What came first, the creature or the story?
The
creature: I was teaching a class of 12 year-olds about energy interchanges, and
we had covered animals (chemical to kinetic) and plants (light to chemical) and
I gave them an assignment to invent a new creature that lived off a different
energy interchange. They came up with some fabulous ideas (I’ve been trying to
trace one of the girls, because I would love to have used her idea in a book!).
Then they said: “Your turn now, Miss!” My
creature converts kinetic to chemical, but I thought I’d give them more to
think about than just energy interchanges. Short stories about Ne’ne, usually
with a philosophical twist, became a reward for the class when they had cleared
up their lab equipment and written up their reports 5 minutes before the bell.
The Zhongzi are labeled the perfect creation: their
creator “designed them so that they can’t develop the flaws imposed on humans
by the process of competitive evolution.” Once they are able to modify
themselves and extend their life, are they no longer perfect?
Good question!
I don’t think that the Zhongzi were ever perfect in the first place. It was the
best Jules Mitterand (and I!) could do, and it turned out that it wasn’t good
enough. Of course, it depends how one defines perfect – and I’m having some
very interesting discussions with my 16-year-old Muslim foster son on this one
right now!
Which Zhongzi clone is your personal favorite?
(I personally like Ze’ti.)
I like
Ne’ne and his offspring, but then he was with me for many years before the book
developed. And my next favourite is Te’ra: the golden poets that are at their
very best when on the edge of an abyss of fear. I felt so intensely with them
when writing about them, and I hope that I managed to the capture the feeling
in the song “Child of the Sun”.
How did your experience in the Humanist Society
affect your writing?
Of course
my humanist perspective infuses everything I think and do. But I fear I am a
heretical humanist. Humanists put people
at the centre of their philosophy, while I put life in all its splendour and
diversity at the centre of mine.
The real
catalyst for the slightly misogynist view of religion expressed in this book was
my work with the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief. I had the
privilege of working with people from many shades of the global religions. Many
of them were wonderful people, extraordinary examples of courage and love, but
some of them had a philosophy of life that was really quite destructive. I have absolutely no patience with the “God
has given man dominion over life” perspective. If it’s true, then She really
messed up!
Of
philosophies arising from religions, I am attracted to the ancient nomadic
Kyrgyz shamanism, which had humans placed bang in the middle of a spectrum of
life from the smallest bacteria to a plethora of gods which, unlike the far-too-human
Roman, Greek and Nordic Gods, were responsible for one thing each: rivers or
trees or clouds etc. Humans were seen as the messengers, the go-betweens, and
their greatest responsibility was to maintain the status quo. A patina of Islam
was laid over this through the tides of history, but the basic tenet of
humility in relation to man’s role remained until first the soviet revolution
and then the modern wave of Wahibism washed over Central Asia. (End of
lecture!)
Of course,
this “humble role of man” resonates badly with man actually becoming the
creator of life-forms himself, as in this novel. But I also have the
perspective that as, arguably, the most sentient beings on this planet, we have
a responsibility to preserve life in any way we can.
This novel functions both as a discussion of
community and industrialization. Did you have a primary subject in mind when
you wrote it?
No: it was
a mind experiment. The basic question I wanted to answer is: Does intelligent
life inevitably have to bear the seed of its own destruction - even if it has
avoided the brutalizing process of evolution? So I seeded the Zhongzi on
Shianshenka to see what would happen. I have to
admit, I lost control. Once they were there, they took over and wrote the story
themselves, which I suppose in itself was a kind of evolution! If there
was any background message, it was about thoroughly understanding the
complexity and interdependence of ecological systems before one starts messing
with them. This was not consciously communicated on my part, but so visceral
that I couldn’t avoid it!
All creatures that populate Shianshenka are
varying and diverse. How did your work as a biochemist affect their creation?
I wanted at
least the creatures and the planet to be plausible from a scientific point of
view. It’s the biochemist in me speaking in Appendix 2, which describes how
life on Shianshenka evolves. I often feel
frustrated when I read Sci Fi novels that suddenly bring in elements of magic,
although I am thoroughly aware that all modern technology would appear to be
magic to people only a couple of centuries ago. There is a gradual transition
between scientific plausibility and magic, and finding the balance is very
difficult. I admit that I deliberately dodged the problem of explaining space
travel!
Do you feel all scientists/artists responsible
for their creations in the same way Jules Mitterand is for the Zhongzi?
Yes, I
believe that ultimately, scientists, artists, inventors, entrepreneurs are
responsible for their products or creations, even though they may lose or give
away control at some point during its development. They are, after all, responsible for its very
existence. If we don’t accept this, we get the nuclear bomb situation: “OK, I
invented it, but somebody else dropped it on someone!” Or the Norwegian oil situation: “We only pump
it up, we don’t burn it! It isn’t us destroying the climate!”
That is not
to say that we shouldn’t take risks. As I said, Jules and I failed in making
the perfect creation, but should that prevent us from trying? At the start of
such a venture one cannot know whether net pleasure or advantage will outweigh
net suffering or destruction. After all, although little Ne’ne carried a bitter
message to the skies, there were generations of happy Zhongzi, revelling in the
beauty of their planet, before the collapse came for the society on the main
island.
I’m in
another interesting situation touched by the same moral question: I have just
finished creating a new website (soon to be published) for the Interstellar
Panspermia Society. Their aim is to seed young barren solar systems with
primitive terrestrial microbes, in order to ensure the propagation of
protein-based life beyond this solar system. All kinds of fascinating moral
questions arise from this ambition, which have to be resolved before any action
is taken.
Sewing the
universe with life may have totally unforeseen consequences for which we will
be responsible long after mankind has disappeared. But the alternative is the
certainty that the formula for life as developed on this planet will die with
the planet, and that may be the worst scenario of all.
At what point is the creator freed from the
responsibility of their creations?
If you
meant “hands on responsibility” as in remaining the good shepherd for one’s
creation, I guess it’s like parenting. At the point at which one’s offspring
are capable of existing on their own, one simply has to let go. Both the
Zhongzi and Bard blame Jules Mitterand for letting go too early, but I don’t
necessarily agree with them!
There is an underlying issue of religion
throughout the work. It strongly influences some of the main characters and weighs
heavily in ending. Do you feel the creation of religion lead to the downfall of
the Zhongzi?
No, I think
ambition – even though it was selfless ambition – together with a driving urge
for change, which was then implemented without the necessary holistic
knowledge, lead to their downfall. Which takes me back to the original
question: perhaps inevitably all intelligent life will want to innovate and
create change and will never be able to say “Stop! This is optimal, let’s
freeze it here”. The Zhongzi tried that at The Dancer, and got incredibly
bored!
This is a multimedia experience, how do you
think that adds to the reader’s impression of Shianshenka and the Zhongzi?
The songs
are central to the world of the Zhongzi and their way of communicating, and as
such they are an important part of the whole. I do think that readers using the
electronic version get a more holistic view of the world of Shianshenka and the
culture of the Zhongzi.
But I’m
sure that this will vary from reader to reader, which is why, in the later
electronic versions, I have just put in links to illustrations and song videos
so that readers can choose whether to follow them or not. For some they will
merely be an irritating distraction that diverges from the picture they have
made for themselves. For others they will augment the experience. But my hope
is that the videos add to the slightly weird, other-worldly feeling. My son
described them as “very pretty, very weird, in other words: pretty weird”. They
certainly won’t be everybody’s cup of tea. Also, they are experimental: I was
working alone in Garage Band on my computer.
I am not a performer and mine was the only voice I could afford to use!
The result is less professional, but more personal and immediate, which I
believe is right for the project.
I hope that
the illustrations communicate the sense of wonder that I myself feel about the
planet. They are a little repetitive, as I have created all of them from
computer manipulations of the one gorgeous cover illustration by Ingelil
Mitchell (the actual cover of the book only shows half of the original
illustration).
What do you hope readers take away from this
novel?
I had three
very different ambitions.
First: I
want people to fall in love with the Zhongzi! I would like to change the habitual
picture that comes up when the word “aliens” is mentioned. Two films have already done much to promote a
different attitude to alien life: ET and Avatar. But both had humanoid
protagonists, with two eyes, two arms, two legs, that had to eat and breathe. I was
curious as to whether it would be possible to emotionally engage readers in
creatures that looked and functioned in a totally different manner. Added to
this challenge was that I am also asking my readers to engage in social
clusters rather than individuals. My first
hurdle was Ingelil, my cover artist (and good friend and partner in many
enterprises). She told me that it was impossible to give expression and
emotions to a creature that didn’t have eyes and mouths. And she admittedly did
a better job on the flower flitters and wobblers than she did on the Zhongzi.
The fact that we used them rather than Zhongzi on the front cover is a partial
admission of defeat here! But in the end she dreamt up the lovely rainbow
creature that I used as the basis for the other illustrations. Fortunately,
feedback so far has shown that most people have no problem engaging in the
Zhongzi. Some are “there” straight away. Some take a little time but are drawn
in by the story. A few haven’t got beyond the first few pages. I’m content with
that: I had expected worse. I loved one reviewer’s description of them as “tiny
furry balls with enormous ideas”. I
interpreted that as a demonstration of affection.
My second
hope is that the book will stay with the reader long after he or she has shut
it because it has raised some question that is relevant for him or her. When I
ran humanist confirmation classes, I told my students: “If at the end of this
course you are asking the right questions, then my aim has been achieved.” So
with the book. It is interesting to note that many of those readers that have
endorsed my book so far have done so in terms of rhetorical questions. And the
range of questions that have caused people to stop up and think is even wider
than I had foreseen: everything from the quite concrete: “What would I
communicate to my children if I only had one golden hour?” to “What would
happen if the agents that we believe lead to evil were removed?” or “Are human
ethics universal?”
My third
hope is that the reader, in meeting the music, illustrations and book together
will get a sense of the wonder and beauty that the alien can give us: the same
emotion that we experience when we see beautiful electron microscope pictures
of the tiniest inhabitants of our Earth.
What is one fun random fact about you?
That I
misspent my youth renovating old British Rail steam engines on the Watercress
Line. And, yes, I can drive a steam engine, and it requires even more
finger-tip delicacy than playing the guitar!
