunk. Because these are movies and not life, the man refuses to take advantage of the situation. Sometimes the woman is angry about this refusal and true love is delayed yet again as a result.

So I've just taken this same trope and am using it in non-romcoms. No one is in love. No one is learning anything about their true feelings through the magic of alcohol. In my books, people are simply getting drunk. I am subverting the genre. It's possible I'm drinking heavily as I do so.

Have you ever been arrested? Were you eventually released?

By the time I joined the revolution, the police had stopped arresting us. It was seen as pointless since the courts just released us again back into the wild first chance they got. So the police were beating us up instead and skipping the arresting part. I've never been arrested, but I've been beaten up.

I've also been rescued by the police in other contexts. It's all been very confusing.

But I
am
clear now that my constitutional rights are not meant to be actually, you know, exercised.

What are you reading this week?

Snapper
by Brian Kimberling. So recommended!

Your thoughts on each in one sentence please: John Crowley, Agnes Smedley, David Sedaris, Molly Gloss, Evelyn Waugh.

I can name that tune in one word. Brilliant, inspiring, hilarious, impeccable, eternal. You can pretty much rotate the adjectives, give them a spin, as they apply equally to all of the above.

Do you have a regular drill as a writer? Ever work in longhand?