Where there's a Wil

Stephen Hunt interviews author Wil McCarthy on impostor syndrome, and why that while he likes the hard stuff - the Egan and Vinge and Linda Nagata - he also likes a lot of the softer stuff as well, the fantasy and slipstream ... if it's thoughtfully drawn.

Are you currently writing full time now, or are you fitting in the odd day-job for variety?

Like almost everything these days, that question defies a simple answer. I spend most of my time in an office at home, either writing or dealing with the ghastly minutia that plague one-person businesses.

But I'm also the co-owner and Chief Technology Officer of Galileo Shipyards LLC, an aerospace corporation doing balloon research for the U.S. Government, and in addition I'm involved with a software startup called Keystrike. I also do a bit of consulting and public speaking.

So yes, I'm a full-time writer, and yes, I work a variety of other jobs on the side. I don't anticipate any changes in the foreseeable future, but I do try to stay loose, and flow toward the interesting. The reality of science is as interesting to me as the fiction about it, so it makes sense to keep a foot in both worlds.

When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?

One of the secrets of the writing trade is this thing called "impostor syndrome," which basically says that nobody feels like a real writer deep down inside, just like nobody feels wealthy. There's an endless supply of people wealthier than you, right? And of things you want but can't afford.

I've been writing stories for my own amusement since first grade or possibly earlier, and I started doing it with intent to publish when I was 16. Of course, I didn't get paid for a short story until I was 21, didn't publish a novel until 25, and didn't start making my primary living at it until age 34.

Now, at 37, I'm under contract with two magazines and two book publishers, and I have a backlist that's 8 titles strong. So I do hope to start considering myself a writer soon.

As for why... well, who knows why we do things? It seemed like a good idea. It still does, most days, but I don't recall any "aha" moment when I first decided this was how I ought to spend my time on Earth. I also wanted to be an astronaut and a stunt man, you know?

How has becoming a published author impacted your lifestyle?

Well, I can walk on water now, which shortens my commute.

Do you tend to read the work of many other SF/F authors, and what are you reading now?

Oy. I love science fiction, but who's got the time? I like the really hard stuff, the Egan and Vinge and Linda Nagata, and I like a lot of the softer stuff as well — the fantasy and slipstream — if it's thoughtfully drawn.

There's more good material out there than any one reader could hope to pursue, which is kind of a good thing and kind of not, if you see what I mean. With 500 channels to choose from, we see more and more of exactly what we're looking for, when we could be surfing and sampling for greater breadth.

I end up reading a lot of nonfiction, because whatever I'm doing, whether it's SF or pop-science journalism or actual rocket-science type engineering, new information is like oxygen. But science fiction is my first love. The imagination has no better playground than that.

Of course there's also real life, with its pressing distractions and beguilements. Publishing SF used to seem like the coolest, most important thing in the world, but as a family man I have a broader perspective.

Your own life is the realest thing there is; that's what science fiction is up against. How can I tell you a story which will, for a day or two, drag you away from everything else you might want to read or do? That takes a lot of gall on my part. Who the hell do I think I am?

But people buy into these worlds, they love them, they wait eagerly for the next installment. Writers have this unique privelege: to become a part of countless real lives.

What's your favourite SF/F movies and TV at the moment?

Well, I hate this stuff about spaceships flying around effortlessly, meeting "aliens" who look and talk and do business almost exactly like we do. STAR TREK gets a pass on this, because it dates from an age when that was the only kind of SF you could sell to people.

I'm willing to accept that show on its own terms, and continue to enjoy it. I accept the hokiness and nonsense of STAR WARS, too, for similar reasons: I was 10 when the first movie came out, and since then it's simply been a part of the world. Not loving it is like not loving cheeseburgers: pointless, because you're goint to eat them twice a week whether you like it or not.

But I don't think any other show or movie could enjoy this priveleged status with me. I love movies, and although it isn't fashionable to say so, I love TV as well. But I'm insanely picky, especially about science fiction, so most of it is simply disappointing.

The recent DUNE movies on USA's SciFi channel were cool, though, and I've also gotten a kick (so to speak) out of THE MATRIX and LORD OF THE RINGS. I actually like a lot of the low-budget stuff as well, though; one way to satisfy me as a viewer is to set up really low expectations and then exceed them.

A good story shouldn't need 40 million dollars worth of computer graphics. I thought GATTACA, for example, was one of the best science fiction movies of all time. Still, it never hurts to have good visuals.

Do you use an agent?

Her name is Shawna McCarthy, although as far as we can tell she and I are not related in any way. A lot of people say the difference between a professional writer and a dabbler is that the professionals have all fired their first agents and hired someone ruthless, but I look at the relationships most writers seem to have with their agents, and it makes me want to barf.

Shawna's a professional who does a good job for me but we're also friends who, despite living thousands of miles apart, sometimes do stuff together outside of work. We even fight and make up sometimes, which I don't think most agents and writers would dare to do.

How long did you spend in rejection letter hell before you were first published?

Hey, I'm proud to say I still get rejection letters. This is partly a function of being new and interesting; if I always did the safe thing which I knew would sell, I wouldn't really be innovating. And innovation is the heart and soul of science fiction, right? If you never experience failure or rejection, you're underperforming.

Where, when, and how do you write?

Anytime, anywhere, by any means necessary. I got into this habit when I was working full-time as an aerospace engineer; there was simply no way to carve out a stable writing schedule in the margins of my life. So I carried a little notepad around with me, and later a palmtop.

These days I also do a lot of dictation which I play back into Dragon Naturally Speaking and then edit by hand. I keep hoping for one of those spiffy palmtop/world phone/voice recorder combinations, but so far no one has built one which meets my specific needs. So I carry a bunch of devices around with me, including a pen.

Still, whatever method I use it seems to take me at least a year to produce a book, from conception to completion, which tells me that most of the real work is taking place in my head, and can't be rushed.

How would you quickly summarise your novel The Collapsium for someone who hasn't read the book yet?

The book was conceived almost as a joke. Almost. My agent was pestering me for something really inovative and big, and no matter what I came up with she just yawned and said "What else have you got?"

This is part of her job, but I was getting fed up with it and finally presented her with a proposal that was absurdly over-the-top, a sort of fairy tale with realistic superscience taking the place of magic. I actually consulted with a number of physicists to make sure the details were believable, although most of that got shoved back into an appendix to keep the story from bogging down.

Anyway, she loved it, and so did Random House, and so did Amazon.com, which picked it as their "Best of Y2K" science fiction book.

The summary is sort of an extension of Clarke's third law: if any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, then any sufficiently advanced society should come to resemble a fairy tale. Which is good, because people clearly need fairy tales on a deeply visceral level, and giving them one could well be a goal of enlightened government, even though it makes the government itself - indeed, the whole society - both sillier and more perilous.

Plotwise, this can be seen as a satirical device, or a Utopian one, and I do think it makes for a rip-roaring, tounge-in-cheek kind of story. But there's a strong undercurrent of truth to it as well, which may be the thing that grounds it back to real life again. We love these stories because on some level we really do want our world to be structured this way.

If 'The Wellstone' was going to be made into a film, who would be your dream producers/actors for the movie? And how do you feel a SF novel with as much science as yours would translate to the big screen?

I don't think my science is any more or less heavy-handed than STAR TREK's, it's just generally more correct, and a bit more outlandish. Nothing wrong with that, eh? I've got a log cabin flying through the solar system on sails of programmable matter, piloted by angry young men with a score to settle. If a Greek epic were set in the Land of Oz, it might look something like this, except that there's a solid scientific basis for all of it. I don't see any problem filming that.

My dream producers would be Andrew Niccol, who did GATTACA, and Paul W.S. Anderson, who did the surprisingly strong film adaptation of the RESIDENT EVIL video game. That's an odd pairing, but between the two of them I think they could nail it. Acting talent is a bit harder to pick, because the story's characters are mostly around 18 years old, and actors don't seem to stay that age for very long.

But if I could roll the actors back to any age I liked, I'm thinking a tan Jennifer Connelly and a pale Chris O'Donnell. Prince Bascal would be played by that guy who did Chakotay on STAR TREK: VOYAGER, but he'd be channeling the Christian Slater character from HEATHERS.

Do you ever attend SF-cons, and what has your experience with them been?

I like them. Despite rumors to the contrary, they're mostly full of intelligent, well-adjusted people. There are a few weirdos, but there are also weirdos on the bus and at McDonald's and stuff, and at sporting events. That's the real world for you.

Would you ever consider writing in a different genre, or are you content with SF/F?

I've written a fair amount of nonfiction, and even dabbled in straight mystery. Writers are as subject to typecasting as actors, though, and it may be wiser — certainly easier — not to fight it. Publishers like to sell me as a certain kind of product, this artist/scientist guy with maybe some talent for making crazy ideas seem real. There's more to me than just that image, but what the heck. I'm content.

What are your hobbies?

Roller hockey. It's a fast, thrilling exercise in controlled violence — just the thing after a week at the keyboard.

What advice would you give to budding SF writers?

Write. That's all. There's no other way.

How did you get involved with the Sci-Fi Channel's news magazine?

That's a funny story, and a long one if I tell it right, but the short version is that I knew Craig Engler before he created Science Fiction Weekly, and came aboard as their science columnist shortly after he sold it to USA Networks and became a vice president at the SciFi channel. The moral of the story, if it has one, is that people never forget how you treated them back when it didn't matter.

Are you from the 'writing tightly against a full outline school' or the 'make it up as you go along' school?

Are there schools for this? I write outlines, yes, but I'm told they're pretty sparse by industry standards, and I've been known to deviate wildly from them, especially toward the end. But making it all up, with no skeleton to hang it on, makes for an aimless sort of fiction that I don't really care for.

Literary types will sometimes say that good writing "resists plot," but I think that's a bunch of hooey. Good writing can survive without a plot, but the best-loved stories are usually thrillers.

How much do you base your characters against people you actually know?

One hundred percent. There's no better model for human behavior than human behavior itself. I do a lot of of mixing and matching, though, so people tend not to recognize themselves even when the similarities are pointed out. Especially when I've cast then as the villain!

Was your non fiction work 'Hacking Matter', about programmable matter, much of a departure for you from the fiction side of things?

Nope. I speculate wildly about emerging science all the time, and often consult with experts in the field to make sure I'm understanding things correctly. With HACKING MATTER I simply did it all out loud, slapping some covers fore and aft and calling it a book. I didn't even have to make up any plot or characters.

Do they really pay people for this? This is the lure of science writing: it's science fiction only easier, and the audience is bigger as well. What was unusual about that project was that it resulted in a patentable invention — a means for altering the apparent composition of matter by moving electrons around — which Galileo Shipyards is currently pursuing.

When it comes to your drafts, how much do you tend to re-write?

Three drafts. The first one nails down the plot, and sketches in the characters and environments. The second draft is where I fill in all the details that make the story truly interesting, and the third draft is where I try to add stuff like nuance and subtlety. If anything I do approaches greatness as opposed to mere goodness, it will be in the third draft that the transition occurs.

Of the work you've penned, what's your favourite novel to date been?

Goodness, you should never ask a man to choose among his children. They're each brilliant in their own way. Still, for lay readers more interested in action than science, I generally recommend MURDER IN THE SOLID STATE, my near-future political thriller.

For those genuinely interested in what science has to offer, I recommend BLOOM, along with THE COLLAPSIUM and its sequels. These have received the highest critical attention as well, so it's not purely my own opinion. But as my backlist cycles into print again, I'll be recommending a lot of the older stuff just as strongly.

What kinds of manuscript changes have been made to your published works?

In books, the author generally has the final say about everything. In magazines, it's more common for editors to change the text around, often without consulting the author. This is obnoxious, but the benefit of magazines is that they can reach hundreds of thousands — even millions — of readers. If audience is the coin of the literary realm, then magazines are its wealthiest area.

Of the feedback people have sent back to you about your novels, what's your favourite been to date?

The best responses come from young readers, both because they're more enthusiastic and because the course of their lives can actually be affected. When I get mail from people whose choice of career or college major was inspired by something I wrote, it's a reminder that every single book I sell is in the hands — and mind! — of a real person. That's a privelege and responsibility I take seriously, even if that seriousness is sometimes buried in humor.

Are you still happily living in Colorado?

Yeah, I love Colorado. From my office window I have a view of the mountains that I just don't think I could find anywhere else, and if I take off on foot, maybe with my voice recorder in hand, I can be hiking in those mountains within about 20 minutes.

But we're also just 20 minutes from downtown Denver, which is the most cosmopolitan city for a thousand miles in any direction. Best of both worlds, yeah, and the climate is exciting as well. In March we had 3 feet of snow, and then two weeks later it was hot enough to open the windows at night. But we got snow again in June, and then tornado-spewing thunderstorms. I love that variety.

What new material are you working on at the moment?

There will be at least two more books in the Queendom of Sol series (which opens with THE COLLAPSIUM). This isn't so much by any scheming of my own; I simply find that the problems of nearly immortal people tend to break up into book-sized chunks, of which there need to be several if I'm going to tell the story honestly, without skipping around too much.

Of course, I love these stories as well, these imaginary people and places, so that may have something to do with it. I'm just not ready to leave yet.

For more information on Wil McCarthy and his works, visit ... www.wilmccarthy.com

Stephen Hunt

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