| A Conversation With Scott Westerfeld | ||||||||||||
| An interview with Kevin Stone | ||||||||||||
| December 2006 | ||||||||||||
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I come from a big family in Texas, in which story telling was very valued. And I've always written, as far back as I can
remember. But the career move came from being fired, in that "here's some money, go away" way. I set myself the goal of living
cheaply for a year, and getting published in that time frame.
Of course, it wound up taking almost ten years to support myself completely through writing, so freelancing was important along the way. In that time, I wrote some Goosebumps, a legal thriller, and even three Powerpuff Girls books. That's choose-your-own-adventure Powerpuff Girls books. How cool is that?
Well, the books have come out faster in the UK than in the US, due to publishing compression. Still, I did write nine books
in four years, and I don't recommend that. While I was writing Parasite Positive (known as Peeps in the US), I
got shingles from exhaustion. The whimsical irony of being infected while writing about diseases did not make up for the pain.
Teen readers are in some ways like SF readers: They question the way the world works and they question their place in
it. They can imagine, in the way "mundane" adult readers do not, the world being utterly different. Being a teenager is a
fundamentally alien experience. Also, the average teen is more into language invention than the average adult -- they write
more poetry, use more slang, and bestow more nicknames than adults -- which also makes them like SF readers.
That said, the main advantage of being a teen writer is that I can change genres without any confusion. I've written fantasy, SF, and contemporary realism, but the bookstores still puts them all in the same teen section, no worries. And teenagers are wider readers than adults, because they haven't specialized into one genre yet, so no problem there, either.
It has exploded, in the US at least, as all those Harry Potter readers ramble through puberty. It has been great to see a
whole generation embrace fantastic literature, and to know that for two weeks every two years or so, it's totally cool to
carry about a book around at school. Another aspect of the Rowling effect is that more adults are reading teen books
unapologetically. I mean, let's face it, not everyone is thrilled with the modern novel. Teen fiction (not unlike SF)
promises more linear and old-fashioned story telling, and that's what a lot of people want.
Eventually, but right now the advantages of teen fiction are many. It's more fun, more lucrative, and the fan mail has more
exclamation points. What's not to love?
My research is a constant thing: I'm always clipping away articles from New Scientist (at least mentally) for later use. But
it's never been a very organized pursuit. That is, I don't find my characters facing a situation and then research how it would
really work. It happens the other way round: I get ideas for a technology, a weapon, or a system from random sources, and then
collect them together and make a story. Much easier that way.
Oddly, The Risen Empire was finished in early 2001, so the politics may be a case of life imitating art. What I
was mostly getting at with my zombie empire was a question about immortality: What would the social costs be if rich, powerful
people didn't die? Many SF books (and con panels) have questioned whether immortality might be boring, or in some other way
disadvantageous for those who obtain it. But the bigger question seems to me to be the consequences of wealth and power
never leaving the hands of those who are mentally stuck in the past. (And yes, I think we have our answer now. Hereditary
heads of government was never a good idea.)
Samuel R. Delany, Iain M. Banks, and Linda Nagata for space opera. Francine Prose, M.T. Anderson, John Christopher, and Meg
Rosoff for teen books. Ursula K. Le Guin for both.
I'm a huge fan of Philip K. Dick, and in particular think
that The Man in the High Castle is an amazing book, so it was obviously
an honour. But one of the best things about the nomination is that it got me to my first SF convention, where I discovered
this wonderful community having a 60-year-long conversation about all the things that were cool and important to me. What a gift.
Night Watch, a Russian blockbuster fantasy by Sergei Lukyanenko, best known for the movie it inspired. It's a totally
crazed piece of world-building, in which the forces of light and darkness contest each other through a vast bureaucratic system
that only a Russian could have invented. (Also, Andrew Bromfield's translation is great).
That's a secret, actually. But there will be airships. Airships and Edwardian biotechnology.
Kevin Stone also does reviews for Interzone and Waterstones. |
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