I met the fabulous & talented Brenda Cooper at the PNBA Fall Show in Portland this year. She is the author of the Silver Ship series and co-author of Building Harlequin’s Moon, as well as numerous short stories. (After meeting her, I kinda felt like a dweeb for not recognizing her name-Nick had given me Building Harlequin’s Moon to read the week before & I hadn’t gotten to it, but I was blinded by Larry Niven’s name on the cover.) She recently took time out of her busy life to answer some questions for me. Be sure to check out her website and these can’t-miss SF books. Wings of Creation, the third book in the series, is due out November 10th.
Chelo, Liam, & Kayleen have an interesting alternative relationship; I wonder how these characters deal with the issues that might arise from it (especially as Chelo & Liam are ‘leaders’ whereas Kayleen is more of a ‘follower’). Will there be further exploration of this in a future book?
I think any time you write about humans, it’s unrealistic to imagine all heterosexual monogamous relations. Humans tends to experiment in matters of the heart. This relationship will be challenged later, but not primarily because it’s triadic. The larger challenge is that they all have slightly different destinies, and the family may or may not hold up under the very real pressure put on them as they enter the Making War.
I understand that The Making War is going to be the fourth book in this series. How is it coming along?
It’s outlined and ready to go as soon as I get a nod to write it. I think it’s going to be a fabulous book (or books – I’d actually best like to tell the rest of the story across two books). In the meantime, I’m working on another book in a brand-new universe, on marketing both READING THE WIND and WINGS OF CREATION, and on short work.
As a futurist you must spend a lot of time thinking about tomorrow; what excites you most about the future? What frightens you most about the future?
I’m very excited about how we are starting (hopefully in time) to find ways to remain a high-tech society and yet live more lightly on the land. At least in Seattle, there is a lot of movement to electric cars and clean energy, toward less violent consumption and more compassion. I love how global and diverse the world has become.
The two things that scare me the most are the idea of nuclear weapons in the wrong places (I do not understand terrorism since it’s essentially a failed strategy, but nuclear bombs in terrorist hands are a nightmare), the idea that we may have already done too much damage to our home, particularly the oceans. I can’t quite imagine how shameful it would be to kill this beautiful planet.
What are you currently reading? Do you read a lot of nonfiction? What is your favorite SF novel? Your favorite non-fiction book?
I read a lot. I have writer friends who tell me they don’t read any more, and if I couldn’t read, I’m sure I couldn’t write as well. I do read a lot on non-fiction: I read the paper every day, I read The Economist and Nature and a lot of websites, although I don’t read very many nonfiction books any more. I can list a ton of favorite sf novels, but to pick one would be like picking the child or friend or parent you loved best. Rendezvous with Rama, Enders Game, Snowcrash, Beggars in Spain, A Deepness in the Sky, Ringworld, Anathem, Red Thunder, Time Enough for Love, Wake, Darwin’s Children, Allan Steele’s Coyote books. And we haven’t even started on the fantasy yet. There’s Lord of the Rings, and Banewreaker, Canticle and Perdido Street Station, there’s Mercedes Lackey (I have short stories in almost all of her short story collections in Valdemar) and anything at all by Charles deLint or George R.R. Martin…and then there’s short fiction. Well, you get the idea.
You write about mankind’s future in space. What do you think is the largest obstacle opposing space colonization today?
The rocket equation. Really – it’s physics. Gravity if you will. No matter how you look at it, it’s expensive and difficult to get heavy stuff from here out into space. The distances are long and the travel hard. There are other obstacles – the idea that space travel should be safe – the difficulty getting launch permits – competition for funding from very real other priorities here. But I believe we’ll get there. There is lot of energy and brilliance at work in the commercial space sector. We also need some perspective. We tend to think it’s taking a long time to explore space. The Wright Brother’s first flight was in 1903. So in a little over a hundred years we’ve gone from being stuck fact to the surface of the planet to flying all over it all the time with hardly a worry except the TSA search indignities, we’ve flown past almost every planet and moon in the solar system, landed rovers on Mars, and men on the moon. This is actually pretty good.
There seems to be a central theme in your novels about conflict between those who, by choice or design, are not technologically advanced and those who are. It is a definite issue that awaits our future. How do you think it can be avoided or mitigated?
It’s not only a future issue; it’s current. And oddly enough, at the rate we are going, America could be among the less technically advanced. We don’t do a good job with science or math education, with broadband, with holding up high bars and asking ourselves or our people to sacrifice and get there. But then I’ll get off my soapbox for a moment and complement you – you hit on one of the two core themes for this series. The first book, the Silver Ship and the Sea, is very much about what happens when we are actually different. Today, humans everywhere are very good at finding ways to hold prejudice for things that really don’t make us very different – skin color or gender or religion or class. I think it’s worth exploring what might happen when we really are different. We are steadily getting better at accepting differences (same discussion as the space one – a lot of good has happened in a short time. From woman’s suffrage to gay marriage has not been a long time for so much and so deep a set of cultural changes).
I think we will be challenged, but we’ll work it out.
You coauthored Building Harlequin’s Moon with Larry Niven. What was it like to collaborate with such a masterful author and what did that experience teach you about writing?
I am so lucky to have been able to write with Larry. He is a fabulous teacher, and brilliant. At first it was downright scary, but later, after I got a little more confidence, it was just fun. Larry did a lot of work on that book. I could never have written it alone or even mostly alone. He gave me gift beyond measure; he helped me reach my dreams.
What is the best advice about writing you’ve ever received? What is the worst? What advice do you have for young writers?
Best. Write. Actually, the best was write fast. Write so fast your editor mind can’t catch up with your subconscious. I don’t know that there is a worst advice I can think of. My advice for all writers? Write. Writer’s write. I spent years writing about how I wanted more time to write. I wrote so much angsty stuff about wanting to write I could have written a novel. Just trust yourself and go, and if you write some bad words, that’s okay. We all do.
How is technology helping you to write? Have you tried any of the voice recognition programs out there, or do you use a handheld device to jot down notes?
I carry a computer all the time. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking years ago, and I’m thinking of trying it again. I am also drooling over Scrivener, but it only runs on a Mac. We’ll see if I decide I want it bad enough to buy a Mac or not (yes, I love Apples. I love my ipod and my iphone and I want an iMac; I just have multiple computers and I run a tech shop as my day job that is very windows-centric, so I would have to keep up to date in both OS’s and software. This could be expensive.)
You have a day job, how do you find time to balance it and writing time? How do you keep from getting ‘burned out’?
This year, it’s been hard. I have typically held a thousand words a day as a minimum, and tried for more most days, but this year I kicked it back to five hundred as a minimum. I still usually do closer to a thousand, and so I’ve gotten a third of the way through a novel, plus about ten stories done this year. But it’s less than usual. Work has been busier because of the recession (I work for a city, and we have an ever-tightening budget) and I have felt like I needed to do more marketing. So I’ve developed the Academy website at www.thefiveworlds.com and blogged more and been doing a science column over at www.futurismic.com. Some days it is hard not to get burned out, but then I really do love writing and that keeps me at the keyboard. And this will sound odd, but a long time ago a teacher taught me that death is a friend. I use the knowledge that I won’t be here forever to keep me moving forward, to keep progressing and to appreciate what I have all at once.
Many thanks again to Brenda! I can’t wait to read her next book. And be sure to check out her website at www.brenda-cooper.com
This is just the first of what I hope to be many interviews with SF/F writers. If you’ve got a suggestion of someone you’d like to hear from, or questions to ask, let me know!
