This
interview with John Meaney was conducted by Kevin Mahoney in the Summer of
1998, just after the publication of John's novel, To Hold Infinity.
KM: In the novel, the main
character, Yoshiko, enthuses about the old adventures of "Chandri, Space
explorer". What fired up your imagination when you were younger?
John
Meaney: I remember strange, psychedelic, Alice-in-Wonderland
pre-schooldays. I vividly recalled a book (read when I was five), about a
boy who stowed away on a rocket ship to the moon. Three years later, I
discovered the juvenile novels of Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton; everything
follows from those beginnings.
Dickens, Shakespeare, the romantic poets? I liked them all, but
they didn't have that imagination-stretching scope of vision which science
fiction provides. (Consider the beginning of "Time is the Simplest
Thing", the first adult SF I read: a man, telepathically linked to an
exploring machine on a far world, which is rolling across an endless grey
plain. Inside the strange structure, a creature waits. The
man/machine enters, and senses this thought: "Hi, pal. I trade with
you my mind". It's as atmospheric as Pip's discovery of the convict
in the graveyard, and a damn sight more imaginative, particularly to an eleven
year old reader).
As for real science? SF provides a poor training-ground, in many
ways. (A simplistic SF plot device from decades past: a young telepathic
boy, living in hiding, uses super-science to design and manufacture a
spacecraft? That kind of thing is arrant nonsense).
On the other hand, when I reached university, relativity startled
only the non-SF readers. To those of us who had grown up with Heinlein,
relativistic time dilation was no stranger. We'd read about the twin who
voyaged to the stars and returned only a few years older, while his Earthbound
brother aged many decades.
KM: What led you to become
a writer?
John
Meaney: All of the above. And English teachers, good and bad.
Some of them allowed me to submit SF stories instead of impersonal essays - how
generous, in retrospect!
You know the kind of assignment: write, for an example, an essay
entitled 'The Lawnmower'. What I wrote about in that case was a lawnmower
blade disrupting a molecular system which contains, within one atom, an entire
universe. Simultaneously, in that continuum, a lawnmower blade disrupts
another atomic universe, etc. in infinite regress.
Scary, isn't it. When I write about an alternative continuum where
the physical dimensions are fractal, I'm adding a sophisticated gloss to ideas
I had when I was about thirteen years old!
I got good grades for those stories, and a bad grade when I first
submitted one to a later teacher: "This kind of thing is not suitable for
an O-level class". (To get the tone of voice right, imagine a Welsh
Jean Brodie).
This really hacked me off - obviously, since I recall it decades later -
because of the sheer narrow-minded ignorance and restricted world view which
characterises such thinking. That story began with a rumination on the
difference, at a molecular level, on the difference between life and non-life.
It was adequately written (I know: I can recall which authors I was
plagiarising!), and addressed an issue which remains one of the deepest
questions in science and philosophy today.
It's rather boring that C.P. Snow's separation of the science and the
humanities remains true; I feel rather glad, on the other hand, that science
fiction has stayed beyond the literary pale, in Britain at least.
(American visitors to the World SF Convention in Glasgow 1995, were amazed at
the sensational, stupid press coverage: the kind of reportage they haven't seen
for twenty years in the States).
KM: Like Chandri, the two
main characters in the novel are Asian. Do you foresee a collapse of
Western dominance?
John
Meaney: Actually, I do. How's that for nailing my colours to the
mast? It's naive to think that the culture we're part of will continue
into the conceivable future. What will the future global climate look
like? Who knows?
Think of some broad factors. Climate: an African drought forcing
refugees northwards into Europe. Economics: tight coupling of the
currencies (and the creation of the Euro zone) leading to a computerised
cascade as in 1987; or parallel global economies of e-currency and grey- or
black-market cash. We're talking about changes which might sweep the
globe in decades, never mind five centuries from now.
Think of the way phase transitions crash through complex systems,
leading to unexpected results. Think of contingency's role: the
place of the individual in history. (Could an anti-monarchist Tony Blair
have brought down the Royal Family after Princess Diana's tragic death?
Probably).
Perhaps Brazil and a resurgent Pacific Rim will cause a division between
the growing south and the declining north. Perhaps the Internet will
spawn geography-independent subcultures. So many possibilities!
Why, then, did I choose to write about Japanese culture? Well,
because it's so cool!
I've trained in martial arts since I was a kid. Not that martial
arts are seen as trendy in Japan. (I've sat on a tube train in London,
watching a group of young Japanese on their way to an evening of modern
Western music, while on my way to train with a sensei from a centuries-long
samurai lineage. Crazy cultural interfaces!).
There are many more ways to live than humans have tried out so far.
A broad example: democracy is no more "natural" a concept than
the divine right of kings. It seems preferable to the alternatives we've
seen so far, but our criteria for judgment are based on cultural preconceptions
(of the importance, for instance, of the individual versus the common
good). I'd like to see the global multiculture spinning off in as many
different crazy directions as possible.
KM: At this point in the
interview, I discovered an error in my research which had led me to believe
that John was the brother of Colm Meaney, the Irish actor made famous by Star
Trek. (Thanks a lot, SFX!)
John
Meaney: I mentioned my brother Colm in the acknowledgements, buried at
the back of the book. Oh, dear. My brother isn't the Trek actor,
though at least one reviewer assumed he was. I really didn't think of the
connection when I put Colm's name in. If I had thought of it, I'd have put
a quotation on the cover. (Colm Meaney says: "This is the best book
ever written in the English language," kind of thing). Overnight
success. Droves of Trek fans storming bookshops. If only!
My wife thinks I should get Bantam to send a copy of the book to the
other Colm Meaney, the actor, but I haven't worked up the courage yet.
KM: According to the book
buyer who first brought you to my attention, you went to school in Slough, a
town which is generally cursed. What are your memories of the place, and
how do you feel about it now?
John
Meaney: Ecstatic. I spent the first seven years of my life in
London, and my universe was grey dingy streets. I remember being
entranced, when passing the shops in Langley, at the stretch of grass - glowing
in the summer sunshine. Rural splendour in Slough!
During the past fifteen years, I've crossed the Canadian Rockies, driven
through the Arizona desert, and stood on the edge of the frozen Baltic.
They're the real thing - but I still remember those awe-struck first
impressions of Slough's miniature wonders.
Slough Grammar School (which I attended up to '72: before your
time!), remains an enduring memory, and has given me a fondness for
redbrick architecture. Birmingham - perversely - is my favourite British
cityy. John Betjeman, eat your heart out!
KM: I once wrote the words
"per ardua ad astra" in a horror story, as you do in To Hold
Infinity. Do you think that this is an apt motto for Slough Grammar and
for you?
John
Meaney: Sometimes I'm up among the "astra"; mostly its
the ardua which gets me down. That's about as apt a motto as you can get.
Speaking on a panel with Iain Banks at the biggest British SF convention
while your first novel's being launched: that's the
"astra". Struggling with self-doubt in the second novel?
You got it!
If memory serves, Slough Grammar's motto is purely "ad
astra". It's Birmingham University's (like the RAF's) motto which
mentions the hard work that you need to get to the stars.
KM: When I read To Hold
Infinity, I got a bit lost. I haven't really read any SF for ten years,
and even those novels dated from the 60s. It took me a while to work out
what AIs were, and yet they were also mentioned in Neal Asher's The
Engineer. Where did this shared SF language come from? What writers
have influenced you the most?
John
Meaney: Well, the 80s to the mid-90s were the cyberpunk era, led by
William Gibson, with Bruce Sterling et al: mean streets techno-sleaze;
"jacking-in" to cyberspace (via skull sockets); illegal technology
and drugs. A short story by Lucius Shepard ends with "What's the use
of a new technology, if you can't find a way to pervert it?" I think
that captures the spirit nicely.
The new shared language is that of real computer science, though
sometimes the direction's been reversed. Gibson coined the term
"cyberspace"; and Neal Stephenson invented the new meaning of
"avatar": an assumed identity in cyberspace.
I'm so lucky! Cyberpunk is typically near-future, and mostly
Earthbound, and it's changed the genre. Now I can use those techniques to
explore the far future in ways which Heinlein or Herbert could not. Mind
you, few of the cyberpunk writers actually have a computing or scientific
background: dropping fragments of software code into text pushes the whole
concept a bit farther. (My day job is with Europe's largest computer
services company, and there's a standing challenge on the company's intranet:
anyone who finds a coding error in the book gets their money back!)
The scientific background is informed by the new notions of
self-organising systems and emergent properties. For the best view of
this new approach to all scientific disciplines, read Collapse
of Chaos by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart: the book's review in
the normally staid Nature (the world's foremost scientific journal), said that
"twenty-first century science will be based on the ideas in this
book".
As for writing influences? Heck! In one sense, it's every
book I've ever read. The first SF writer I read for the language as well
as for astonishing ideas was the late great Roger Zelazny. Gibson changed
my whole concept of SF. However, while I can rattle off the names of a
hundred more SF writers whose books I love, I suspect my writing style is more
influenced by my favourite crime writers: John Sandford, James Lee Burke,
Robert Parker, Val McDermid, Patricia Cornwell. And I love the physical
tension in Adam Hall's espionage novels. It's almost tangible.
Sheer good writing can possess my spirit like nothing else. I turn
to John Irving, Thomas Pynchon, or Dickens, Shakespeare, Sartre, Zola -
wonderful writers, all. We're so privileged to be able to read their
works.
KM: What's the best piece
of advice you can give to a young writer?
John
Meaney: The best advice comes from Iowa Bob, the wrestling coach in The
Hotel New Hampshire. You've got to get obsessed, and stay obsessed.
Of course, he was talking about wrestling, but writing's the same as an
athletic discipline. You have to keep at it, and learn from your losses:
from rejections, in this case. (Interestingly, many of the writers I've
mentioned are (or were) either martial artists or gym rats).
KM: What's next for John
Meaney?
John
Meaney: Cardiac arrest or schizoid breakdown are the prime
candidates! Luckily, Bantam have already bought the second novel, on the
basis of a five-page outline. It's a situation many people would kill to
achieve, but it's not without its own rather piquant stresses.
The novel is set in the same universe as To Hold Infinity, but on a
different world and several centuries later. My editor thinks it's a
rather Dickensian tale, but we'll have to see.
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