The Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson

For over a decade Kim Stanley Robinson has been one of the leading lights in the sf field: winning fans and critics alike with his perfect blending of both hard and soft science fiction sub-genres (appealing to fans of Greg Bear and Ursula K. Le Guin alike), eco-politics and strong character-focused writing. Although born in Illinois in 1952, KSR has spent much of his life in his beloved California, where he grew up and lives today. The influence and love of the land and history of the state can be felt clearly in his championing of environmental issues, his love of mountaineering and outdoor pursuits, and most significantly it can be felt throughout his work, most obviously in his Three Californias trilogy, and also in his understanding of the importance that setting and past play in storytelling and on human development in general. KSR has degrees in literature and English – and has written one of the more famous doctoral thesis in sf, on The Novels of Philip K. Dick (published in 1984).

The Three Californias trilogy

A loose thematic trilogy written over six years, each book tells the story of a different hypothetical future California: The Wild Shore (1984) is a pastoral post-apocalypse novel, The Golden Coast (1988) is a near-future dystopia and Pacific Edge (1990) is a near-future realistic eco-utopia. The first two parts of the trilogy show two Californias technologically out of balance: The Wild Shore, showing a future USA on its knees by a Soviet nuclear sneak attack, and The Golden Coast shows a hedonistic car and technology obsessed culture, ‘a sprawl of condos, freeways and malls,’ while Pacific Edge attempts to show a non-idealized civilization where technology and the natural world are in harmony. However, neither of the first two parts are perfect. Although The Wild Shore has its share of conflicts: a rise in American nationalism and international isolation, it ultimately paints a relatively idyllic picture of rural life, with little mention of the inevitable societal breakdown, sickness and violence that the survivors of a nuclear holocaust world undoubtedly have to contend with – the end result feeling more like the adventures of Huckleberry Flynn than Mad Max. Still it is a strong début novel: superbly written and showing KSR’s deft ability to depict believable characters that continue to develop throughout the novel. The Golden Coast suffers from being practically indistinguishable from our own society today, although it is this novel that really expresses KSR’s love of California and feels perhaps the most autobiographical. The Pacific Edge is probably the most successful: depicting a realistic utopia of anarcho-collectives, yet like The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, he shows that even a society in balance would have its share of heartache and disappointments to contend with. Again Pacific Edge shows off KSR’s talent for depicting place and landscape and it is this novel that best foreshadowed the Mars trilogy which was yet to come.

The Mars trilogy

The mammoth Mars trilogy,some 2000 odd pages in total not including the supplementary The Martians companion volume of short stories, tells the future history of Mars from the initial colonists to civil wars to the eventual formation of a Utopian Martian state over a period of two hundred years.

Red Mars (1996): details the landing of the ‘first 100′ colonists, a odd-ball collection of scientists, engineers and misanthropes in their quest to tame the new frontier. Each chapter being from one of the characters perspective. Here KSR hits pure gold. As each chapter pulls the reader’s loyalties from pillar to post as our preconceptions are undermined by deeper and deeper character development. Most noticeably in our perceptions of the rivalry between John Boone, a flaky all American hero: kind of Bill Clinton on steroids, and the charismatic power hungry Frank Chalmers, who in the opening chapter – the only chapter in the trilogy to be told out of chronological sequence – assassinates Boone many years in the future on a colonized Mars. The narrative jumps back in time and we read of the journey to Mars and the initial stages of colonization. Not only that but we see Boone win Chalmers’ girl, Maya Toitovna. Later KSR shows us Boone’s last days, a washed up drug addict: no longer a simple stereotype, we perceive him as a lovable real person – warts and all. Suddenly we realize Chalmers’ crime. We now hate Chalmers. Obviously here I’m expressing none of the subtlety and guile of with colossal switch-a-roonie and no doubt you’re wonder what so great about that, but trust me, after several hundred intense dense pages of character development and intrigue it hit me in the chest: noooooooooo! Don’t kill him, you bastard! Clever stuff, Mr. Robinson – clever stuff. There are countless other examples of cunning character interplay throughout the trilogy. Some minor, other cosmic in scale. For are start, Red Mars barely hints at the rivalry that will develop throughout the rest of the trilogy between Sax Russell and Ann Clayborne that personifies the main political and ecological struggle between the opposing groups the Greens and the Reds, who fight over the right to terraform Mars into an Earth-like planet or to leave it untouched and pure. The other conflict that dominates the novels is that between Earth’s interference upon the development and freedom of the colony.

Red Mars is practically a faultless novel. Perhaps a little too long, but having the ambition to require the 600 odd pages to tell the story it has to tell. Maybe some of the knitty-gritty scientific detail will be a little too involved and dry for some readers, but other than that it would be hard to imagine how Red Mars could ever have been improved upon. Hard that is until Green Mars (1994) and Blue Mars (1996) came along. I’ll spare you my eulogizing of these novels, only to say that the evolution of Sax Russell from bone-dry irresponsible scientist to womaniser and revolutionary figurehead is possibly some of the greatest storytelling I’ve read in genre fiction.

One of the problems with these century-scale future histories, such as the Foundation trilogy, is the necessity of telling the story as a multi-generational saga, where every few chapters we the readers are required to drop our allegiances to the group of characters we’ve just been reading about and immediately superimpose them on the next group of characters who unconvincingly and conveniently happen to be the great grand children of the initial characters in the first chapter we read about two volumes ago. A process that the reader has to continue adopting until the conclusion. This is fine if the author wants us to comprehend that there are forces bigger than us mere humans but these continued interruptions are less than conjusive to the enjoyment of a novel. Here KSR happens upon a simple and what you might think is a rather obvious solution for any sf author worth his salt, but one I hadn’t seen adopted before, that of longevity treatment, thus making the characters effectively immortal: giving the whole trilogy a narrative consistency that, for my money, no other future history sf series has managed.

Interestingly this simple plot devise also gave the trilogy its most moving storyline: the depression, dementia and loneliness that the effectively immortal will have to contend with in a society stretched across the solar system. Things become especially poignant as we see the once beautiful Maya Toitovna look at a picture of her ex-lover Frank Chalmers and wonder who that nice looking man is. And it is in details like this that KSR most impresses. Short punchy sf novels and short stories can cope with minimal character-orientated storylines, but if you’re going to ask a reader to stick around for 2000 pages then there better be more than just a few clever concepts and wacky ideas. The novel is, after all, a medium that is usually best when used to explore the human condition.

The other novels of Kim Stanley Robinson

Of greatest note is his huge The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), a 700 year alternate history of a world where Europe fell to the plague and Asian civilizations rule. Not as sensational as it might first sound, but an fascinating and ambitious, if flawed, work that deserves greater analysis then I’m going to give it here. Although I will say that again KSR finds an interesting way of falling into the multi-generational pitfall that these multi-decadal sagas fall into: that of using the same pool of characters again and again in each era, but this time using reincarnation as a narrative tool.

His last trilogy, Science in the Capital (2004-2007), a kind of West Wing meets The Day After Tomorrow, fail to capture the scope and imagination of his early work. Probably because it failed to pave any new ground. For the first time I grew bored of the classic archetypal KSR characters and the setting, a near future Washington in a world of global warming, felt to mundane to be interesting for anyone but the most fanatical KSR fan or environmentalist. Indeed more than any of his other works it seemed to expose his biggest flaw as a writer: his apparent naivety that the human race will eventually find peaceful political solutions. Now I didn’t expect KSR to write a pessimistic Ballardian post-apocalypse, but his faith in human beings does at times make you wonder what exactly has he been smoking! Still this trilogy did predict Hurricane Katrina and the sinking of a major American city, although the immediate US action on climate change that he predicted didn’t, to the best of my recollection, ever materialize. Maybe Obama will be his real-life Senator Chase. Maybe not…

Of his early novels only Short Sharp Shock (1990) stands out. It’s his only real foray into fantasy writing, its not realistic – indeed its surreal – and its by far his shortest novel. Antarctica (1997) is little but a one volume Earth-bound Mars trilogy, which also features the green-fingered Senator Chase. Escape from Karhmandu (1989) is a fix-up of four eco-comedy novellas that sadly are neither funny nor any good. Of more interest to sf fans will be his to early novels Icehenge (1985) and The Memory of Whiteness (1985), both of which are readable, if unremarkable hard-ish sf novels, that also feature a prototype background that is basically similar to that found in the Mars trilogy.

Anyway, maybe Science in the Capital indicates that KSR is now somewhat off the boil these days. I’ll be interested to see what his next novel is like. I feel he has probably explored eco-politics beyond the point that he could have anything more to say on it, so I hope he finds away of reinventing himself, while capturing the quality of his greatest work. I’m hoping The Years of Rice and Salt and Short Sharp Shock show the way, rather than Science in the Capital.

More on KSR:

• The KSR forum
• The KRS page on Fantastic Fiction
• And hear KSR on Feb 18, 2009 episode of The Future and You podcast as pointed out by PhilH on the SSS forums

An interview with Golden Death Music

An interview with Golden Death Music

Golden Death Music has just released his fine ‘home-made’ début album Ephemera Blues distributed via that sprawling internet grapevine called MySpace. His music is a rich dreamy mix of beautiful songs, ambient textures and psychedelic sonic spirals (and is reviewed on this very blog here), and is by far the best thing I have heard on MySpace or indeed anywhere else for a long time – so check it out!

Golden Death Music has kindly agreed to answer some questions about himself, his influences and MySpace, etc…

The English Assassin: So, who is the man behind the golden death mask?

Golden Death Music: I’m human…reached my quarter century mark the other day…besides that…… I’ve lived in Ohio in the US for most of my life, though I’ve spent the majority of the last 2 or 3 months in Canada. The music I make, Golden Death Music, is a completely solo effort, though I have been involved in projects with other people such as The Blue Revision. My visage and accompanying body have been explained to me as being somewhere between “horrifying” and “quite fetching”.

The English Assassin: What are your musical influences?

Golden Death Music: Well, I’ve always listened to a large variety of music, and the size of my album collection has disturbed and upset more than a few people… Some certain albums I’ve found myself returning to over the past couple of years are Dungen’s Ta Det Lugnt, Dilute’s 2 LPs, Mainliner’s Mellow Out, Ethiopiques vol. 13, and anything by Ariel Pink. It really does a disservice to the other albums I get so much joy out of to mention specific ones, but those are some off the top of my head.

As far as for what I hear in these other people’s music that I hope to achieve in my own goes, I guess it’s sincerity and an affective nature. There’s an emotional state I’ve been able to attain sometimes when I’m playing or listening to music that is characterized by a pure, thoughtless feeling of energy. It is really indescribable for me, but one most powerful things I’ve ever experienced. If I am able to capture and transfer even a fraction of this feeling to other people through my music, it is astounding to me. I would have to say that this feeling (and the pursuit of it) influences my musical endeavours more than anything.

The English Assassin: Over recent years there has been an explosion of new electronic formats of music, such as mp3s, and mediums of communication between musicians and the wider public, removed from the traditional labels and music press, with MySpace perhaps being at the forefront of this new music order. As someone who is actively utilizing MySpace to promote your music, how important are these innovations to your endeavours? Is this virtual network actually more useful in connecting with potential fans than say the more traditional methods of gigging, zines, etc…?

Golden Death Music: MySpace has definitely facilitated a degree of exposure for me that I would not have been able to achieve by more traditional methods. I really just decided to put some of my music up there on a whim (which I had only shared before with 4 or 5 people, most of which were related to me), and I continue to be overwhelmed by the positive feedback and support I have received from the people I’ve contacted there. It also allows a degree of personal contact between artist and audience which I think is unprecedented – I have definitely gotten to talk to some people via MySpace that I have long admired and never dreamed I would ever get to have a discourse with. All this being said, I still think playing shows is an essential part of creating and maintaining a bond with your audience. There is something amazing that happens during live performances between the audience and performer that is not able to be reproduced by other means.

The English Assassin: Your music seems incredible well produced with lots of studio trickery, effects, etc… Roughly how did you go about constructing a track for Ephemera Blues? What stuff do you use?

Golden Death Music: Ha, well I don’t consider the music to be especially well produced, as my knowledge of “professional” recording techniques is basically non-existent, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment! I have always valued the quality of the songs over that of the audio fidelity, and my dealing with the technical side of recording music has always been a very intuitive thing. Recently though, I’ve been learning more about proper EQing and compression, and things like that certainly have their merits – I just don’t think they should take precedence over the song-writing itself.

Nearly all of the songs on Ephemera Blues were composed spontaneously when I sat down at the computer with the intention to record something. I usually start with a guitar track, and then elaborate on that with other instrumentation. Lyrics and vocals most often come last. The exception to this method would be “Into the Ocean”, which was born out of a improvisation with the keyboard player of my last band, and subsequently toyed with for a few months before I decided to record it.

The gear I used for Ephemera Blues is all pretty inexpensive stuff: a $30 mixer, low end sound card, a borrowed African hand-drum, a rusty old coronet that my step-mom’s grandfather played in the military, a browsed bass guitar, and a Yamaha acoustic I’ve had for about a decade. I used two different microphones (Shure SM 57 and 58 for those who care), and recorded most everything on my computer in Adobe Audition and FLStudio.

The English Assassin: What are your plans for the future with Golden Death Music or any other projects? And what is your ultimate ambition for GDM? Record contracts, live performances or just keeping it low-key?

Golden Death Music: I’m currently working on another Golden Death Music album, and am fortunately in the midst of a very motivated and creative state. I also have a lot of collaborative tracks in the works (some of which are with people I’ve met on MySpace). As far as record contracts go, if there is a label out there willing to help distribute the music while allowing me to remain uncompromising, I’m all for it. If not, I’m happy just putting my albums out myself (with Lido’s help and amazing art for the albums of course!).

I would like to say a big thanks to Golden Death Music for doing this e-interview and wish him luck with his new album and in finding a uncompromising label for his music.

Golden Death Music can be found at his MySpace page here.

An Interview with Tim Jeffreys

An Interview with Tim Jeffreys

Tim Jeffreys has self-published eight audio books since 2000, three of which are reviewed in the audio book and fiction review sections on this very blog. His stories range from pulp horror to macabre fairytales to slip-steam and non-genre, but always with a personal edge and a melancholy atmosphere.

Tim Jeffreys has kindly agreed to answer some questions about his work, audio books and his influences.

English Assassin: What inspired you to self-publish and what was the inspiration to go down the audio book route rather than more traditional printer mediums?

Tim Jeffreys: It’s just in me to self publish, it was just a matter of figuring out the ways and means. I can’t spend my life waiting to be picked up by a publisher. I’m too restless. I was sitting on a box of stories wondering what to do with them. It’s exiting when you first realise you can do something on your own – that you can get your stuff out there. I’ve been amazed by the encouragement and receptiveness. There are always a few people who want to shoot you down, but then there always will be.

The audio book route came about by chance. A tutor at University encouraged me to do my first recording. He must have been thinking ahead much more than I was because at the time I was sceptical. But hearing your stories read back to you gives you a certain distance and allows you to be more objective about them. Also, suddenly, it was easy to produce CDs. I think the audio format is becoming more and more popular these days as people have less time and energy to sit down with a book. It was just a matter of this all coming together at the right time. I am interested in the printed medium, though. In a way I consider that the ideal format. I just haven’t figured out a way to make books as easily as I can make CDs. Also I do like the fact that making an audio book involves more people. It becomes more of a joint effort. I’ve met some great people I wouldn’t otherwise have met, and had a lot of fun doing this. Writing is quite a solitary pursuit otherwise.

English Assassin: To what extent do you tailor you work to the audio medium? Do you have a specific audio actor in mind or is it more general, like a male or female voice for a specific story?

Tim Jeffreys: I don’t consciously tailor my work for audio, but I think it has influenced what I do. Over time I’ve brought certain things out in my writing – rhythms and rhyming lines (I’m thinking of a story like ‘The Hand-Made Tail’). Technically, writing wise, it’s frowned upon but it works well for the audio medium, and it’s also something that comes from me having a huge interest in song lyrics and the way they work as snippets of writing.

I usually only think of a story as having a male or female voice, and I’m constrained by who’s available to work with me, but the more actors I’ve worked with the more I’m able to think ‘This would be good for such a person’ or ‘Such a person’s not so good with this kind of thing.’

English Assassin: Could you briefly describe the process of making an audio book and how has your method changed since ‘I Retched Hard and the Man Spewed Forth and Crawled Away’ to ‘The Garden Where Black Flowers Grow’?

Tim Jeffreys: It’s an ongoing learning curve. Apart from providing the stories on ‘I Retched…’ I had no input. I had to take control of the recordings, which was difficult in the beginning because I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted things to sound or how to work with actors. But actors encourage instruction, that’s what they’re used to. I’ve learnt by going back into the studio time and again. I’ve got to a point now where I feel more confident directing an actor. Over time I’ve learnt my own process of how to get what I want. I work quite quickly, because of money constraints. It’s not a case of doing take after take. Often I’m willing to see where an actor will take something, which can be interesting, but there will be some things that I will want done in a particular way. I do all the editing myself at home. Again, you learn a lot just from listening back to things.

English Assassin: What are your influences, in literature and any other mediums? And who do you rate in genre fiction today?

Tim Jeffreys: I don’t read much straight genre fiction. It takes a lot to ‘wow’ me and I like books that have a lot of ideas in them. My literary influences tend to be women – Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Maggie Gee, Isabel Allende, Shirley Jackson. I don’t consider these genre writers; rather they’re writers that have used genre trappings for their own ends. Woman writers, for me at least, tend to go deeper into things and bring out more of an emotional side, which I like.

I’m also influenced by the bands that I listen to. Many of my ideas have come from hearing fragments of song lyrics and just having my imagination seize on it and run with it. Ideas can be suggested to you in song, because song lyrics can be misheard and they tend to be slightly vague or abstract. Or they can really nail something with just a few words.

English Assassin: In your opinion, how healthy is the market for short fiction in the UK today? Are things getting better or worse?

Tim Jeffreys: There are very few, if any, outlets for short fiction in the UK outside of woman’s magazines. Clearly, things are getting worst in the sense that there’s been this huge ‘dumbing down’ in the publishing world. Like most things it’s been damaged by this cult of celebrity. I read something not long ago which said that the future of publishing is ghost written books by people like Wayne Rooney and Geri Halliwell. It’s horrible and frustrating, but to my mind it only encourages a reaction. It encourages the DIY, small press mentality amongst people who are sick of it and want something more.

English Assassin: In your stories, quite often the doomed protagonist is victim to the destructive impacts of alcohol, such as: ‘The Garden where Black Flowers Grow,’ ‘The Revenge and I Retched Hard and a Man Spewed Forth and Crawled Away,’ is this a deliberate subtext and an issue you feel strongly about, or am I reading far too much into things?

Tim Jeffreys: I think what I’m addressing in these stories is more a person’s potential to lose control or lose themselves, whether through alcohol, drugs or whatever. It’s something that frightens me – the idea that something can take someone away from themselves and force them to act in a way that they wouldn’t normally act, hurt their loved ones, or behave irrationally. I seem to be drawn to writing about my own fears and concerns. I’ve witnessed alcoholism first hand, so maybe that’s why I tend to end up writing about it.

English Assassin: There appears to be a development in your writing away from genre-related spooky fiction to more real world situations, i.e. ‘The Revenge,’ ‘Vampire,’ ‘An Exhibition,’ etc…, and more recently your writing has shown a more worldly influence and seem less British in focus, i.e. ‘Spanish Landscape’ and ‘View of Burano.’ Is this direction you wish to continue to explore in the future?

Tim Jeffreys: If anything I’d like to make my stories more personal, more provincial in a way – in the way that a Smiths song, say, is provincial. I’d like to drawn more on my own environment. I’ve been travelling a lot over the past few years. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Spain, for example – not just on the beach, but in the towns, in people’s houses. It’s all experience to draw on. Hopefully, my stories will reflect where I am and what I’m doing, what I’m experiencing. As far as spooky stuff goes, it has certain limitations, but I want to place that at the centre of my own experiences, make it more personal, and take it from there. And expand it. Even though a story like ‘An Exhibition’ doesn’t contain anything supernatural, I still consider it a horror story because what happens is truly horrifying to the protagonist. It’s her own personal horror story.

English Assassin: Which of your audio books and which story are you most happy with? Would you like to expand any of your shorts into a full length novel?

Tim Jeffreys: I’m probably most happy with ‘Black Flowers’. I think it’s my most accomplished technically, and a good solid collection of stories. I like the fact that it was written over the course of one spring/summer and gives an indication of where my head was at a particular time. Although my stories are fiction, in another sense they’re like diary entries. Even a story which may not seem to have been drawn from my own life usually has at its heart some nugget of truth. It’s difficult to write without drawing on what you’re experiencing or what’s already in your head, floating around.

One of my favourite stories is ‘Their Eyes Were Flints’ simply because it’s one of my most original ideas. Sometimes you look back on a story and think ‘where did that come from? How did I ever think that up?’ I’ve no plans to expand any short into a full length novel. A story usually finds its own length. I’m happy for something just to be a page long if that’s as far as it wants to go.

English Assassin: Any releases or projects planed in the near future?

Tim Jeffreys: Hopefully there’ll be another set of stories out soon. I have most of them already written. Also, I’m working on a sort of novella called ‘The Orange Grove’ which I hope to eventually spread across two CDs. An illustrator friend of mine is currently working on pictures to go with some of my more fairytale-esque stories, which he plans to turn into a book. It’s still in the early stages though.

I would like to say thanks to Tim for taking the time to doing this e-interview and wish him luck with his future releases and in getting his work out to a wider audience.

More information on Tim Jeffreys audio books can be found here: http://timjeffreys.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/index.jhtml

Tim Jeffreys Ebay Shop: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/The-Dark-Lane

Tim Jeffreys My Space: http://www.myspace.com/22154396