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24 October 2005
Someone Has To Be First: An Interview with Nuria C. Botey
Can Spaniards write speculative fiction, or does the genre belong to "Anglo-Saxon" culture? For Anglo-Saxon (English-speaking) writers and readers, the question may seem odd, but it's a question they only recently stopped asking in Spain. For most of the 20th century, there were only a handful of writers, all male, and they usually used Anglo-Saxon pen names. For example, between 1953 and 1978, Pascual Enguídanos Usachs published his 59-novel space opera series The Aznar Saga under the name of George H. White. Only in the 1980s did "made in Spain" science fiction, fantasy, and horror become possible. The lack of a long-standing writing community seems to be the reason why almost all Spanish genre writers are male. At most a dozen writers are women—not due to any apparent sexism but simply because someone has to be first, and these women are it. Science itself still has "an unmistakably American flavor" because America dominates the scientific community, says Lola Robles, author of two science fiction novels. Some things have changed, though. The natural setting for stories used to be somewhere far away and exotic like New York City or Mars rather than Madrid, "but with globalization nothing is far away," she says. The barriers have fallen for books set in Spain with characters named Marta or Pablo or Rodríguez. Because science is still a bit alien, most genre authors write fantasy, and fantasy sells better, but even so, centuries of tradition have erected another hurdle: "Realism is the 'good' literature in Spain," as Robles puts it. People often ask her, "Why don't you write something serious?" Or they read her work and tell her it's mainstream, not science fiction. In the U.S. and Britain, some newspapers will review genre books and some universities will teach speculative fiction as literature, but it doesn't happen in Spain. Despite these problems, Robles, who helps coordinate the Women's Library in Madrid and wrote the Bibliography of Women Science Fiction Writers, says the situation for women on the cusp of change, despite yet another hurdle. The Spanish market for science fiction, fantasy and horror is small and weighted toward English-language authors. According to the registry of the Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror, in 2002, 44 novels were published by Spanish authors and 147 by foreign authors, mostly American and British. Many Spanish writers must enter the mainstream for money and recognition. This leaves women with few role models, Robles says, "but I think they have lots of possibility in the future." Spain has some top-quality writers, both male and female, and if they can become well known, she says, women will be encouraged to write. The Internet is giving writers new ways to reach readers. Moreover, in her experience, compared to mainstream publishers, genre publishers are more open to new writers—and without regard to gender. Writers need a connection to be considered by major houses, "while in science fiction, the publishers at least read the manuscripts they get." Robles' latest novel, The Monteverde Report, draws on her soft sciences background as a linguist to weave a tale of extraterrestrial investigation, and when it was presented this spring with the panel discussion and party—the tradition in Spain—the publisher got a surprise: for the first time in his twenty years of experience, almost all the audience was women. Things are changing, and Nuria C. Botey is typical of the new generation of women genre writers. She's young—born in Madrid in 1977—full of energy and enthusiasm, has published a number of short stories, and is working on her third novel. She is the first woman to win the Pablo Rido Award, the top international prize for a science fiction, fantasy, or horror short story in Spanish.
With a smile, she called writing a vice, an addiction. "It's not something I want to do, it's something I have to do . . . When I was little, I liked to tell stories, and when the time came to stop playing with dolls, that's when I began to write. "I've come to the conclusion that I really studied psychology with writing in mind. I realized when I began studying that at age 18, you're very young to write. You need to learn about reality. Social sciences give you not only a certain perspective but also a critical point of view." When an editor asked her one Friday to submit a story to a horror anthology with a deadline of Monday, she decided to try an idea she had had while ironing—people iron a lot in Spain, and she loves to iron because it gives her time to think. She likes antique dolls but some people find them frightening, so she wrote a story exploring fear from that psychological point of view, "why people get frightened seeing a doll whose eyes move and whose skin is porcelain." By Monday, "The Circle Closes" was complete. "I write a little of everything, and within this 'everything,' I write stories, and then people tell me, this one is fantasy, or this one is horror, or this is mainstream, but I don't know. When I get an idea for a story, I write it down, and I don't think of it as belonging to one genre at all." But she doesn't write science fiction. "I don't dare. I have a lot of respect for science fiction because I've studied humanities." She laughed, then confessed, "The technical side, the science, is beyond me." She prefers fantasy. "It allows for more play because fantasy can take place at any time, in the most boring present, in the farthest future, and in the past." While some may consider science fiction more the territory of Anglo-Saxon writers, fantasy is not, or at least it shouldn't be, she insisted. "If you've read the medieval legends of Spain from the 12th or 13th century, when it comes to fantasy, it's been a genuine constant for us, and not just among Romantic authors but also in traditional legends, in beliefs in the fantastic, in the macabre, in demons, in things that disappear, in the dead . . . Life and death and unexplained events are present in all cultures because they're part of being a human being. The questions about who we are, is there something more, is something watching us—that's something we can find in all cultures. It's widespread, yet we in Spain have a certain tendency to undervalue what we have at home, and if something comes from outside, we don't think we have anything like it." She tries to read all kinds of works, "and the pile of books to read just keeps growing," but her favorite is short stories. "For the limited time that we have to read nowadays, it's perfect because while you're in the subway or at the bus stop, you can read some great stories and find outstanding authors. It's very hard to write a good story in twenty pages or especially five pages, and so you learn styles, you learn techniques, and at times I find ideas very similar to ones that I've had, but they're told in the third person or they begin at the end or they give me a perspective that would never have occurred to me." Finally freed from the demands of her thesis, Botey planned to spend August finishing a number of works, from short stories to a novel, so she could submit them to contests: in Spain, the way to publication is often through contests sponsored by publishers, universities, municipalities, or organizations. "In Spain, we have an illness that I think is congenital and inherited, and it's called titulitis, the inflammation of titles. We Spaniards need documents that say we're special, that we've done great things, and that we've taken a lot of classes or attended a lot of conferences or have won lots of prizes. We love to have a curriculum vitae that fills a big portfolio with papers that say you're wonderful, that you've been praised by such-and-such." She knows that prizes may say more about the jury than about the work, but that doesn't stop her. "It's a matter of adrenaline. Instead of believing in lotteries, I prefer contests because fewer people participate. I love to enter contests. It adds some excitement to daily life. You may be a little bored and you have problems you don't want to think about, but on the 25th of the month, when they announce the winner, you might be lucky." And if she doesn't win, she sends the story somewhere else. A contest helped her find the Spanish science fiction community. On the Internet, she had read about the Pablo Rido Award, sponsored by Madrid's Tertulia (Discussion Club) for Fantastic Literature. She entered and won in 2003 and began participating in the tertulia. "Then I began to send out the stories I had in storage because I hadn't known about the genre, and like so many other women, I didn't know how to get them in the hands of publishers or present them to contests, and since I didn't know much about the genre, I didn't do much." Her experience, she thought, may explain why there are fewer women in the genre. "It may be that they don't know how to do it because there aren't many female writers." If they don't see someone else writing, they don't dream of writing or find out how to do it. But that is changing, slowly. "Lately I've been reading a few more stories by women in some magazines, and I don't know if women are starting to write or if they are starting to risk sending stories in." As the first woman to win the Rido, she hopes they see her name and feel encouraged. Like Robles, Botey saw a hopeful future. "I think there's a lot of will in the genre in Spain. There are very young people with a lot of desire to do things, and when I say very young I mean very young in spirit, not that they're adolescents. It's something you notice when you get to know writers. You get the sensation that they've kept themselves from aging. The truth is that science fiction rejuvenates. "It's in the spirit of an adolescent to dream, to do things, to take certain risks, but at the same time, as happens when you're young with young ideas, the desire to do things can be disillusioned very quickly if you don't move forward." This can translate to confrontations and factions, but also creates a depth and meaning. "I see a lot of enthusiasm, with all the good and all the bad that enthusiasm brings."
A one-sentence story by Nuria C. Botey is available at Ediciones Efimeras. Click on the blue dolphins. The story "Benemérita" (Guardia Civil) refers to a seizure by the Guard at Madrid's Barajas Airport of thousands of counterfeit plush toys of the popular children's puppets, the Lunnis. The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (Spanish Association for Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror) offers news and excellent links. Other good sites to explore Spain's genre community are Bibliópolis and Sitio de Ciencia-Ficción. For more by Lola Robles and other women writers and activists visit www.escritoras.com and www.mujerpalabra.net. Roble's Bibliography of Women Science Fiction Writers includes English-language writers translated into Spanish.
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Interviewed on a hot July afternoon at a café in Madrid's Atocha Train Station, she was especially cheerful because she had just handed in her doctoral thesis in social psychology after five years of research into the construction of identity among adolescents in ethnic groups. When the research became frustrating, she would go write fiction, "switch off totally and enjoy myself," ignoring everything, including mealtimes.