Cristina Jurado & Odo: Technology is a central part of
your SF stories. From nano-technology in the acclaimed The Bohr Maker to the philosophical cells of the spacecraft “Null
Boundary” in Vast, it seems that you
envisioned the future as a inevitable mix between organic beings and AIs. What
made you take this stance? And what do you think of the nanopunk label, which
has been frequently used to describe your work?
Linda Nagata: My background is in biology, and biology is full of examples of
organic nanomachines—all those intricate goings-on that create life—so it
seemed a natural for me to move in that direction.
As for the term nanopunk, I don’t care for it. “Cyberpunk” was cool.
The rest seems derivative—but if readers find it a useful way to sort books, that’s
fine.
CJ & O: Even though you also write
fantasy, you are most known for your science fiction stories. Why did you fall
for SF?
LN: It’s incredibly frustrating to me that my fantasy novels are not
more popular! I would love to be able to write more in the Puzzle Lands story
world, but without reader support, it just isn’t practical. At any rate,
science fiction is my first love. It’s a habit I acquired from my father, who
was always very interested in both science and science fiction. I think it’s
the suggestion of possibility in science fiction that makes it interesting to
me. As much as I love many fantasy novels, the question asked by the harder side
of SF is, Could the human experience
evolve in this direction? Science
fiction is not predictive, but that potential, that “maybe,” can still connect
us to even distant extrapolations such as Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center
series.
CJ & O: You have a degree in Zoology, and
grew up in Hawaii (one of the natural wonders of our planet), where you
currently live. How do you think this influenced your stories?
LN: Hawaii has incredibly diverse geography, from tropical shorelines,
to rainforests, to lava deserts, cinder fields, and alpine peaks—and over the
years many of these features have found their way into my stories. Hawaii is
also a very multi-racial place, and that too has been part of my work from the
beginning. Over the last few years, as I compare my experiences to others, I
think that growing up here, in a family where the fact of my being a girl was
never used to hold me back, has spared me the negative experiences that affected
so many others as young women.
CJ & O: Can you describe your creative
process when writing a story? Do you use character cards, outlines,
alpha-readers?
LN: My process has evolved a lot over the years. I used to insist that I
know the end of a story before I started it, and I was dedicated to developing
outlines, though of course I was free to modify the outline as I progressed. I
would also polish each chapter before moving to the next.
That’s all changed now. I still like to have at least a rough
outline, but with my soon-to-be-published novel, The Red: Trials, I had no clear concept of how the story would end
until I reached the point where I needed to write it. Not a strategy that I
recommend!
I don’t use character cards. At most I will write a brief character
sketch as I begin to develop a story idea, but often I won’t even do that. I
also never use alpha readers. No one reads my work until I have a solid draft
that I’m fairly happy with—that’s just the way I work.
CJ & O: You have recently written an
article on iO9 stating that “it is time to start reading hard science fiction
again”. Has hard SF fallen out of grace? Why do you think that hard SF is
relevant nowadays?
LN: The seed of that article was planted after I heard several
disparaging remarks about hard SF being a genre of cardboard characters. Every
genre has its good and bad books. It’s up to the writer to bring life to
characters and story, and it’s up to readers to demand quality writing.
CJ & O: Do you believe that being a woman
has made it more difficult to publish your SF stories?
LN: That has not been my experience, although my traditionally published
novels were sold in the nineties, so my experience may not be reflective of
what's going on today. My 2013 hard SF release, The Red: First Light, was never submitted to traditional
publishers, so I have no idea what its reception might have been.
As for short stories, I think magazine editors are hungry for more
hard SF. Over the past couple of years I've sold stories to Analog, Asimov's, Lightspeed, and
a couple of anthologies.
Now, if you were to ask, Does
being a woman make it more difficult to convince readers who don’t know you to
buy your books? I would have to say “maybe.” There is no real way to know
this, of course. I can’t say what goes through a reader’s mind when he or she
picks up one book over another. I do know that, although my readers have always
been small in number, men have long made up a large part of them, and many of
these men have enthusiastically supported my work. Lately, I hear from more and
more women, and that’s extremely gratifying.
CJ & O: You publish your stories and
novels through Mythic Island, your own publishing imprint. Why did you decide
to take this direction? How has been this experience so far?
LN: Actually, all of my short stories have been originally published by
magazines or anthologies, though I've republished some of them through my
company, Mythic Island Press LLC. As far back as the nineties I had wanted to
publish my own work. Somewhere along the way I taught myself a basic proficiency
in InDesign, intending to do a print run of Vast,
but I never quite got around to it. Then the self-publishing revolution hit,
and by the fall of 2010 I began turning my early novels into ebooks, and later
into new print versions.
My experience in traditional publishing had been fairly harsh—despite
good reviews and a couple of awards, my work was soon out of print—and given
family and financial demands, I felt like I was wasting my time writing, so I
moved on. When I started writing again, I decided to self-publish for many
reasons, among them that I would be in control of my work, that I would be in a
position to correct mistakes, and that I would get a much higher return per
book sold, which would allow me to do more promotion.
It's been extremely challenging, but it’s been enjoyable too, and I
hope to continue self-publishing my novels for the foreseeable future.
LN: It was wonderful to receive both of these acknowledgements,
especially since it had been so long since my last SF novel. And yes, they did
impact sales, especially the Nebula nomination—but not in any overwhelming way.
Despite the nomination, “discovery”—that process of letting readers know you exist—remains
a huge challenge.
CJ & O: You have worked as a programmer.
What are the differences and the similarities between writing fiction and
writing code?
LN: I used to work in website development, using PHP/MySQL, and for many
years I really enjoyed the process. I found it similar to writing a novel in
that the goal was to create this large, complex, detailed, and yet
well-integrated end product. But with programming, measuring success is easier.
After all, you are building a website to accomplish a specific purpose. If the
site operates as intended, you win. But things are not so clear cut in writing.
You may get to the end of a novel, but is it any good? Who knows? One reader
may love it, another may think it’s a complete waste of time. There is no clear
way to measure the result of your labor.
CJ & O: What are you working on at the
moment? Can you give us a sneak peek of your future projects?
LN: I’m getting the sequel to The
Red: First Light ready for publication. I’m not sure when this interview
will post, but the new novel, The Red:
Trials, is scheduled for release on May 20, in both ebook and print
versions. After that, I have some short fiction I want to work on, and then
more novels to come.
CJ & O: Where can we learn more about you
and your work?
CJ & O: Any other thing you would like to
add?
LN: Just a hearty thank you for this interview!
CJ & O: Thank you very much for your time and your answers!
Hoy se pone a la venta The Last Good Man, la nueva novela de Linda Nagata. Esta es su sinopsis:
