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Klara And The Sun with Jo Zebedee
236 Plays2 years ago
We're joined on this episode by Jo Zebedee, author of several novels, including the Abendau space opera trilogy, the dystopian Inish Carraig and the Irish fantasy Waters And The Wild. Jo talks to us about Klara And The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro's 2020 novel about a sickly young girl who purchases a robotic "Artificial Friend" called Klara. Klara sets about trying to heal her human owner by using some very strange logic. Jo talks with us about how the book, despite being told from a robot's POV, shows us how to live the most human of lives. We also touch on themes of science vs engineering, the human heart, and whether the book is really the dystopian fiction that it's marketed as.
Jo also talks with us about her new novel The Wildest Hunt, published by Inspired Quill, and about her own body of work. We touch on male and female lead characters, the strong Northern Irish element running through her books, and the difficulties of writing as a career, and what we can do to mitigate that.
We'll also stop by at The Judge's Corner to take a bite into the meaty topic of Food and the Law, we'll hear a reading of Little Match(maker) Girl, Peter V's winning entry from the January 75-word writing challenge, and get critical new information about the Jupiterian invasion of Slish Wood.
Further Reading
Service With A Smile in Klara And The Sun
The End Of All Things by Juliana Spink Mills - Kraxon Magazine's story of the year for 2021
Index
[00:00 - 43:21] Jo Zebedee Interview Part 1
[43:22 - 44:20] Voicemail #1
[44:20 - 57:16] The Judge's Corner
[57:22 - 58:13] Voicemail #2
[58:13 - 59:42] Writing Challenge Winners
[59:47 - 1:00:43] Voicemail #3
[1:00:47 - 1:38:44] Jo Zebedee Interview Part 2
And join us next month, when we'll be discussing the classic horror-comedy film An American Werewolf In London with the writer and podcaster Richard Sheppard.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Novel Discussion
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello everyone, welcome to Crohn's Cast, the official podcast of FFF Chronicles, the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community. I'm Dan Jones. And I'm Christopher Bean. Today we're talking about Katsuo Ishiguro's science fiction drama, Clara and the Sun, published in 2021 by Faber and Faber. It's set in the United States in an unspecified near future and told from the point of view of an artificial friend, or AF.
00:00:46
Speaker
a robot who's bought by the mother of a 14-year-old girl called Josie. Josie is apparently a very sickly child and Clara acts as her companion. Clara, being solar powered, believes that the sun offers nourishment and healing powers, not only to AFs, but also humans. And so the robot sets in motion a plan to try and harness the power of the sun to heal Josie.
Jo Zebedee's Work and Influence
00:01:06
Speaker
Clara and the Sun is Ishiguro's eighth novel and was long-listed for the 2021 Man Booker Prize.
00:01:13
Speaker
Joining us today is the author Jo Zebedee. Jo is the author of six novels and several short stories. Her novels include the alien invasion cum prison drama Inish Karach and the Abendal space opera trilogy. Hailing from Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast, she frequently draws inspiration from her home country and peppers her stories with local colour, myth and legend.
00:01:35
Speaker
This unique combination of speculative fiction and Northern Irish legend caused her to be listed in The Guardian's Top 10 Irish Science Fiction Writers. Her latest novel, The Wildest Hunt, published by Inspired Quill, is a dark fantasy set at Christmas time and was released in late 2021. She also finds the time to run a local bookstore called The Secret Bookshelf,
00:01:58
Speaker
as well as her own management consultancy business. Hello, Joe. Hello, how are you doing? Very well, thanks. Good to have you with us. Yeah, it's lovely to be along. Yeah, see you both. It's been a long time and you're one of the top members of Crohn's, so it's great that we've got you along for the ride. Yeah, I was thinking about when I first met you. I joined Crohn's in 2011, I think.
00:02:21
Speaker
And that's when you had the other name. And so we've been talking for 10 years. And I mean, I know we see each other's videos on Instagram for time to time, but yeah, it's the first time we've actually met up.
Analyzing Clara and the Sun
00:02:32
Speaker
So it's nice. Well, I can't say put a face to the name, but it's nice to put a voice to the name. Well, that's what we're trying to do, not just inform people and educate, but bring people together.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's what I get for living in the sticks. So Clara and the Sun, what made you pick that book out of our long list of texts? Well, I think first of all, I mean, science fiction is my preferred genre over fantasy and science fiction. I mean, I read fantasy and read quite a bit of it, but sci-fi is where my natural draw goes to. And especially sci-fi with sort of human social elements as opposed to the harder end of sci-fi.
00:03:14
Speaker
So I suppose I'd read Never Let Me Go before and I suppose I was drawn to the idea of a very strong character writer and someone who could draw someone in writing that artificial viewpoint and then I picked up the book because that's the nice thing about running a bookstore is that you normally have the book somewhere where you can pick it up
00:03:40
Speaker
and had a quick look at the first couple of pages and I find the voice quite refreshing and quite naturalistic which was nice so I thought yeah let's go with this one. Yeah the voices the voicing in Clara and the Sun is very interesting because Ishiguro is writing from the perspective of Clara the titular character who is an artificial friend so a robot and the thing that I picked up about the the writing style is that it's
00:04:10
Speaker
It's literal, taken to the extreme end of literal prose. As far as I can see, there are no metaphors, there's no literary flourishes, there's no purple prose, there are no similes in the robot's understanding of the world. Everything is laid out.
00:04:30
Speaker
factually and yet it's still very clean, it's as clear as winter air is the pros and it still draws you in. The metaphors and the symbology and the symbolism is there but it's overarching the whole of the text.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I liked the simplicity of the voice. It was almost, but not quite childlike, you know, it was just a little bit more to it than a child. And it's interesting that you weren't seeing metaphors because I was almost seeing metaphors where there weren't metaphors. So the whole thing about the sun and the fact that it was almost a diaphragd in it, it was almost, you know, how God to me,
00:05:12
Speaker
Yes, there were no metaphors, but the whole time the bits in the field and running through it and whatnot was peppered with almost invisible metaphor language, which I really liked. Yeah, I really liked it as well. I think it's brilliantly written. You have the dual layer of meaning where everything is presented exactly as you see it. So you see the world, as far as I could see, the world is presented as a setting
00:05:39
Speaker
but it's also presented as a place of meaning and a place of action. There's a dichotomy between the two. The way that Clara sees the world is purely in
00:05:54
Speaker
with respect to facts and figures and geographical markers and she sees things very literally. As you say, she deifies the sun and she's very quick. I think it's in the first couple of pages she starts calling the sun him as if it's a god rather than a boiling ball of gas in the sky. So very immediately she is like a little child.
00:06:21
Speaker
I think it's quite apt that she's put in the relationship with Josie. So what did you think of the relationship with Josie that Clara strikes up?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, I felt that making Josie ill in some ways made it a more equal relationship than that sense of just master and AF. And that idea of an unequal relationship is brought up quite early where she watches another AF.
00:06:52
Speaker
walk behind their teenage mistress or master. So I like that it brought them down to a similar level and they were both facing this adversity and both supporting each other through it because I think it made for a more equal relationship. And it's interesting you're saying about Clara Sykes, she mentions once or twice that her boxes are full. So you get this idea that when she's watching the world, it's through this almost screen
00:07:22
Speaker
So there's a lovely cleanness about everything she sees. It's all very focused on the one thing as opposed to all the periphery that often goes on. And I think her relationship with Josie was focused in the same way. When they were together, it was all about Josie. So I thought it worked well as a central relationship. And obviously then there was the illness.
00:07:48
Speaker
and that adds that extra bit of tension and then the realisation of where the story might be going in terms of that illness. It's interesting you mentioned about the you said there was a sense of inequality in the relationship between a lot of the AFs and other children
00:08:06
Speaker
But also there are inequalities between or disparities between the relationships between the different types of AF. The later models quickly start to distinguish that they are superior in inverted commas to the models that have come before and also the human children
00:08:30
Speaker
There's a concept of, it's called being lifted, isn't there? So there's this thread of inequality, inequality in terms of tiers of citizens, whether it's robot to robot, or human to human, or human to robot, and also the adults as well. So it's running through the entire book like a stick of rock.
00:08:55
Speaker
But what's so clever with that is that he then inverts that. So the ones that are at the bottom and in equal, if you like, actually prove to be often the more successful and also in many ways
00:09:12
Speaker
The ones with a better life, so, you know, okay, Clara is not one of the B3 models, but she's someone who comes into a nice place and has a nice life and, you know, as she fades away at the end, she's looking back without regrets.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so you get the sense that, okay, society has decided these people are lifted or these people are better. But actually, as the narrative plays out, that's very much inverted, I thought, which was a nice touch. I hadn't thought, I mean, you mentioned Clara deifying the sun, but it's almost a Christian type message that the first will be last and the last will be first.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yes, yes. It's almost there and I wonder if that's intentional. Certainly the idea that Clara wants to sacrifice herself, well she does literally sacrifice part of herself in order to save Josie but maybe we'll get to that later. We mentioned we probably should explain the concept of being lifted in case people haven't read the text. We have the story set in a near future
00:10:20
Speaker
where genetic engineering seems to be the norm, but not affordable to everybody. So we have certain children who can be lifted, and there are children who are left behind, who are unlifted. And Clara makes a friend in one of the unlifted children called Rick. What did you think of Rick?
00:10:46
Speaker
I actually really liked him. I thought he was one of the better characters in it. He was mature, which worked well against Clara's almost immaturity. Well, immature maturity, I would call it with Clara. She's immature in the sense that she's seeing the world for the first time, but she's mature in her thinking. And I felt that he was a good comparator to the more
00:11:13
Speaker
materialistic world that was around him. And then as the story goes on, we start to realize that actually he's incredibly talented and he's creative in a way that many of the lifted people don't seem to be. So I think that for me, there was also a sort of conversation in there about whether or not being lifted had actually improved things. And of course, we realize as we read on that Josie's illness has probably been caused by her being lifted. So that kind of
00:11:43
Speaker
brings that even more to the forefront that this thing that we consider to be what sets us apart actually isn't something that's helpful or actually making better people. And this I think that's that's really at the heart of the novel is that whether whether science and advances in science and advances in engineering make us better people. Would you say that?
00:12:13
Speaker
I think it's part of the themes. I don't even know if it's all about science. And I suppose it's whether you read it as a book about AI or whether you read it as a book about humans. Well, I thought that the two major engineering advances are the artificial friends themselves, excuse me, and the concept of being lifted through the genetic engineering.
00:12:42
Speaker
And neither of those things seem to have made many of the humans better people. Like you say, the ones who are left behind, like Rick, tend to be better. They intend to be more level-headed, let's say, and they know how to act and they know how to conduct themselves. But I thought that Clara was one of the characters
00:13:07
Speaker
who came across as knowing how to conduct herself and knowing how to direct herself and orient herself with respect to the wider world. And even though I think the novel is making the point that science and engineering cannot replicate what the essence of humanity is, whether it's consciousness or a soul or the human heart, as Josie's dad says, but I think Clara is actually
00:13:36
Speaker
She actually is emulating human capacity for goodness. Yeah, and it's interesting because I think I read it slightly differently because what I was kind of taking from it was that
00:13:53
Speaker
Clara could have emulated human, but none of us can emulate another person. So, you know, the whole thing and just I assume we're like spoilers here. Yeah. Spoil what you want. We better remember to do that on the boilerplate.
00:14:14
Speaker
So one of the things that we find out is that Clara is being kind of groomed to become the successor to Josie, should Josie pass on. And they're making this puppet of Josie and the idea is that Clara can inhabit this. And I think what Clara says is that I could do it, but she can't get to the heart of Josie. But I got the feeling that that wasn't because of machine and person.
00:14:41
Speaker
but because nobody can get to the inside heart of someone else. Nobody can replicate the individual. Yeah. And I think that in the end Clara almost comes to the realization that she doesn't need to because she's forged her own place in the world and it's a very funny little place. It's a kind of, it's an illogical place in some ways because the, well later in the book
00:15:09
Speaker
The main driver of the story is that Clara wants to harness the power of the sun because she's solar powered. She wants to harness the power of the sun to heal Josie of her illness. And it's completely illogical, but it works against all your expectations. And as she's trying to destroy a machine called the Kootings machine, which is causing a great deal of pollution in the roadworks,
00:15:35
Speaker
And as I was reading it, I got the sense that this was complete nonsense. I don't know if you got the impression of that. She was trying to destroy the machine in order to please the sun so that the sun would show benevolence upon Josie and make her better and heal her. And you think, well, that's completely mad.
00:15:59
Speaker
Did you get that sense, even though it weren't? Yes, and one of the weaknesses I felt actually was the sudden revival of Josie and I understand
00:16:12
Speaker
that it was about power of belief. But to me, there needed to be something more concrete so that I could understand why she suddenly got better. And if it was purely that actually Clara was right and her act was going to pacify the sun and let Josie recover, I didn't feel that was fully built, which I think is saying the same as what you're saying.
00:16:38
Speaker
in the sense that I just found that that wasn't entirely believable. To me it was about Clara's belief and then that belief actually became what happened and I wasn't convinced that I had been carried on that journey from one to the other entirely. Well there's an interesting question then. So as writers we can present the world in two different ways and that's the ways that I thought that what the novel was being presented. So one is as a place of
00:17:07
Speaker
science and geography and physical descriptors and relationships in between materials and time and space and phenomenon and then there's another tier of the world which is arguably a lot deeper and a lot wider and a lot broader and that's the world of action and consequence and how you are at and how you conduct yourself and how you drive yourself through the world and
00:17:33
Speaker
And it's that road that Clara takes, even though she sees the world in terms of just physical descriptors, the way that she acts drives herself along that second, deeper tier. And there's a more real truth than the logic of the story. So I guess the question is, as writers, do you feel it's more important to have the scientific logic of the story, or is it more important to have the
Writing and Cultural Influence
00:18:04
Speaker
the logic of meaning, let's say. I don't know if that's the right phrase, but the logic of you do the right thing or you make the right sacrifices and you get the desired outcome, even though it might be traumatic. And there's not necessarily a causal logic between those two things. It's partly driven by story and partly driven by what
00:18:30
Speaker
you're trying to reflect in your story. I'm a big believer that most speculative fiction picks up themes in the real world and shines a light so that we can look at them from a different direction. So I suppose part of it for me is led by where that light is shining. And part of it then is led by the writer and I suppose their underlying beliefs. And I've never tried writing a character, for instance, who's
00:19:00
Speaker
completely different from my sort of life take and is still someone who would be a protagonist. I think that would be incredibly hard to do. I can do it as an antagonist, I can do it as someone who's a secondary character, but the idea of actually getting into somebody so deeply and not
00:19:20
Speaker
feeling the world that they feel as possible as a good world would be quite different. So I think that whole process is very nuanced between the writer, the story, the world and the meaning that often, you know, and I don't know about anybody else, but whenever I write often, I don't know what the meaning of the story is. Or I start off with a very clear idea of what the meaning of the story is, and it turns out not to be the meaning of the story.
00:19:46
Speaker
And maybe I'm just chaos central as a writer, but I think they were all just knitted together in a little knot that's hard to unpick sometimes. I think there's often probably even three tiers of meaning. There's the meaning that there's the logic of the story and then there's the meaning that maybe you as a writer are bringing to it, but then there are other meanings that the reader infers from it. And so it's sort of a triumvirate of a relationship.
00:20:16
Speaker
I mean, when you've written any of your books, have you been struck by the interpretations of other people that they brought to your novels? Yeah, I mean, I suppose for me, the key one for that is in each character. And it's interesting as time goes on, and perhaps as I mature more and understand more about my
00:20:36
Speaker
roots and culture and my sense of what drives a lot of my writing, which is trying to understand that very complex culture that is Northern Ireland. I set out to write something that wasn't about the Troubles. I set out to write something that was escaped from the Troubles almost because I was very fed up with reading Troubles novels and I felt that not every Northern Irish novel has to be about that.
00:21:05
Speaker
And of course, I brought it out. And, you know, it's a very gritty post-war invasion Belfast. It's very there are a couple of branches of aliens. There is the whole backdrop of Northern Ireland. And of course, people read it as an analogy to the troubles, which I denied having known why I said about writing it. And now as time goes on, I'm realizing that it's not an analogy. There's nothing in it that's an analogy. But it's probably a
00:21:35
Speaker
a story that deals with my thoughts about the background that lies behind my history and my culture. I mean, even if you wanted to explicitly avoid references to the troubles in Northern Ireland, it's still in you, isn't it? And it's still in your community and it's still in the countryside and the cities around you.
00:22:02
Speaker
And it's a real challenge for writers over here at the minute and particularly crime writers are getting it quite a lot that, you know, there's a lot of people saying let's move on past the troubles, you know, nothing in Northern Ireland has to be about the troubles and there's a lot of people arguing strongly.
00:22:17
Speaker
that people shouldn't be writing about that. But there's all this saying, hang on, there's collective hurt here, there's been loss in this community. And it's up to us as writers how we choose to deal with that. And you can't tell me not to write about it. So it's very difficult. It's interesting. What would you say to, there are lots of writers on crumbs, as you know, you well know. What would you say to them if
00:22:41
Speaker
if they're worried about what they want to convey a very particular type of meaning in their story, they want to convey a particular type of point. And you know, they unleash their book into the wild and it's taken in completely other ways, the contrary to what they might have intended. I think I'd tell them that once you put it out there, you lose a certain amount of ownership of it. Definitely.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's definitely true. Can I just interject something here? It's a bit of an aside, to be honest. For those listeners who have not been listening to the opening of these podcasts, or this might be one you're just catching, when we refer to Crohn's, we're referring to the science fiction and fantasy website forum for writers and fans of the genre. So
00:23:40
Speaker
Although this is called the Crohn's cast, I know sometimes it might not be clear because the website is that the name of the web site is a bit of a mouthful. So I just wanted to remind listeners that Crohn's, when we refer to Crohn's, it's the website. It sounds a bit like a disease, doesn't it? Yeah, it's like the latest variant, isn't it? Yeah, Crohn's variant.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a great website because it has nurtured me as a writer, it's nurtured so many others as a writer, and you write down that it's the sort of place where you can ask that sort of question in safety and get a response. So yeah, for me, once it's out there, I can do nothing about it. I'm in the terrifying position of waiting for first reviews to come in on a new novel.
00:24:27
Speaker
you know i don't care as much anymore sounds awful but i tell my stories and i care if people like it or not but i don't care so much now what they think it says about me as a writer i think also when you've you've put something out there isn't it a case of there's a conclusion for you so therefore when somebody comes to read it especially when it takes so long to get something out there after you finished it
00:24:55
Speaker
that you've moved on anyway. Do you know what I mean? Like your headspace might not necessarily be in that place. I suppose it depends on the length of the novel, how long you've been writing or those kinds of things. But it's interesting to hear you say that because with my fiction, I've realized
00:25:11
Speaker
the stuff that used to wind me up, as in all people, I want them to understand this or I want them to understand that or this is how I want, you don't have that control as an author of what people are thinking, they will think what they think and that can be positive or negative. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's weak to say or I don't think it's dismissive to say,
00:25:34
Speaker
I don't care. I think it's a growth in, you know, I mean, you've had a lot of experience with quite a lot of published books, and a lot of effort. So I suppose when you're such an auto didact that you have to pick up these skills anyway, you know, you have to develop that tough skin. Yeah, I think I think if you if you if you put work either
00:26:01
Speaker
And you're going to take reviews and whatnot hard. I think you would, you nearly need to just hang up your boots because not everybody is going to love it. And at least three of my books just on the eve of it going out, I've had advanced readers who come to me and say, I hate that book. And, you know, it's just been copy edited. It's sitting there with the cover. There's nothing, nothing can happen. But this book come out and your last review is this book's awful.
00:26:25
Speaker
So I think you have to have. I think the other thing you need to have is good humour. You know, if people don't like my books, that's fine. They don't like my books. That's grand. For me, I think it helped a bit that the very first book I put out was the darkest thing I'd ever written. And for me, had the themes and whatnot that I don't
00:26:46
Speaker
tend to revisit or really want to. So I'd kind of run the gauntlet of bringing out something that wasn't going to be universally liked. But I think there's another nuance I'm going to be writing about Northern Ireland, which is
00:27:02
Speaker
Everybody here knows what everybody else is, okay? It's not that, you know, with something like racism, it's overt. You can tell what race a person is by and large, yeah, or you can tell they're not of my race. In Northern Ireland, we all look the same, and we all have the same accents, and yet we all know
00:27:23
Speaker
Who's who? By and large, who's who. And we go to segregated schools. By and large, there is an integrated sector, but it's very small. So when you're writing anything from Northern Ireland, you're writing it from your perspective in your community, no matter how enlightened you are, no matter how moderate you are. So there's always a sense of fear of, it's a dual fear. It's have I got it right for people
00:27:51
Speaker
from my community reading this, as well as have I got it right for people in the other community reading this, and it's really difficult. And over here you don't, it's a bit like telling people what you get paid. You don't like to talk about your political views. Well, I mean, the odd one does because they're very out there, but quite a lot of us sit in the fence and don't really want it to be known. And yet you write something and then your views are kind of known. Yeah, there's a third perspective as well. So you've got the
00:28:20
Speaker
the two communities that you mentioned Northern Ireland, the religious divide, but also the third community, which is the outsider in terms of readers of your novel. So you're trying to get it ready for the rights for the two communities in
00:28:34
Speaker
Northern Ireland, but there's also the the outsider perspective. And I'd include myself, I suppose, Chris as well, when when I would read Inish Karak, then I'm the I'm the outsider to that. And although, you know, the English has have a certain perspective on that, I suppose, but not to the same degree by any stretch of the imagination. And so there is and there's probably a fourth tier of outsider as well, beyond the United Kingdom entirely. And and the
00:29:04
Speaker
the Republic of Ireland as well. It reminds me actually, just to bring it back to Clara, it reminds me of Clara herself. She's written as the outsider. She's written as the outsider in the human world and she's brought into the household of Josie, the sickly child and her mother who is
00:29:25
Speaker
is trying to get Josie better and hold down her own job, but also at the same time investigating the possibility of, as we said, of having this doll or this robot created to replace Josie in the event that she passes on. And Clara sees everything from the outside. So she's seeing things from the perspective of the
00:29:54
Speaker
second-class citizens such as Rick and such as Josie's father who lost his job as a, I think it was an engineer, who now lives in this sort of strange tenement segregated part of society where all the jobless go. So everything, Clara sees things in boxes and it seems that the world is set up in boxes as well. So Rick's in his box and Josie's in her box and Clara's in her box because she's an AF and
00:30:22
Speaker
Josie's dad is in his box because he's unemployed and he used to have a good career but now he doesn't. Everybody's put in their boxes and it's not helpful and it's only when Clara decides to break out of the boxes towards the end of the book as she makes her sacrifice, and I'm just working this out as I'm saying it, Clara has to destroy the polluting kootings machine
00:30:51
Speaker
by giving up a little bit of the oil in her head, it's called PEG oil, I think, that's poured into the Kooting's machine by Paul, Josie's father, and it destroys the machine. And as she sacrifices a bit of this oil, which apparently, according to Ishiguro, gives her cognitive abilities, which are said to be remarkable, and afterwards, the boxes begin to blur. So people are not in their boxes anymore.
00:31:21
Speaker
they had started to merge together. And it's at that point, after she makes this sacrifice of herself and she lets the sun in, that the other people in Josie's life start to arrange themselves in a less bordered fashion. I'm sort of working this out as I'm speaking, so sorry. Did you have a sense of anything like that?
00:31:49
Speaker
Oh, you think I'm barking up the wrong tree completely. It was just what you said about people being segregated in Northern Ireland and bringing it back to Clara. And I thought, oh yes, that's actually what happens in the book. Yeah.
00:32:05
Speaker
There's definitely, I felt the breakdown of her cognition, this sense that she had been, and in fact, at the start of the book, it's not really made clear that she has these boxes. There's just a couple of hints. And then, yeah, I thought the scene where they broke down was very good. And I haven't seen it in the sense of bringing the boxes together, but I can see that now you're describing it, that there's an element of
00:32:33
Speaker
the world fractures for her and then it comes back together and we stop hearing about that breakdown of the boxes. She reconfigures herself around it and then almost after that there is a softening in this story. Do you think, is there something to suggest maybe that Clara's journey is the journey that humans ought to undertake
00:33:02
Speaker
So seeing things in very rigid, literal, and literally putting people in boxes, visually anyway, and then undergoing the right course of action. And people are no longer in those boxes and they're reconfigured. I think that's a great way of putting it. They're reconfigured into a whole, a social whole that is more healthy and more productive. And it works out at the end.
00:33:32
Speaker
I think Clara is supposed to feel quite human. I mean that's the type of writing that Ishiguro does is a sense of taking the outsider and making them more human than others in the story and I think he has done it again with this here and I really think that Clara is more of a take
00:33:56
Speaker
on humanity than it is a take on AF or AI, which actually I think is a more interesting discussion around AI, you know, because I think still to this at this stage, people think AI are going to be your robot vacuum cleaner, you know, and they're not realising.
00:34:18
Speaker
some of the strides that have been made in the last years were really, you know, we're starting to talk mimicking humanity in terms of thinking and that's growing more and more. So, you know, I think he uses her as
00:34:37
Speaker
I mean, we're coming back to that metaphor. I think she's nearly a metaphor for humanity in it. I think she is. I do think she's a metaphor for humans on an individual level, but also almost on a historical level, because very early Clara, so when she's young, she warships the sun. And what did early humans do who worship the sun? And there's a certain
00:35:06
Speaker
We're a logic for that. There's no reason to question why early humanity would have worshipped the sun, and there's no reason to believe why Clara wouldn't worship the sun. She's solar powered. And as she goes through her life, she grows as an individual. But it's also as though she's representing the growth of humanity, or the potential growth of humanity in any case. It's interesting that this is a science fiction or a speculative fiction book.
00:35:35
Speaker
That is almost, it almost seems to be saying that it's not anti-science, I don't think. I don't think it's anti-science. I wouldn't go that far. Although in one scene the, wow, what's the, Capaldi, is it Capaldi, the doctor? The sculptor. The sculptor, yeah, the sculptor who is making the replacement doll for Josie. He's described as a scientist and he
00:36:05
Speaker
addresses Josie's father Paul as a scientist, and he gets very indignant. He indignantly responds, I'm not a scientist, I'm an engineer, we're not the same. And I thought, well, that's very interesting, that. In a science fiction book, you would have a character that makes the point of deriding the scientist and saying, I'm not the scientist, I'm an engineer. What do you think is going on there?
00:36:32
Speaker
I got the sense. Especially given what you were saying about AI. And I got the sense through the father's story that some of the things that had taken humanity on this path were no longer wanted or needed. And I felt that was part of the sort of derogatoryness about his role. And also, I suppose,
00:37:02
Speaker
He was an interesting character because you got the sense of great pride in him and yet there was no way for that pride to go now. It was kind of, you know, relegated and useless. So I felt some of the antipathy was around that there that this, you know, this other person still had a role and in fact was cutting edge, was trying to put
00:37:28
Speaker
consciousness into real people. I thought it was going to go down the Pinocchio Ridge at one stage. I was glad it didn't. But obviously there were the things about that, about what makes us real and can we be designed as real. So I think that
00:37:44
Speaker
The fact that one of their expertise, the engineering expertise, had become relegated and yet the other one was coming up and was almost, you know, manipulative. It wasn't almost manipulative. It was manipulative and cruel.
00:37:59
Speaker
was saying something about perhaps where things are going. I mean, it's not a dystopia that's presented, but it's not a nice world either. I agree. I don't think... I think when I read the original review, one of the original reviews, I forget where.
00:38:18
Speaker
It was listed as a dystopian fiction book. I don't think it is. I don't think it's dystopian. I think it's speculative fiction, i.e. it presents a possible future, not just scientifically, but socially. So it presents a possible future scenario. But I don't think where Clara makes the choices that she makes and
00:38:45
Speaker
affects the kind of change in the world that she wants to see and it works and which is almost, it does feel like something divine because it's so counter to cold logic, it runs so counter to the cold logic of the world that it does feel almost like there's a divine moment where
00:39:05
Speaker
she opens the curtains and the sun sweeps into Josie's room and all of a sudden as she's bathed in the sunlight she sits up and miraculously she feels better and her illness starts to wane after that. It's a very strange place for a science fiction book to go but I really liked it. I thought it was touching on genius actually.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, I really liked that. And one of the things that I liked at the very end was the gentle fade-out of the AFs, because there was a real sense of, you know, it was almost rescue puppy syndrome of where do these poor people end up for, you know, machines or robots or whatever they are.
00:39:47
Speaker
end up and it was actually done quite gently in the end, which I liked and which would be very far from dystopian in terms of what happened to the AIs. It reminded me very strongly of the ending to The Remains of the Day, which I don't know if you've read, but at the end of The Remains of the Day, the Butler Stevens, the narrator, is left to
00:40:14
Speaker
look forward to the few remaining years that he has left on planet Earth. And he does so mainly from a position of regret. And so the remains of his day are quite melancholy and faced with a feeling that he couldn't have done all that he could. He didn't do all that he could have done. And with Clara, even though she had a very short and finite lifespan and she's left to her slow fate,
00:40:44
Speaker
she faces it, well, she faces it looking at the sun because she's done everything that she could have done, which, again, I think it's a perfect metaphor for a human life. That's the way that you want them. And that's why I don't think it's dystopian because it's a perfect, it's almost a happy ending, even for Clara. Yeah, no, I felt
00:41:06
Speaker
I felt the ending, it's not uplifting as such, but I didn't want her to face the other future being this Josie and having to live up and deal with this difficult mother as the pseudo child. I felt it was a much nicer ending and it was nice that the mother chose the ending for her.
00:41:26
Speaker
that it was her who said no you know she should have a slow fade and you know because Clara and her had kind of bonded you know throughout it so I felt it was appropriate that it was the mother figure that did that especially because the mother had lost an earlier child to presumably we think the same illness as Josie that the mother was able to show them eternal
00:41:53
Speaker
kind of, you know, approach of a lawyer to slow fade. So I thought, I thought the ending worked very well, actually. And I thought the whole book worked well. I enjoyed it, I felt. They picked up a lot of those themes.
00:42:06
Speaker
It reminded me more than anybody of Ray Bradbury and that death touch that he brings, particularly to his short stories, where he contained a very human picture in very few words that stays with you and resonates for years after you read it. And the other, the other, the other writer, it reminds me of a Northern Irish writer, Bob Shaw, and the slowed last stories, which if you haven't read are an absolutely fantastic sci-fi concept. And the concept is
00:42:36
Speaker
that you can embed a picture of a time in glass and you can have it of a certain depth and it will retain that picture for a period of time so if someone has passed away you can retain them and it's a moving picture and it's an absolutely wonderful concept.
00:42:53
Speaker
So it reminded me of those sort of very deaf speculative writers who could just drop the humanity into a speculative story and you remind you that that's actually why we're
Speculative Fiction and Human Experience
00:43:03
Speaker
writing it. It's not always to write about aliens and weird things, it's actually mostly to write about people. Yeah, I think that's a great message for any of the writers who are listening and it's probably a good point to take a break. Yep. We're going to return with Joe a little bit later on in the podcast.
00:43:23
Speaker
Hello, SFF Chronicles, I want to talk to someone about the Jupiterian invasion. I was chatting to one of the lads over in the Martian Embassy and he was saying that he saw highly Jupiterian rocket ships parked up at the bank of Slishwood. I'd say they're probably going to start with throw my hair. When were you ever in the Martian Embassy? Wait, I'm on the phone.
00:43:43
Speaker
And anyways, I go there every Wednesday. I work for NASA. You don't work for NASA. I've been with them this last 25 years. I've never heard anyone mention you. That's because you never went further than cologne. I've been to Pluto. I've been offered more times than you've had a hot dinner. And you know all the starship captains by their names. There's Jasper. Pascal. Martina. Prunches. Tell me later. I'm trying to let these people know about Armageddon. Hello SFF.
00:44:13
Speaker
Anyway, you're going to need to... We're going to visit the judge's corner now where our resident legal beagle, Damaris Brown, provides all sorts of practical useful information for writers. This month she's going to be talking about food and the law. As well as talking about legal issues which affect us as writers, I thought I'd also touch on legal matters which we can perhaps bring into our writing. And I'll start with my favourite subject.
00:44:43
Speaker
Food. Why write about food? Well, it plays a huge part in human culture, from coffee and cake when meeting friends, to formal banquets to cement international relations, as well as being integral to religion from the feast in Valhalla to the Jewish Seder. Even aliens who imbibe energy from light need a source of that light. So how can we not include it in some way? It's also world building on the cheap. Writing a fantasy set in the past
00:45:12
Speaker
Choose a time and place close to the culture you're creating, and a minimal amount of research gives you authentic backgrounds. Squash and sweetcorn immediately point to indigenous Americans, butter tea and yak cheese to Tibet, while dates pomegranate and tamarind are redolent of Persia. And for those writing science fiction, you surely want to consider technology such as lab-grown meat, climate change surviving GM crops, and insect farms.
00:45:40
Speaker
It's also character building on the cheap, giving further intimations of rank and wealth, gruel for the poor or invalid, or a rich man's elaborate cock-and-trees, that's a suckling pig's head and shoulder joined to a capen's body, and of character itself, whether it's hobbits filling up the corners or Jean-Luc Picard's Earl Grey, hot. But where there's food, there are rules. These might be cultural or customary, such as table manners and etiquette,
00:46:09
Speaker
what can and can't be eaten in polite society, or religious. All major faiths have some taboos or strictures around food, Hinduism and beef, Islam and pork, restrictions of Lent, Leviticus laws. But outside basic grow your own and barter communities, where there is food production, there are laws imposed by secular authorities.
00:46:32
Speaker
Strange as it may seem to our eyes, some tree laws sometimes sought not only to control what people wore, but also what they ate. Laws regulating excess and expense were imposed in republican Rome and re-emerged in medieval Europe. Such laws weren't designed to keep the lower orders in their place, since cost did much of that. There was a by-the-by, what was costly in the past isn't necessarily what we might expect.
00:46:58
Speaker
Spices were phenomenally expensive, sugar too, in medieval and early modern England, but oysters were cheap until well into the 19th century. Rather, the food sumptuary laws strove to ensure that nuances of rank among the wealthy were maintained, particularly where a rapidly rising merchant class were gaining wealth and position to the consternation of the nobility. So in England in 1517, under Henry VIII, that paragon of anti-extravagance in eating,
00:47:27
Speaker
Spending limits were imposed on nobles, so that no more than the equivalent of 10% of their capital could be used on food for their family each year. The number of dishes at a meal were also fixed according to the person of highest rank present, nine for a cardinal, six for a Lord of Parliament, Lord Mayor or Knight of the Garter, and three for persons who could spend £40 per annum or were worth £500.
00:47:52
Speaker
On the continent, some places put restrictions on the type and amount of red meat and game eaten, or laws govern costly, sugary items such as desserts and confections, and these were often tied to strictures against the sin of gluttony and as part of the religious conflict of the Reformation. But the main secular laws relating to food are those which we now call consumer protection.
00:48:17
Speaker
but which were perhaps originally more concerned with protecting the markets and trade rather than public health. The Babylonians had the death penalty for watering down beer. China in the second century BC had a supervisor of markets who sent officials out to check on produce, and a Sanskrit law detailed fines for the adulteration of goods such as oils and grains.
00:48:40
Speaker
In Rome, Pliny the Elder complained about dealers using smoke and noxious herbs to give a better colour to their wines, and inspectors were appointed to prevent malpractice, not least widespread dilution of the wines, often with seawater. In medieval Europe, guilds ensured quality control among their members. In England, the Worshipful Company of Bakers were required to enforce the so-called bread asizes in and around the city of London.
00:49:09
Speaker
The first of these in the 13th century fixed the price of bread, but later versions dealt also with quality. Giving short weight was probably the most common offence, from which rose the baker's dozen, 13 loaves given when 12 were wanted to ensure full weight was supplied. Though it wasn't unknown for sand and sawdust to be added to bread flour, and in some cases, bakers were forbidden to mill their own grain to curb the practice.
00:49:36
Speaker
The penalties for serious offences started with the baker being dragged on a hurdle through the busiest and dirtiest streets of the city, with the offending loaf around his neck. For a second offence, he was put in the pillory for an hour, not only unpleasant and humiliating, but potentially dangerous, especially if onlookers flung hard items at him. And for a third offence, he would be thrown out of the guild and his oven destroyed. His livelihood ended.
00:50:04
Speaker
Hush as that might sound, it was better than being a fraudulent baker in Turkey, where the offender's ear would be nailed to his own doorpost.
00:50:13
Speaker
Sellers of bad ale or foul meat receive similar penalties, such as being paraded through the streets in a tumbrel. And a London ordinance of around 1400 says that no poulterer or other person whatsoever shall expose for sale any manner of poultry that is unsound or unwholesome to man's body, under pain of punishment by the pillory and the article being burned under him. Which is exactly what happened to one William Fott,
00:50:40
Speaker
accused of selling putrid and stinking pigeons in Fleet Street later in the century. But he got off lightly compared to offenders in the Tang Dynasty in China, where consumer protection was more thorough several centuries beforehand. When dried or fresh meats cause men to become ill, all the leftover portion should be speedily burned. The violator will be flogged 90 strokes. He who deliberately gives or sells it to another will be banished for a year.
00:51:08
Speaker
and if the person to whom it has been given or sold dies, the offender will be hanged. The German states also had stiffer punishments. Wine sellers were branded or sent out of the city, and one vintner convicted of adulterating his wine died after he was required to drink six quarts of it.
00:51:29
Speaker
Staples such as bread and air were targets for fraudsters because of the volume sold, but greater profit came from more expensive items such as spices. Even if not adulterated with other substances, something like pepper might be sold damp, making it swell so it weighed more, but then rotted more quickly. One of the most expensive spices then as now was saffron.
00:51:52
Speaker
which was counterfeited with false saffron, merry goldflowers, or even dyed threads of rope. But greater profits brought greater risk. In Nuremberg in 1444, one man was burned at the stake over a fire of his own alleged saffron, and others were buried alive with their fraudulent products.
00:52:12
Speaker
With diagnostic and forensic techniques still centuries in the future, one of the first English food inspectors, the ale tasters of the 15th century, used not only their judgment as to quality by tasting the brews, but tested them by the seat of their pants. Literally. Ale was poured onto a wooden bench and the taster sat on it. If his leather breeches stuck, it proved the ale was adulterated.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I'd like to think that the Tasters had some kind of clothing allowance to compensate for ruined breaches. As the centuries rolled on and cities grew in size, with more people having to buy processed goods, the opportunities for fraud grew, with protective legislation following only very, very belatedly behind. From 1724, with the adulteration of Tea and Coffee Act, British legislators tried to protect the national beverages at least.
00:53:04
Speaker
Among other adulterations, tea leaves were often reused after being boiled with sheep dung and dyes. But little else hit the statute books for another hundred years. In 1820, a man called Frederick Akum wrote a treatise detailing types of adulteration and how to detect them. But after naming names, he was effectively hounded out of Britain.
00:53:28
Speaker
A list of the unwholesome, if not downright poisonous ingredients later found in Victorian foodstuffs makes for frightening reading. Strychnine in ramen beer, sulfate of iron in beer and tea, lead in wine in cider, ferric ferrocyanide and lime sulfate in Chinese tea, sulfate of copper in pickles, bottled fruit, wine and preserves,
00:53:53
Speaker
lead chromate in mustard, copper carbonate, lead sulphate by sulphate of mercury and Venetian lead in sugar confectionery and chocolate. And that lovely colour of Gloucester cheese was made by red lead. A study published in 1848 found that of all the loaves subjected to analysis over a 12 year period, not a single one had been unadulterated.
00:54:20
Speaker
Inevitably, people died, and one terrible case occurred in 1858 with Humbug sold in a Bradford market. As sugar was expensive, the manufacturer habitually used a substitute of powdered limestone and plaster of Paris, but on this occasion he was applied with arsenic trioxide. Twenty people died and two hundred were made ill, though since each suite had enough arsenic in it to kill two people, it's surprising the casualties went far greater.
00:54:49
Speaker
Everyone involved in the process with charge with manslaughter, but not one person was convicted since, unbelievably, no actual crime was committed. As Ackham himself had noted nearly 40 years earlier, the man who robs a fellow subject of a few shillings on the highway is sentenced to death, but he who distributes a slow poison to the whole community escapes unpunished.
00:55:15
Speaker
Acts brought in over the next decade began the slow task of giving real protection to the consumer but though the laws still continue to multiply to this day the food scandals continue to occur and doubtless will continue well into the 21st century and beyond. So how to bring this into our writing? Well genre fiction isn't exactly short of ne'er-do-wells happy for people to die for the sake of profit
00:55:40
Speaker
and adulteration is easier and safer than highway robbery. In a medieval type fantasy, why can't a guild of alchemists be determined to thwart the criminals by perfecting analytical techniques? Steampunk is ideally placed to deal with the horrors of Victorian food,
00:55:57
Speaker
And for science fiction, even setting aside the ways new technology can fake or adulterate goods, consider how we're moving away from protecting consumers as a whole to safeguarding relatively small numbers of vulnerable people with the labelling of potential allergens, while doctors are keen on laws to stop us eating fattening food. What might come next? Allergens or sugar becoming as stigmatised as smoking?
00:56:22
Speaker
so people can only eat them inside specially designated booths, criminalised for eating an almond Danish in the street. How's that for dystopia? Even if you can't contemplate an entire plot around food, it's perfect for subplots, or even simpler sides to give depth to world building. Perhaps religious dietary laws are twisted and not ignored, and that would be equivalent to puffins being designated as fish, so the birds could be eaten in Lent.
00:56:51
Speaker
has actually happened in the Middle Ages. For anyone interested in taking this further, I'll be giving links on the Crohn's thread. Meanwhile, I'd just like to acknowledge that in this talk, I've quoted or paraphrased extensively from an article by Leslie Hart, available at JSTOR, and from a book by Anthony Wall, included with other research in an article by Artisan Food Law Ltd.
00:57:22
Speaker
Hello SFF Chronicles. I was on earlier about the Jupiterian invasion. Just wanted to let you know the Jupiterians have built a giant battle robot in North Leithrum. Probably the size of 8 Ford Fiesches stacked up on their sides. I think they're planning to use it to destroy Earth. And, um, what was I gonna say again? Oh yeah, they've been led by a tall skinny-looking fella called Zaldirban Domhackel.
00:57:47
Speaker
Just so you know, I've never seen him before, know nothing about him or his mates, but he reminds me of me when I was me. Of course, back then things weren't as easy as now, especially for the robots. All they needed was to sniff damp air and they went all rusty. That's because there was no lamination in those days, yeah, yeah, you made your own waterproofing. I use goose fat most of the time, you know.
00:58:12
Speaker
It's time to venture down to the challenges now. Before we get to our challenge winner for this month, I wanted to tell you all about the Kraken Story of the Year. Kraken is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine that's been affiliated with Crohn's for a number of years, and it publishes a number of short stories online monthly. Each January, it runs a vote for Reader's Story of the Year, and the 2021 winner was The End of All Things by Juliana Spink Mills.
00:58:38
Speaker
I've included a link to the story in the episode Blurb, so please do read it. It's an excellent piece of flash fiction, a deserving winner and our congratulations go to Juliana. So over to January 75 word challenge, which was won by Peter Vernon, AKA Peter V, with his story Little Matchmaker Girl, read today by Chris. Little Matchmaker Girl by Peter V.
00:59:07
Speaker
As the tube pulled into Finchley Road, Claire considered crossing platforms for the Metropolitan Express service but stayed, enjoying having the carriage to herself. Well, she was alone when leaving Swiss Cottage. Now, from nowhere, a little girl was sitting opposite. Where's your mummy? Claire asked, troubled.
00:59:27
Speaker
Here, but daddy's on that train," the girl sobbed. Instinctively, Claire took her hand and ran, just making the other train in time. Smiling, the little girl vanished. How are you doing? SFF Chronicles. I was wondering if you could get back to me about headage payments for Jobotarians.
00:59:54
Speaker
You see there was a few of them up there at Slishwood and a friend of mine accidentally gave them, you know, magic mushrooms. Now, I don't know who this man is and I never met him but the Tuberterians started puking up green bile and he had to give them poaching to calm them down. Only they went pure wild on that and took them to see this massive battle robot that they had. It was about the size of eight Ford Fiesta's.
01:00:17
Speaker
Anyways, that man went to bring them on to Drumkeren, but they fell asleep on the way, and now there's no moving them, whatever's gotten into them. So now, there are 16 Jupiterians struck up in my field on the mountain road. So, could you let me know if there's any grants I could apply for? It's just they'll only be taken up space otherwise.
01:00:45
Speaker
Welcome back. Me and Dana here with Jo Zebedee from Northern Ireland talking about Clara and the sun. But now we're going to move on to more to do with Jo and her writing journey.
Jo's Crohn's Journey and Writing Path
01:00:59
Speaker
And also maybe talk a little bit about Crohn's because she's such a big presence character on Crohn's that it would be wrong not to mention it. One thing I've noticed recently is your involvement more in
01:01:13
Speaker
the stuff we can't talk about on crime. So you know, there's a rule on crimes with politics and stuff like that. But I want to talk to you about women in science fiction. And genre, because
01:01:27
Speaker
there's been a groundswell amongst us, you know, in the genre, amongst us women, I mean, amongst us genre writers, where, you know, it's being a lot more attention to minority status writers. And I just want to, you know, your thoughts on women, authors and sci fi, or maybe, you know, authors in general, in genre,
01:01:56
Speaker
you know, fiction, female authors in genre fiction. Yeah, I mean...
01:02:01
Speaker
I've been tremendously lucky I've had, I don't think, any barriers for being a woman. I did decide to call myself Jo, rather than Joanne, and my mum goes, I've got three boys, and if I'd have wanted another one, I'd have chosen a boy's name, but no. But that was more because I'm a management consultant as Joanne, and I didn't want my clients suddenly seeing spaceships and whatnot turning out.
01:02:28
Speaker
But of course now that happens anyway, and I go primarily by Jo. But you know, it is more useful to be a Jo than a Joanne. Oh, it certainly was at the beginning. But I mean, I think one of the things, I mean, there is this sense about readerships of fantasy science fiction that is predominantly men. And obviously with my other hat on, I run a bookstore. And you know, I can assure people that
01:02:56
Speaker
you know, women buy sci-fi and women buy fantasy. And they buy it just as much. The slight difference is that men would have more of an inclination to it. But because women tend to be the bigger readers anyway, that all balances itself out. So I don't see it as a barrier. But I do think that the whole sort of opening up of the genre, opening up the genre in terms of
01:03:25
Speaker
wider voices in terms of the emergence of Chinese science fiction that's been really interesting seeing that perspective that we so rarely see in the West being played out in science fiction and also you know seeing some of the more diverse sort of viewpoints that aren't the sort of
01:03:46
Speaker
white cis male which has dominated the the genre and certainly dominated the genre in terms of people's perspective for many many years but what we know is that there have been great sci-fi writers as women it's just that they haven't always been recognized as uh women writing because they've changed their names or they they don't get us just as much attention but people like Pat Cadigan normally she's an absolute giant of the genre she's she's she's wonderful um
01:04:12
Speaker
So, so, yeah, I still feel very welcome in the genre. I feel very lucky to be part of it. The only thing I would say is that there is still a tendency and particularly Facebook groups to to show pictures of scantily clad women in space outfits and then sort of laugh at the women's service and actually doing taking that down. And there is still something of a boys club in fandom that
01:04:38
Speaker
It's OK if you've got to fix skin. And as I say, I grew up with three brothers, so it really genuinely does not bother me. But I can see it being a barrier to other women. Is it motivating as well? Yeah, it can be. It can be. So I think there's work to do around fandom. But I think the actual writing communities are in general pretty supportive. So in terms of content,
01:05:04
Speaker
It's not the trouble. So if you read an Arthur C. Clarke, you know, say rendezvous with Rama, that's a wonderful book, but not really much in the way of representation of any kind of minorities. But then he doesn't really write characters, he writes concepts and ideas. But then you hear about other things where, like there was a comment recently I read online about, you know, science fiction and the amount of tokenism.
01:05:31
Speaker
going on. That's the content of sci-fi, but certainly with TV and film, I've noticed since the Battlestar Galactica reboot, strong women, strong minority characters are becoming far more common
01:05:49
Speaker
than they ever were but it seems to be like digging the heels and going no no no we still need Captain Kirk or we still need a you know this kind of thing are you trying to push I don't mean to sound this strong but in terms of is there an agenda you have in your writing pushing
01:06:09
Speaker
Were you involved in the distaff? I was, yeah, yeah. I was part of the, I think it was, everybody says it was my idea in the first place, but I'm sure it was so in Deputies, but anyway, the two of us kind of felt it between us. Yeah, no, it was interesting. Distaff is the collection of science fiction short stories that was published in 2019, is that point?
01:06:35
Speaker
Dublin, a Titan corner, the Eurocorn, so he did that yourself, yeah. And that's just the female line-up with, and Rosie was the, she was the instigator, wasn't she? Yeah, I think so, I think, yeah, blame Rosie, yeah. She's not here to defend herself. Yeah, we'll get back around at some other point, I'm sure.
01:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I don't feel a need to go and write strong female characters. I write characters and some of them are female and some of them are male and they are characters and they're people in their own right. An interesting one with Abendai was several, so the spoiler for my own books, but Abendai starts with a pair of twins and one survives and one doesn't. And it is the male twin that goes forward and the story is about. And a lot of people said to me, you know, why didn't you
01:07:23
Speaker
write that about the female twin and it would have been a very very different story and I didn't because one of the things that I was trying to challenge was this concept of the great sci-fi hero who can be put through so much torment and come out the other end on changed just better and I really wanted to bring that down to the human terms and I suppose this perhaps
01:07:46
Speaker
you know quite feminine in a way to ask those questions hopefully if this was I think it's uh kari isn't it in care care oh that's gonna make so many people off set on crons when they hear it we're providing a good service here
01:08:08
Speaker
And then I carer for you, that's why I say I carer for you. I say carer like that and carer like that. He's an interesting character and he's on the face of it. I mean, you always referred to him as your sexy space pilot, didn't you? Oh, no, that's his dad. No, that's his dad. Keep up now. He's still an interesting character. He looks like very traditional
01:08:39
Speaker
male character, and you do put him through the wringer. And what's interesting is, and we mentioned this in the episode with Stephen Palmer as well, with respect to Northern Lights, in the figure of Mrs. Coulter, who's a demon mother figure, and you also have that demon mother figure as the main antagonist in your book. So it's another example of a very strong
01:09:09
Speaker
mythological idea of the corrupted mother figure, let's say. So the mother figure that's jettisoned all of the good side and has just become this devouring monster and she destroys her own child. Which, you know, there's a psychological truth to that. There's a mythological truth to that. It doesn't... I think that relationship between care and his mother is the
01:09:37
Speaker
the main thrust of the book. And I thought that's what made the books great for me. Everything about the setting and the space opera and action.
01:09:49
Speaker
great but it was the relationship between care and his mother that i thought that that's the essence that's where that's what takes the book from and you're right it wouldn't i don't think it would have been anywhere near the same story if it had been for example female protagonist and a male antagonist it would have been completely different dynamic and so i think
01:10:12
Speaker
You know, mentioning what you said, Chris, about tokenism, you've got to be very careful as a writer that you are making sure that you're choosing the right character to fit in the right role. Otherwise, Abendal felt right. It felt like it worked. And I think that's because you were drawing on that very strong myth.
01:10:35
Speaker
And it wasn't that it didn't have strong female characters in it. It has a number. It has a female general who is a very strong character in the first book. It has the mother and it has Carol's wife, who is very much an Eva Peron. And in fact, the last scenes which suddenly were written in kind of a little bit of an Easter egg to the whole Eva Peron sort of Argentina, you know, taking a city by your charisma vibe.
01:11:04
Speaker
you know and I try not to get bogged down in what gender
01:11:10
Speaker
the characters are. And in fact, whenever I started writing my last book, not the one that's just come out, the one that's coming out next year, I tried to do it with a genderless, main character as a millennia, but find out the gender. It didn't work out in the end because, you know, it just became, I suppose your gender is part of who you are. And to try and portray a character without that perhaps meant that you couldn't get to know the character in their fullness. But isn't it?
01:11:40
Speaker
The other danger is not the right word, but the other possibility is that that becomes the main thrust of the story. Yeah, and it very much wasn't the thrust. So yeah, so I don't get hung up on. And one thing I don't like though is this concept that strong female characters almost have to be masculine to be strong or masculine-esque.
01:12:05
Speaker
So, for instance, one of my favourite space operators is Lois McMaster Bujold, who wrote the Phocosigan books. I think her is hard to say. Try getting them out of bed in the morning, Phocosigan. I don't want to.
01:12:21
Speaker
But in For Corsican we have this very big male character who's the main character which is Miles but actually the character that many of the readers find most interesting and who is absolutely central and who is the main character of the first book is Cordelia, his mother, who is not having to be uber masculine
01:12:40
Speaker
she you know and she actually operates in this very stringent male world of almost regency style sort of manners and you know they portray the women very much as strong women doing what women do and not having to go out there and be sort of male. So it turns out that one of the big movers in the background is the person who sorts out all the social
01:13:07
Speaker
interactions and at one point, this is spoilers for the Fakosakin universe, but at one point there's a very central vote to be taken and she manages to instigate that lots of the men aren't there by doing things like bringing forward the birth date of one of the children because they're all born in little incubators and somebody else gets a marriage invitation and the women quietly remove all these auntie votes
01:13:30
Speaker
by taking the men out in a social way. So I'm a big believer that you don't need to write, you know, this sort of sense of strong, almost sort of master the men. G.I. Jane character. Yeah. And there's room for that too, because some women are G.I. Jane characters. And it's like writing men, you know, and actually
01:13:54
Speaker
You know, one of the things with Curtis, he's a commander, but he's also quite sensitive. And I suppose this would have jumped in over in America a bit of a laugh. So my military scenes were bigger read by a guy called Jim in America who
01:14:14
Speaker
is who was at the time a major in the U.S. Army. And who remains a Facebook friend and who I met and whatnot, and we get on very well. But Jim's take on, you know, a male commander was very different from mine. And some of his notes are hilarious. He's like, come on, this guy really has to grow up here. And I'm like, come on.
01:14:33
Speaker
you see it's just going through all this trauma it doesn't matter you know and there was a really different take on that and I don't see that to be this great commander that the masculine character had to be macho macho macho all the time but it was a very fine line to pull that one off and I don't know what that entirely did but you know that's
01:14:55
Speaker
So people are people. They're not the agenda. Well, I think it was pulled off very well. But the attempt, I think, is the important thing as well to present that. Yeah, I think I would admit it. I think probably I could have done with a few books under my belt before I took on the themes that I took on and out and die. Well, you're quite prolific now. I mean, you've had quite an output. And the thing is, from what I picked up on from you,
01:15:23
Speaker
which is, I suppose, different from Crohn's and our social media accounts, is every time you're talking, you're talking about the story first, you're not talking about how you're going to publish it, who's going to, do you know what I mean? Like, I think a lot, we find quite a lot of new members come on and they say onto Crohn's and they might post a thread saying, I've got this trilogy or this 10 series of fantasy or science fiction,
01:15:48
Speaker
is it best for me to do you know Wattpad or to go to you know self-part route or whatever. As an author who has so much energy in terms of self-marketing and has been so like you've done public speaking haven't you?
01:16:05
Speaker
Thank you. No, should I hate public speaking? Oh, really? Really? I'm a lecturer and I can talk all day about management theories. I can bore you to death about cultural or cultural makeup of organisations. But I absolutely hate public speaking. And I especially... If you know that, we would have asked you about management consulting.
01:16:23
Speaker
Let's change that. This has been a complete waste of time. I hate standing up, I hate the, and I studied drama, so you know, how you get to be a drama student and not like the limelight is beyond me. But once I'm on panels and whatnot, I'm very happy to talk and I do.
01:16:44
Speaker
I'm okay. I'm fine with talking. I just don't especially. Somebody said to you, can you come to this uni or this library or whatever? And can you talk about your latest book? Or can you talk about, you know, your journey or whatever with that? How would you approach that? Would that be a problem for you or?
01:16:59
Speaker
I'd do it, but I'd get very nervous beforehand. Very, very nervous. And yeah, but I mean, I would do it. But yeah, it's one of those contradictions. But if they asked me, would I go and read my work? And that would be different. I actually, I'm okay with the talking. I don't like the reading. And I don't like you get a choice. Like they say, come and read. Or is it Oh, well, I'm trying to publicize this new book. So you read from that? Like, is there a favorite you go to?
01:17:27
Speaker
Um, no, not really. I quite like conventions because they're a bit of crack in between, you know, you get to see people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes the bar, sometimes the coffee bar, not all, not all in the wine on a Monday night, you know.
01:17:45
Speaker
But go on then, tell us about the wildest hunt then, that's your latest isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that one there has just come out actually, it was quite funny actually, it came out two days ago and I had it in mind, it was the 29th, my life is chaos at the minute, I'm a big consultancy job on, it's Christmas in a big shop, I have kids, I have family, it's just chaos.
01:18:06
Speaker
and I had it in mind it was today and then one of the one of the one of the people in the the Crohn's brand brand Wigmore and Hervey and contacted me and said I'm really surprised we haven't seen a Fred yet from you saying hey hey the book site and I went is it today?
01:18:23
Speaker
So yeah, so, so, so, thankfully, Brian reminded me to actually go publicize my book on day one. I had done, just in case my publisher's listening, I had done some background work, sorry, and I haven't been ignoring it completely. But it's, it's, it's an interesting one. So in it, I have a psychic detective. I suppose in terms of theme, it is closest to waters in the wild, which is one that I brought out with the same publisher about three years ago.
01:18:50
Speaker
And Waters in the Wild is a really interesting one because they remind people who stop me and they almost whisper it and they go, you know, Inish Carrick isn't my favourite. I actually really like the Glens one. So it's never had a wide readership, but those that have read it seem to really, really like it. And like Waters in the Wild, this pulls on the Irish mythology. It has
01:19:12
Speaker
two central female characters, three actually, so there's a child who's dead, but still around, and then there's the main character, the psychic detective, who has actually been set up to go in and investigate this child's death.
01:19:28
Speaker
by the friend of the child who is now the wife of the child's brother. So it's all very incestuous. And they go up to Donegal, and Donegal is wild, and the estate that I put it in is just the most amazing thing. So you're sitting in these bleak hills, and I mean bleak, yeah, you drive for miles through this bleak hill, and suddenly you get to this estate, which is this massive lake and then a big folly of the castle.
01:19:54
Speaker
in the middle of the Donegal Hills. So it's quite one of the one in beautiful gardens called Linde. And I was there one summer and I thought,
01:20:02
Speaker
what could it hide and the thing about Blenvey is there's an outer wall and then there's another wall and then there's a lido of water with a wall around it and there's walls within walls within walls so they became magical wards and it's these magical wards that are conveying the power and then of course I brought in the Irish mythology so there's a lot of ironclad bits and pieces in it and
01:20:27
Speaker
Strangely enough, for me, some very dark ferries that wouldn't be like me would it? That I think are sand and chills up people's spines. And then we've got this massive snow bomb, so it largely cuts Donegal off and they're stranded in the Donegal hills with this. What's about the Irish mythology then? And what parts? Because it's fae, isn't it? Fae derives.
01:20:49
Speaker
the stuff that you're focusing on. So tell us a little bit about that. What are the roots? What are the meanings behind these different myths, these sort of fairy fake folklore?
01:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, so it's interesting because, you know, there's the Heydidly Dee sort of side to Irish mythology with leprechauns happily mending shoes and whatnot. And then there's the darker side. Most of the people from here would see the darker side as the more true. I'm glad you said that. I'm not someone from
01:21:31
Speaker
this side of the pond, because we would, various typing the Irish. No, no, so we're having Irish fairies, you see. But yeah, there's a big tourist market and chalalies and whatnot, you know, and little epicorns and whatnot. But most of the people here would see the fair is quite dark. And actually, supposedly, there's one sort of legend that says that they were the original Aboriginal people of Ireland who were lost to history.
01:21:59
Speaker
If you ever want to read a really good book with a take on Irish mythology, The Call by Paddy Algernon is amazing and in that he has the fae coming back to take the revenge on people by basically eradicating the teenagers of Ireland. It's very well done. What's the call? The call and then the invasion is the second book. It's the Greylands geology. It's very very good. You can give me the fiver later.
01:22:27
Speaker
So the fae, most of us would see them as quite dark and there are people who live in the lands who would still put little offerings out at night, you know, to keep the house safe from the fae.
01:22:39
Speaker
And I mean, where I live, it's in the north, so I'm very much in the Ulster Scots part of the land. So, you know, some of our pronunciations and some of our legends are influenced by the Scottish. So often with mine, there is a certain amount of harshness in the stories that I tell because I've got that northern sense. And, you know, it is cold up here and it is bleak in the winter in places. So, yeah, it's almost this
01:23:09
Speaker
mine that you can keep mining because, you know, it's up to you why you take a mythology, mythology constantly gets rewritten. And would I say that my wild hunt is entirely an Irish wild hunt? No, it's probably closer to the English mythology. And also, I think, is it the Norse mythology as well? Has the wild hunt certainly one of the European ones?
01:23:35
Speaker
But all these here are intricate and intertwined and whatnot, and there's a lot of the Irish in it, so things like the iron that binds and whatnot. So, yeah, I enjoy, I mean, I prefer writing sci-fi, but I do enjoy a good talk. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, by far.
01:23:50
Speaker
It's really interesting you saying that the mythology changes over time because I've just finished reading Mythigo Wood by Robert Holstoff. That's a brilliant book, yeah. And it's exactly the same concept, isn't it? The mythologies that represent the mythologies change, but the central mythology is sort of extracted out over time and becomes this overarching thing.
01:24:14
Speaker
Yeah, it was really, really something that book actually, really something. Yeah, no, it's brilliant. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've read it, but it stays with you. Okay, last question I've got, well, I have two, but I think it's only fair to ask one. What are you reading now?
01:24:42
Speaker
What am I reading now? Well, I just finished plowing this on. What I'm reading now is Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune, having recently finished Into the Cerulean Sea by him, which was an amazing book. It's one of what we call the Book Talk book. So TikTok is massive for books and they have books they recommend under the hashtag Book Talk. And it was fantastic. And I lent it to my daughter and she's now lent it to her friend and my other daughters lined up to read it.
01:25:13
Speaker
between you and me there's a signed hard copy coming to my daughter for Christmas which I know will be one of the big presents which took a bit of internet searching even for a big seller to come across but she doesn't know that I hope not unless she's listening at the door. Well she might be listening on eBay already.
01:25:33
Speaker
So I'm enjoying it but I'm not finding it just as drop-down amazing as Into the Cerulean Sea which I think is a really really really good book I would recommend. Would that be your required reading or are we talking Captain Corelli?
01:25:49
Speaker
It's certainly up there. It's certainly very good. I've read quite a lot of very good books recently. I've also just finished a book from Ireland called Small, Small Things Like These by Clerk Keegan, which deals with the Modeline Magdalene Laundries, which was very different, but it was well done. So yeah, but you know,
01:26:11
Speaker
It changes over time, doesn't it? You read books and you love them and then you put other books down and you don't. But that was one I really liked. Well, Sam, you know, the Dusty Zebra, Sam, she sent me all these strange words you might be hearing. I was just thinking that. I should be saying these are member names on the forum. So one of the moderators is called the Dusty Zebra, an editor called Sam. And for Christmas, a few years ago, she sent me what's the name?
01:26:38
Speaker
Is it Pat Conroy or Conoy? The guy that wrote The Fisher King and beach music. She sent me beach music. Now it's a kind of... Oh, is it called beach music? I'm going to sound like such an ignorant pig now. Anyway, she sent me this book. It's the kind of book I wouldn't read. It's much more literary fiction, I suppose. But it's becoming one of my favourite books just because there are some things that are so
01:27:02
Speaker
You know, it's lovely to eat this chocolate all the time, but sometimes you get Pat Conroy, thank you. I've just remembered. So, yeah. Lightning memory recall. Yes, yes. Speech mistake. Pat Conroy.
01:27:18
Speaker
And yeah, so I was expecting your first thing out of your mouth to be Captain Corelli's Mandarin because I know you've been quite vocal about that. Oh yeah, I love it. I love stories with a strong sense of bliss. I really like stories that feel like
01:27:37
Speaker
The places is part of the story. I loved Where the Crow Dogs Sing, which I read last year, which is very much like that. I absolutely love Carlos Ruiz-Safon and his Barcelona and how he portrays it. And I have
01:27:52
Speaker
hopefully his collection of short stories for Under the Tree this year, I'm hoping, if I have hinted correctly. So I love stories and I think that's where Captain Corelli's mandolin is really strong. And even another one that I love, Time Traveller's Wife, you know, the whole thing. I love it, I love it, sorry, it's such trash but I love it.
01:28:16
Speaker
and Wuthering Heights again with the sense of the mirrors and whatnot. So a sense of place is really important for me and I write a sense of place, that's why.
Challenges in Writing and Marketability
01:28:25
Speaker
One thing about me is I'm very face blind, which means that I find visualisation very difficult and I think that's why I use a lot of settings that actually
01:28:35
Speaker
I know from real life and there's a planet in Abendai which is a space opera which is based on the same beach that I had the idea of going to Caricorn just as it happens it's the beach down the road and I just really struggle not to have a scene somewhere to write it, yeah.
01:28:54
Speaker
So that's really important to me that I can feel that I'm part of the place. All right, one more thing. I do keep saying no more, but one more, and this is really scab picky and unpleasant, but what do you hate about writing or about the whole reading, writing, authorship, readership? I suppose for me, it's like a reward for writers.
01:29:21
Speaker
Most writers I know, even fairly successful writers, are not full-time. Most of them are juggling a day job. I know a few full-time writers. A lot of them spend a lot of their time marketing, promoting, rather than the actual writing. And I think it, you know, from the bookseller perspective, we see it more and more that the models of publishing these days do not support Middle East authors. And in fact, Middle East authors have been absolutely decimated.
01:29:49
Speaker
let alone middle-list debuts, you know, at least existing middle-list authors already have their existing readership. And I think that is putting writing into two boxes. The first one is making your living very difficult. So, I mean, you know, I'm sort of smiling quietly. I'm what did you say? And I'm a prolific writer. I haven't written anything for six months. I have not had time. I've had consultancy work on. I've had the shop, which is in its infancy and building. I'm planning, I hope,
01:30:18
Speaker
to write the secret of the image character in January. I had rumours. For four years. I know we're trying to wrap things up but it isn't an important thing actually because when a lot of people are starting out with their writing they may have grand designs on this being a career and you know it is for some people so it's clearly possible but I
01:30:45
Speaker
It seems to me that the people who are at least the happiest, the most content, are not the ones who have bet the farm on writing being a successful career, a successful career outcome, and it's the people who already have a good job, or at least a steady job, at least a steady job that keeps the pennies rolling in, because more and more it seems that writing is
01:31:13
Speaker
It's highly vocational, which I think everybody on this call would agree with. You feel a calling to convey a particular story or a particular sense of meaning or whatever it is, but it's not something that is going to sustain you unless you hit the jackpot. But it's a very high-risk, high-reward gamble. And you might win it, but it seems to me that you have to get your house in order
01:31:43
Speaker
First, and then you enjoy the processes of writing I find a lot more. You're right. Yeah, it gives you great freedom. Sorry, I'm in the same boat as you, Jo, that I've not written. I'm working on something, but I've hardly touched it because I'm just too busy. But I don't mind that.
01:32:01
Speaker
I think it gives you great freedom as well, in terms of the fame, if you're not trying to make a living. Because it's something I'm always saying to you writers, forget about how well you write. There's a guy in the concert, if it was about how well you write, you know, Graham Wigmore Bim and you know the morrow. It's about how marketable...
01:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, he would. He's brilliant. My daughter is currently reading his first book and is absolutely loving it. She has tabs on every second page to ask him questions about. We're happy. Oh yeah, he knows it's coming. But the thing is, it's about marketability as well. And that marketability shifts. You can write something that you think is marketable now and then it's not marketable in two years time. So, you know, it's not just about being a great writer.
01:32:49
Speaker
it's also about having that stroke of luck or stroke of you know sort of forethought or whatever it is that says yes you know this is this is the next big thing and I find for myself I mean what I write I'm never going to be
01:33:06
Speaker
bringing in many books. People are not by and large looking for Northern Irish science fiction as a big thing and I have no real desire. Sometimes I go and write other things and if I wanted to I would but at the minute I'm quite happy exploring where that takes my thought processes. So it gives you great freedom.
01:33:26
Speaker
you don't have to earn a book. I mean some of the guys I know who have done really well are still struggling, are being dropped by publishers, are being dropped by agents. I mean I've already been through that though, I've had an agent that was dropped. It's not a lot of fun quite frankly, I'd rather just plow me on furrow and that's what I do. I have a very supportive small publisher who publishes my fantasy. I self-publish my science fiction, I have another science fiction coming out next year which is a Cully Blackie dystopia. So you know where Liam Neeson
01:33:54
Speaker
is vaguely from, somewhere north of me. Above that there's fields, upon fields, upon fields, and that's Edward City and Paisley sort of area.
01:34:04
Speaker
and that's where I've set a dystopia. So, you know, the world is waiting for a Caulibaki dystopia but I doubt if they know it enough to go and buy it. But it gave me room to explore and I mean the theme of this one here and then the Arts Council in Northern Ireland gave me money to write this so that, you know, they get to buy time to write it, they've always been very supportive. The theme here is about
01:34:27
Speaker
It's about migration, it's about how well Northern Ireland tolerates the other, and that's what it's actually about. But it was very carefully, the migrant in this sense, in the story is actually French, because I didn't want it to become about developed world versus secondary world versus everything else, because that becomes a very different
Future Projects and Closing Remarks
01:34:49
Speaker
politicised story. This was about how well
01:34:52
Speaker
we tolerate someone different coming into our land and taking our places which obviously then has big significance in Northern Ireland because we are quite divided. So you know I just love the freedom that I can pick up and say I'm going to write that story and you know people will either like it as a young adult venture story or they won't and people may or may not pick up the themes from it or they may pick up different themes coming back to what you said earlier they may pick up something entirely different from what I wrote
01:35:21
Speaker
And maybe whenever I think about it, I realise that is what I wrote. Yeah. I think that's a good note on which to start. Thanks ever so much for joining us. It's been an absolute hoot. I'm very good at headlines. What we'll leave is the next time we do one of these, because I quite like to do an episode with you talking about funding because you are so on it.
01:35:47
Speaker
you know, because you have to be, I suppose, because it's more of a niche. The only thing is Northern Irish funding is very different, because we have an Arts Council that funds the individual artists. England has an Arts Council that funds three different ways, and I don't know how the US and the UK works. Yeah, it's, you know, it is a good point, Chris. That would be something to think about for a future episode. I think there is something out with the authors. But that's why we have to do it in person, so I can have the wine in front of us.
01:36:16
Speaker
Well, I finished it. By the way, I want you to know that this was this much wine. We're not talking. I was sitting there with a bucket full. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We don't want to start off rumors about it. We
01:36:44
Speaker
This episode of Crohn's Cast was brought to you by Dan Jones and Christopher Bean, and our special guest, Joe Zebedee. Additional content was prepared by Damaris Brown, Brian Sexton, John Currierley, and Peter Vernon. Special thanks to Brian Turner and the staff at Crohn's, and thanks to you for listening. Please like and subscribe, and don't forget to join the world's largest science fiction and fantasy community at sffchronicles.com.
01:38:54
Speaker
You're not helping me.