7 March 2003

A Rock and Roll Revolution: An Interview with Gwyneth Jones
By Liz Williams

Liz Williams is the daughter of a conjuror and a Gothic novelist, and currently lives in Brighton, England. She has a PhD in philosophy of science from Cambridge and her anti-career ranges from reading tarot cards on Brighton pier to teaching in Central Asia. Her novel The Ghost Sister was published by Bantam in July 2001 and will be appearing under the Big Engine imprint in due course. A second novel, Empire of Bones, was published in April 2002. Her third — The Poison Master — was published in January 2003. Nine Layers of Sky will be appearing in autumn of 2003. Liz has had short fiction published in Asimov's, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, The Third Alternative, and Visionary Tongue, among others. She is co-editor of the recent anthology Fabulous Brighton. She is also the current secretary of the Milford UK SF Writers' Workshop.

Starting with Bold as Love... This had its inception as a much earlier, first person short story. What was the inspiration behind the novel?

I have to go a long way back. in the early 80s, about 1980-83, a friend of mine called Johnny Clarke ran a music venue at a pub at the bottom of West Street [in Brighton] called the New Regent and anybody around Johnny who was interested in music, or anybody who just happened to be passing, really, got involved — taking tickets, on the door, breaking up fights, and being part of the audience and wishing there were more people in the audience than four, and that was a time in my life when we just spent a lot of time going out, partly because of the Extremes connection, because we just kept hearing about things, and we became grass roots rock music. I suppose you'd have to call us fans, though I was never a fan of a particular group at that time. I liked some of them, I didn't like others. I loved — to my lasting damage — loud fierce music. Carnage. Exploited. King Kurt. Jesus and Mary Chain. Band of Four were quite loud. There were a lot of them, and what Johnny found was that the punks would fill the club, because they had devoted followers.

But all these people talked left wing politics, really, and they wanted to be free and the original "Bold as Love" story was the idea that there had been a rock and roll revolution, and everybody was living in a scummy rock club milieu, because that's what the revolution had created. And it was a joke, about utopianism, because as I've said elsewhere, just think how lightly we would tread upon the Earth if nobody washed, nobody minded disgusting sanitation and all there was to eat was the odd dodgy vegetable curry and plenty of alcohol, which is really cheap. It would be miraculously ecologically sound, this rock and roll revolution. You don't have to live like a refugee, but it would really help.

That was what the story was about. And it was also about the fact that though the people who do the talking are generally very gentle, sweet young men, whatever they look like, what they're actually living off, what they're actually talking from, is the energy of young males, which is not exactly peaceable or gentle. They mean to be, but what they do is different, and the story is about Fio and her boyfriend and it's basically Fiorinda saying "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you think you've had this great revolution, but nothing's changed. Men are still ruling the world. It's just a different phase of male life that's ruling the world." Like the way it was in the Stone Age, maybe. Young fierce males taking up the space, breaking the place up and eventually the knives come out and there's another young king. So that's what "Bold as Love," the story, was about. I always knew that I wanted to write a longer thing about it, but it took me 10 years, originally, to write the story and another 10 years, nearly to give the book out. I move slowly!

What relationship, if any, would you describe as being between Bold as Love and Kairos, which also depicts a dysfunctional, slightly future Britain? I think it's the same story. I think most people, most artists, have a particular story that they tell, and they just tell different aspects of it, and different viewpoints. My story is the story of the Kairos — the change, which is never going to happen, the change when the world turns upside down, and as I said at the end of Kairos, things that were previously impossible become possible, like social equality, sexual equality, the war mongers scraping around for money at jumble sales and the peacemakers getting the financial backing. That's the story that I'm always telling. I just tell it lots of different ways. And there's something else, which has recently just occurred to me, and maybe this is the subtext of an artist's life: What you do is you tell the story of your own life, but of course, if you look at my life, you will see that there has been no revolution in England in my time. There has been nothing of the kind that I describe. However, as you grow up, you absorb your family's life, and especially your parents' life, and my parents told me what the world was like, inevitably, whether they meant to do it or not. My parents grew up in the 20s and 30s and the climatic event of their life was the 6 years of the second world war. I think I discern that story in the story that I keep telling — the build up in the 30s and the fear and hope that something's going to give and things will really change, and then the discovery that it doesn't change, you get a war instead, and I think that's something that I keep referring to — the story that was told me to me.

The Second World War had an extraordinary effect on that whole generation. My dad was in the army and ended up at Cassino, and it determined the whole course of his life.

My dad was in the 8th army, in N Africa, Sicily, Italy, not on the Monte Cassino side, but up through the Dolomites into Austria. He was in signals. And my mother — that was her time as well. She was getting bombed out in Liverpool, and putting out incendiary bombs on the streets of Manchester, and getting into trouble, in the wrong place and the wrong time, and sneaking out to see my dad.

I do remember the bomb craters and the general devastation — you're always homesick for your earliest childhood memories, no matter what they were. Maybe that's why I keep breaking the place up in my science fiction and longing to get back to bombsites in the middle of Manchester.

And an aftermath of something.

Yes, an aftermath.

It's still the pivotal point of the 20th century. We're still turning on its axis.

It's still The War. In comparison, WW1 was nothing, people getting killed. All that happened was people getting killed, and every war since has been just a mess, but The War — that was a major event. Do you know [Pynchon's] Gravity's Rainbow? I read it quite regularly, because I think it's one of the defining texts of SF. It tells the story of rocket science and where rocket science comes from. Rocket science is science fiction, and so it's the story of where science fiction comes from. I read it regularly because it's a big book, and big books you can never get to the bottom of, because you've always forgotten by the time you go back and read them again. I read it to remind me of what I'm writing about and why.

Talking of where stories come from, there's something very Arthurian about Bold As Love.

Not in the original story. In the original story it was Fiorinda and Ax. It was basically the government and the opposition; the men and the women; left brain, right brain. Ax is the person who sees the whole pattern and wants to keep it in order and push out anything that isn't convenient, and Fiorinda is the person who says: "That bit doesn't fit; this isn't working," which is the way your brain operates. When I came to write a book, for one thing, the world had changed. It had got a lot harsher for violent protests and all kinds of things, and so I wanted to write a different kind of story, a feel-good story, though many people have discerned that Bold As Love isn't as feel-good as all that.

But it was in my mind that I wanted to write a fairy story. I saw Ax holding back the tide of dissolution, of Western civilisation. It struck me, it's more interesting if you have your main character, who's supposed to be the leader of the revolution, actually trying to prevent the revolution from destroying the normal services. And I've got a bloke holding back the tide in England. I've got a beautiful (she's got to be beautiful) bride who is sort of central and magical, but she's not in control. You know, this sounds like another story, and at this point I decided maybe this is Arthurian, but maybe I can twist it. It was at that point that I invented Sage, because you've got Arthur, you've got Guinevere — you've got to have a Lancelot. So yes, it's Arthurian. I think maybe the Arthur story is like actors always wanting to play Hamlet. I think fantasists — if they're English, European, American — often think "Oh, I'd like to do an Arthur." I think that. "Ooh, I'd like to do a vampire story and I did; ooh, I'd like to do demonic possession and I did," and eventually you get round to covering all the bases that appeal to you.

What myths are you intending to explore in Castles in the Sand (Gollancz, June 2002)?

Not going to tell you.

Oh, OK!

There's a first paragraph on the website, and it will tell you absolutely nothing. There will be elements of the Arthurian story, but don't expect every part of the Arthurian story — more magic, more weird science, and more foreign travel. I felt that foreign travel was neglected in Bold As Love; Cornwall from Reading is as far as they go.

Graham Joyce describes writing as proceeding by "lamplight and instinct," and he also draw the analogy between writing and mining. What analogies would you draw? Do you have a clear idea of the theme of a novel before you write it, or is the theme and the underlying metaphors of the novel a kind of emergent property?

I can tell you what happens when I start to write. What happens is that however long it takes to work out what story I'm going to write, I do an A to B synopsis, and that synopsis for me is set in stone, I don't change it, though I know for other people that doesn't seem to be the case. I know what's going to happen in my story. A lot of things may change, the different events may change, the motivation of the characters may change, everything may change but I still know what's going to happen. My synopsis is the story. Then when I start writing, I write about 3 chapters — and this is comment not a plan — and then I start to think. And then I go back and write the 3 chapters again and with luck proceed with the rest of the book. I have to have something on paper, really, before I can work out exactly how I want to achieve my effect, though usually I know what effect I want to achieve. It can take me ages.

So when it comes to analogies to other crafts — I'm diabolical at all kinds of handicrafts — so I think it has to be art and music. I think of painting a picture, balancing touches of colour, bringing things out, putting things in the background. I think a great deal of my work is like writing music because there's a tune and the instrument you're writing for, and maybe orchestration. I'm giving myself away here! No, I wasn't brought up in a rock and roll recording studio! I went to a school that was devoted to music, and I always had music around me, but my choice of punk and heavy metal is not linked to my early childhood. That was Chopin and Beethoven, who were the punks of their day, I suppose. And when I was writing Bold As Love, I was thinking in terms of theme and little signatures for the different characters, because I wanted to make that effect. And also there is a lot of repetition, because when you examine a piece of music, repetition plays such a huge part, and it plays a huge part in audience response, and there's a uniformity in Bold As Love All the chapters have the same shape, the repeating chorus lines, repeating images. It's a song. Well, I think so.

How do you approach issues such as ontological difference — e.g. in the case of the Aleutians, who see the world in such a sideways manner. What is the mental process of putting yourself in such different shoes?

There's no easy answer to that. All I can say is that I just go through it. I say to myself: This is going to be a kind of people — and of course they're people, as I've often said, all aliens are human beings in various disguises; we don't know any aliens. I think my aim with the Aleutians (White Queen and North Wind) was to think how it would be if there was no gender divide, and how it would be if there was no concept or a very weak concept of otherness. We have a strong concept of otherness, but the Aleutians have a very weak otherness concept because I'm working on the theory that he and she, male and female, up and down. These things are all very deeply rooted in the human psyche because of our gender dimorphism. So I worked out the biology and from the biology, the culture sprang. I worked out what kind of reproductive system they could have which would make them the people that I wanted them to be, and then I worked out the consequences of their concept of self and how their culture would develop. And I just kept doing it, until I was reasonably satisfied.

As well as your science fiction, you've also written a number of fantasy stories. Seven Tales and a Fable springs to mind, as does "La Cenerentola." What do you think the function of fairy tales is, especially in a modern society, in which folk legend starts to merge into scientific exploration?

I think the sociological function of the story — all stories — is just exercise, bonding, between people. Cultural function is passing on knowledge. The reason why old people used to be revered in tribal societies is that they were repositories of knowledge and of how to deal with unusual events. If there's a famine, you go to the oldest old lady of the village and you say: "Do you remember anything like this?" And, they'd say, "Oh, yes, there's a plant in the woods, doesn't taste very nice, but it'll keep you alive." It's like holding onto your old people to survive. You let them die, and you die.

Of course, the printing press changed all this, and of course, long before the printing press the need to transfer knowledge about unusual events has been expanded and developed. Appetite that grows from being fed... The more people tell one another stories, the more the idea of having stories told to them becomes accepted and the industry develops. But how does it come down to fairy stories and SF? I think fairy stories, as I said in the introduction to Seven Tales and a Fable, are sweet stuff for hard times. They make you content with your lot, because you could be the goose girl who ends up marrying the prince. They are subversive in a safe way. Clever Jack comes up from the scullery, but he doesn't overthrow society, he becomes the prince. And I think that they are very conservative and preservative in that way — they're comforting. They're also comforting in the sense of speaking bitterness because it's comforting to tell people that you've had a really hard time, and it's comforting to read that other people have had a really hard time.

Schadenfreude?

Not only that, but "I am not alone"! So I think that's what fairy tales are and what fairy tales do. SF, as a lot of people have said, is clearly our folklore. It has that character. It's a place where this civilisation we live in now puts its conforming, conserving ideas. The idea that SF is subversive is misinformation, a hijacking of the term "subversive." And there's probably a Greek word for it, too. Of course, there's SF that's subversive of SF that happens inside the genre, and it never reaches the outer market, mass market.

Do you think there is a form of literature that is subversive?

Subversive of what?

Prevailing cultural order, prevailing political order.

There's Schnews! (Brighton's radical news-sheet) There's pamphlets, pamphleteering, leafleting, that's the radical tradition. If it was subversive, it seems logically that it couldn't get mass market support. One of the things that needs to be unravelled here, and I keep getting my son to try and unravel it for me, is why Stephen King is referred to as the Dickens of the 20th Century when what he writes is extremely harsh. Why do hundreds of respectable, middle of the road people love to read King? And it's not because he's a great writer. He's a good writer, but I'm interested. There's something strange going on also in the fantasy games. Final Fantasy sounds incredibly subversive. It's all about these people putting up nuclear power stations and destroying Gaia, and the horror of discovering that you are not a free individual, that you are the creation of your society. You are using pre-determined roles and never have any choice in the matter. Sounds like it would be banned. But it's harmless, because it's a fairy tale, because it comforts people. So subversive literature. I have never come across it.

Like a feuilleton; the 19th Century political pamphlets in Vienna that appeared from nowhere and so couldn't be traced.

I'm sure that must be the level at which subversive literature always operates. And goodness knows, things could be a lot worse, so maybe it works!

At what point does a new novel begin for you? For instance, is it with a place, a story, an image, or a character? Do you find that your work for younger readers tends to be more story driven?

I don't know if it will strike you as strange, but for me, where a story begins and where a story is rooted, is place. The way I feel about Bold As Love is that it's rooted in the atmosphere of a scummy rock venue, and also in the atmosphere of an outdoors English summer rock festival. That's what created the story for me, from that, all the connections, the weird juxtaposition of the might of the corporate entertainment industry a few yards away from the mud and the scum. It's a strange combination, and it makes our place in the world and their place in the world so beautifully clear.

Makes perfect sense. I read for atmosphere a lot of the time, and write for atmosphere also. It overrides plot for me a lot of the time. And I loved that "England's Dreaming" aspect of Bold As Love. Corporate vs private.

The only thing you can do is try and get a tincture of something that isn't entirely profit driven and brown. I went to Reading [festival] this year, for the last time. My ears won't stand it. I might go to WOMAD (world music festival in the UK) again, but I'll probably never go to a loud rock event again. On the Saturday we went off in the afternoon and played baseball up on the Ridgeway. It was very beautiful and very English, and I was hitting the baseball into the landscape that was on the cover of Bold As Love. Then on the Sunday in the afternoon it rained. I was so glad it rained because of sitting inside a marquee on the wet grass, surrounded by English people all getting wet and thinking, "Ooh, isn't it nice to be outdoors." That was some essential part of Bold As Love for me.

How did you begin as a writer?

Just unlucky, I guess! I'm not sure. People ask me this question, and I'm always a bit bemused by it because I don't really have any clear memories. I was writing things, drawing things, writing poetry, — which I gave up entirely when I was about 12 as everybody should.

Less people should write poetry?

I wrote something when I was 14 that won a competition in the newspaper and at that point a local writer told her literary agent that she'd seen this lovely story in the newspaper. I got an invitation to lunch in London with this literary agent. And that big break came to nothing, but it was probably where it started, what gave me the impetus to become a published writer. But when I hear people say "I always wanted to be a writer" or "I just hope I can do this strange thing called writing" — no, that doesn't resonate with me at all. Really I think I'd have been a lot better off if I'd worked at university and become an academic, but it's not easy for them now a day.