1 00:00:06,970 --> 00:00:17,390 Narrative features. How did the stories we tell shape how we think about the future, the present and the past? 2 00:00:17,390 --> 00:00:27,370 What is speculation for? And how might we construct better narratives for a better future? 3 00:00:27,370 --> 00:00:31,180 Narrative Futures is a podcast coming to you from Futures Thinking. 4 00:00:31,180 --> 00:00:41,280 A research network housed in the Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities. 5 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:47,700 My name is Chelsea. I'm a doctoral researcher in the faculty of English here at the University of Oxford. 6 00:00:47,700 --> 00:00:54,030 E.J. Swift joins us on this, the sixth episode of Narrative Futures to discuss climate fiction, 7 00:00:54,030 --> 00:01:05,250 nested narratives for deep time speculation and how she negotiates the politics of form and content. 8 00:01:05,250 --> 00:01:08,730 This podcast is interactive, following the interview, 9 00:01:08,730 --> 00:01:16,260 you'll be treated to to writing prompts designed by novelist and creative writing tutor extraordinaire Louis Greenberg. 10 00:01:16,260 --> 00:01:25,830 We invite you to share your response to these with us via email at Futures Thinking at torch dot o x, dot ac dot UK. 11 00:01:25,830 --> 00:01:32,730 We'll share these on the blog where you'll also be able to find the full transcript of each episode with links to the books, 12 00:01:32,730 --> 00:01:37,290 writers and ideas that we discuss as the world so radically changes. 13 00:01:37,290 --> 00:01:47,850 We hope these conversations and ideas give you insight and inspiration to think about how else we might live and create collectively going forward. 14 00:01:47,850 --> 00:01:53,350 E.J. Swift is the author of the climate fiction trilogy The Cyrus Project, featuring the novels. 15 00:01:53,350 --> 00:02:02,070 Cyrus Katta VĂ©ro. And Tomorrow. Her short fiction has appeared in Interzone magazine and in anthologies from Salt Publishing, 16 00:02:02,070 --> 00:02:09,320 Jurassic London, Newcomb Press and Solaris, and has been translated into Chinese and Polish. 17 00:02:09,320 --> 00:02:13,940 Her short story, Saga's children were shortlisted for a B.A. ASFA award, 18 00:02:13,940 --> 00:02:20,780 and the Spiders of Stockholm was long listed for the 2015 Sunday Times FFG Short Story Award. 19 00:02:20,780 --> 00:02:24,800 Her latest novel, Paris Adrift, a speculative time travel tale, 20 00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:33,830 is set in an apocalyptic City of lights and is another example of Swift's careful interweaving of politics and speculation in fiction. 21 00:02:33,830 --> 00:02:41,290 What you're going to hear now is a short extract from Swift's novel Katta Vieira, the second in the Science Project trilogy. 22 00:02:41,290 --> 00:02:47,680 This extract is an example of swift nested narrative style to produce deep time speculation. 23 00:02:47,680 --> 00:02:56,310 Following this will launch into the interview. 24 00:02:56,310 --> 00:03:10,250 I'm going to be a short extract from Carter or this particular extract is a radio story which is being broadcast to the city on the station about. 25 00:03:10,250 --> 00:03:14,780 On a forgotten day, sometime between 200 and 300 years ago, 26 00:03:14,780 --> 00:03:18,410 the musician who Liyana cut of that hour pulled her daughter's limp body from a 27 00:03:18,410 --> 00:03:23,420 street flooded with the South Atlantic and carried her home through a hurricane. 28 00:03:23,420 --> 00:03:32,340 The storms raged for three days. During that time early on, I sat in the attic of her house with her daughter and son to her. 29 00:03:32,340 --> 00:03:40,180 On the first day, the South Atlantic plopped things from houses and boil them down the streets and strange floating processions. 30 00:03:40,180 --> 00:03:44,620 On the second day, the wind took the roof or hoody on his house. 31 00:03:44,620 --> 00:03:48,370 She did it to take the body of her child and it did not. 32 00:03:48,370 --> 00:03:56,140 The child's turn blue and cold when the rain ceased and the sea fell flat and glimmered as though it had never stirred. 33 00:03:56,140 --> 00:04:00,100 Never mind drowned souls in the hundreds Pityana captivated or burned. 34 00:04:00,100 --> 00:04:04,100 Her daughter put the ashes in a tin and her guitar on her back. 35 00:04:04,100 --> 00:04:10,720 Then came south, which was the only way to go. Cars and bikes have been swept away. 36 00:04:10,720 --> 00:04:14,800 So she came on foot. She walked for a changing world. 37 00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:20,710 But it did not matter to her because she had already changed. And the change was in the ashes on her back. 38 00:04:20,710 --> 00:04:27,710 And it was not reversible. She walked through jungles that burned and cities that crumbled and slid. 39 00:04:27,710 --> 00:04:35,410 One day she passed through starved, ghostly towns. The next she was ambushed by the warlords of water was. 40 00:04:35,410 --> 00:04:40,600 She followed the rusting railway line south and no one stopped her. She said no words. 41 00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:47,210 She sang no more songs. Those who saw her paws experienced a peculiar sensation. 42 00:04:47,210 --> 00:04:54,470 Some said they saw their own deaths. Some snow angels, tiny shining ones, clustered about her back. 43 00:04:54,470 --> 00:05:02,850 Others heard the voices of the unborn. Each time the lamb changed on account of it or stopped and felt the soil. 44 00:05:02,850 --> 00:05:07,070 Each time she frowned and shook her head. No, not here. 45 00:05:07,070 --> 00:05:11,430 No, not here. No, not here. 46 00:05:11,430 --> 00:05:20,380 And so on, until she came to a valley with a cold running river and barren hills rising gold around at a bend in the river, Julianna stopped. 47 00:05:20,380 --> 00:05:29,320 The riverbank was rough and muddy. Here, yes, here, she dug a hole with her hands a metre deep in it. 48 00:05:29,320 --> 00:05:38,650 She buried the ashes of her little girl. She took out her guitar and she picked something sad and bittersweet on the strings, but she could not sing. 49 00:05:38,650 --> 00:05:43,800 She scratched her daughter's name in the soil. She was ready to die. No. 50 00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:52,240 A traveller passed through the valley, a trader or short soldier or an artist or a nurse, and asked who she was. 51 00:05:52,240 --> 00:06:01,190 Viridiana had no words and could not answer the trader or the soldier or the artist or the nurse read the name of her daughter. 52 00:06:01,190 --> 00:06:06,710 He looked at the valley and saw its potential. The river, the hills which encircled it. 53 00:06:06,710 --> 00:06:12,910 He imagined trees and agriculture. He went on his way to helping others and bringing them back. 54 00:06:12,910 --> 00:06:19,660 When he returns, mysterious woman was gone. Her guitar was on the riverbank, damp with the morning dew. 55 00:06:19,660 --> 00:06:26,850 Her daughter's name was still there. Dug into the soil. And there it is today, lessness beneath the foundations of the city. 56 00:06:26,850 --> 00:06:30,890 But if you look closely on a night with the stars in it, you can see it. 57 00:06:30,890 --> 00:06:41,800 Or so they say. At 430 a.m. station Kotov that are broadcasting stories for children or old women who act like children. 58 00:06:41,800 --> 00:06:48,270 The Alaskan is not listening, not creating only a little, maybe only with the periphery of her hearing. 59 00:06:48,270 --> 00:06:52,490 She knows all the stories. It is absurd that they make her heart flutter. 60 00:06:52,490 --> 00:06:58,090 Still. With her level of memory, she could probably quit the debate in. 61 00:06:58,090 --> 00:07:07,810 This one is an old favourite of the city storytellers. This is the story told in the tango clubs, the romantic one told by guitarists and flautists. 62 00:07:07,810 --> 00:07:12,130 This was the story the Alaskan heard first, but her favourites of the darker tales. 63 00:07:12,130 --> 00:07:19,440 She likes the dark. That is where the interesting things dwell, the dark spaces and yawning gaps in time. 64 00:07:19,440 --> 00:07:24,310 The Alaskan should have lived in the blackout years. They would have suited her well. 65 00:07:24,310 --> 00:07:32,720 Instead, she is bed bound in a hot, airless attic in a crumbling old district of cattle that are in a country that is not her own. 66 00:07:32,720 --> 00:07:37,370 Luckily, something with someone is always arriving in Canada. 67 00:07:37,370 --> 00:07:44,350 And the Alaskan is usually the first to know. It's really, really beautiful. 68 00:07:44,350 --> 00:07:48,100 Let's try to find something quickly that would work. So, no. So gorgeous. 69 00:07:48,100 --> 00:07:54,560 I think it's really emblematic of the lyricism in your will, in your work. 70 00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:57,620 So we first met in February, twenty nineteen in Oxford, 71 00:07:57,620 --> 00:08:02,810 where you've been invited to contribute to a panel on feminist science fiction that I was chairing. 72 00:08:02,810 --> 00:08:07,770 And I recall your reading of the White Fox in the red. And that was so beautiful. 73 00:08:07,770 --> 00:08:14,060 The room full of eager undergraduates listening intently, the snow drifting gently outside the window. 74 00:08:14,060 --> 00:08:21,260 And that was my first introduction to your work, which I have now since discovered varies quite widely across genres, 75 00:08:21,260 --> 00:08:25,460 but sort of within the speculative, fantastic space. 76 00:08:25,460 --> 00:08:32,510 And the white fox. And the red is a climate fiction short and so is the science project trilogy climate fiction. 77 00:08:32,510 --> 00:08:36,460 But they engage with these kind of ecological concerns in very different ways. 78 00:08:36,460 --> 00:08:42,980 And when you're plotting a story or novel, what kind of concerns of form do you take into consideration? 79 00:08:42,980 --> 00:08:54,250 When I'm thinking about fiction? For me, it tends to come from either the character or concept or of a place or an idea of place. 80 00:08:54,250 --> 00:08:59,000 And it's those things that really influence then what kind of form I'm going to take. 81 00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:06,100 I think with this last projects trilogy. I'd always conceived just as the three books, 82 00:09:06,100 --> 00:09:15,510 but I think what was quite important to me was the way the voices within across the novels widened as the perspective of the novels widened. 83 00:09:15,510 --> 00:09:21,210 So in the first book, you've got very much a sort of star crossed lovers scenario. 84 00:09:21,210 --> 00:09:27,480 And the two perspectives are limited to those of Adelaide and that crime on either side of the city. 85 00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:38,370 The haves and the have not. When we moved on to Category two and Turmeric, the third novel, I introduced gradually more voices throughout those. 86 00:09:38,370 --> 00:09:49,110 So they had a slightly different feel in terms of their structure and that kind of correlated with the perspective on the world widening. 87 00:09:49,110 --> 00:09:56,400 So you saw these these these different nations and cultures as the trilogy expanded. 88 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:01,250 So I think it does tend to come from the character for me. I really love that. 89 00:10:01,250 --> 00:10:08,490 And I think it's kind of part of what we're seeing in the kind of growing renaissance of science fiction, perhaps, 90 00:10:08,490 --> 00:10:16,440 or of speculative fiction, where stories are focussed around characters rather than about worldbuilding. 91 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:21,690 But you build your world so perfectly into your characters experiences of it. 92 00:10:21,690 --> 00:10:27,600 I think it's an incredible feat, given that this is your first trilogy. Thank you. 93 00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:35,460 I mean, I yeah, it's it's it was very challenging to work out where to go from Cyrus, I think. 94 00:10:35,460 --> 00:10:41,820 But it was really driven by the geography and the geopolitics of the world. 95 00:10:41,820 --> 00:10:49,230 And I think once I had a sense of what that world looked like, there were so many different stories I could have told within that space. 96 00:10:49,230 --> 00:10:56,000 It was almost trickier to decide how I would limit those stories, in a sense. 97 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:00,290 There's other ways, or I think I could have done stuff differently looking back, 98 00:11:00,290 --> 00:11:08,420 and it's very much a classic trilogy in the way it expands and is set up and I think. 99 00:11:08,420 --> 00:11:13,580 In another life, I might have done something different with the third book. But but there it is. 100 00:11:13,580 --> 00:11:20,420 Yeah, I mean, let's talk a little bit about those geopolitics when you will sort of worldbuilding the SARS project through the, 101 00:11:20,420 --> 00:11:25,820 I suppose, the multi vocality of the AM of the vocalising characters. 102 00:11:25,820 --> 00:11:29,900 What kind of research did you did you do to build the various locales? 103 00:11:29,900 --> 00:11:35,600 I have images of you trudging around Chile. Oh, I would have loved to go to South America. 104 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:38,680 I couldn't make it there. Mainly. Mainly due to funding. 105 00:11:38,680 --> 00:11:47,840 That's one of the things certainly for the second novel is as it as you say, it's set in South America, moving from Patagonia, 106 00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:54,830 where in the trilogy, the majority of civilisation in South America is located there across the belt of the Amazon, 107 00:11:54,830 --> 00:11:59,210 which is now a desert up to the Panama Exchange point, 108 00:11:59,210 --> 00:12:05,150 which is the kind of point between the powers of the north and south in this radically altered world. 109 00:12:05,150 --> 00:12:11,480 One of the things I did at the time was read a huge amount of South American fiction as much as I could. 110 00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:17,330 And really just to try and sort of soak up some of those amazing writers, 111 00:12:17,330 --> 00:12:22,820 not consciously trying to emulate what they were doing, but just to sort of absorb something. 112 00:12:22,820 --> 00:12:25,700 And I'd hope that might feed into the work in some ways. 113 00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:35,810 And I remember being hugely influenced at the time by Angelica Gora Dishes Kalpa Imperium, which is these sort of nested stories. 114 00:12:35,810 --> 00:12:42,800 Extraordinary work. Beautiful lyrical that in times this crazy flights of fancy as well. 115 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:50,840 And I think books like that sort of fed into that storytelling culture that I tried to imbue in category. 116 00:12:50,840 --> 00:13:01,370 So you have the stories on the radio. I also did quite a lot of research for that book into the Nasca jihadists of which has so many theories. 117 00:13:01,370 --> 00:13:11,300 But one of the theories is that they were part of a network for conservation and they were linked to the conservation of water. 118 00:13:11,300 --> 00:13:17,060 And in this world, which is set three, 400 years from from our world, 119 00:13:17,060 --> 00:13:24,590 those geoglyph have become a new kind of not so much religion, but sort of tenants of living. 120 00:13:24,590 --> 00:13:28,070 Of which the first principle is the conservation of water. 121 00:13:28,070 --> 00:13:35,810 So I was taking inspiration from, again, those geographical features of a RAICES so broadly for the trilogy. 122 00:13:35,810 --> 00:13:44,540 I was looking at climate writers such as Mark Linus's Six Degrees, which was hugely influential. 123 00:13:44,540 --> 00:13:52,760 There was a particular story in New Scientist about sort of Earth one hundred with this map that I remember looking at and thinking, 124 00:13:52,760 --> 00:13:59,810 guess that's sort of how the world must look. And so I was working on climate science at the time. 125 00:13:59,810 --> 00:14:03,230 Obviously, that has hugely moved on even in the last 10 years. 126 00:14:03,230 --> 00:14:10,700 So it's interesting to consider if I was writing the trilogy now, how it might look different. 127 00:14:10,700 --> 00:14:16,010 Based on the new knowledge that is publicly available. Yeah, absolutely. 128 00:14:16,010 --> 00:14:20,810 I think climate fiction has been growing in popularity in recent years. 129 00:14:20,810 --> 00:14:28,730 But there's also kind of the realities of climate change, as you say, in the last decade, have changed drastically. 130 00:14:28,730 --> 00:14:38,330 So I think if I think about your own trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 21 40 and the three Californias trilogy of loopy novels, 131 00:14:38,330 --> 00:14:44,750 Claire Vaye Watkins, gold, fame, citrus, et cetera. What do you think is is happening in that genre of space? 132 00:14:44,750 --> 00:14:46,310 What you think is the intention? 133 00:14:46,310 --> 00:14:55,520 I think there a zine, guys, given the looming climate disaster or or I suppose and or is there something I'm kind of more political going on? 134 00:14:55,520 --> 00:15:02,480 I think if you're a writer grossing speculative fiction in at least the near future, 135 00:15:02,480 --> 00:15:06,350 it feels to me that it's almost impossible to ignore climate breakdown. 136 00:15:06,350 --> 00:15:15,140 I don't really see how you can write anything set sort of near to now and not acknowledge it in some way, even if it's very much in the background. 137 00:15:15,140 --> 00:15:19,580 And it's not the sort of main thrust of your of your story and your narrative. 138 00:15:19,580 --> 00:15:26,810 And so I'm not surprised that we're seeing it more thematically across literature, 139 00:15:26,810 --> 00:15:33,620 both within speculative fiction, but that also what we might refer to as mainstream fiction. 140 00:15:33,620 --> 00:15:37,400 One of the things I do find really interesting about all of these novels is 141 00:15:37,400 --> 00:15:41,870 this There's often a tendency towards a sort of destructive narrative form. 142 00:15:41,870 --> 00:15:51,800 And I think that's partly because the whole concept of climate change is so huge and it can feel so paralysing the immensity of scale, 143 00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:58,820 both in terms of scope and in terms of time, that the sort of perhaps more fragmented narratives. 144 00:15:58,820 --> 00:16:07,820 I'm thinking of novels like played by James Bradley, a novel like The Swan Book by Alexis Wright, An Average. 145 00:16:07,820 --> 00:16:13,330 Australian author, which takes a completely different approach to time. 146 00:16:13,330 --> 00:16:15,060 But there's something interesting going on there. 147 00:16:15,060 --> 00:16:21,860 Normally, I think in some of these works, I think the deep time approach, particularly for someone like Alexis Wright, 148 00:16:21,860 --> 00:16:27,620 who is kind of pushing back against the terra nullius sense of Australia. 149 00:16:27,620 --> 00:16:35,300 And I think that I mean, some of that is is represented in the theory about indigenous future isms by someone like Grace Dylan, for example. 150 00:16:35,300 --> 00:16:43,250 But then I think about your short story. I'm going I'm gonna go back to it because it just it struck me and it stuck with me, obviously, for years. 151 00:16:43,250 --> 00:16:50,990 The white folks and the red. And that is a kind of human climate fiction kind of hybrid. 152 00:16:50,990 --> 00:16:57,820 And the really small it's a small story, but a really, really powerful one. 153 00:16:57,820 --> 00:17:07,700 Yeah. And I'm kind of wondering about about where that came from, I suppose, and how that feeds into the broader kind of grand narratives of unit. 154 00:17:07,700 --> 00:17:12,280 But, you know, the world is under water and never one has had to move south. 155 00:17:12,280 --> 00:17:15,440 You know, living on Antarctica, for example. 156 00:17:15,440 --> 00:17:25,160 And yet there's, you know, in in your world building, there is the there is a smaller story, I suppose, character driven like so much of your work. 157 00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:32,770 Yeah, I think with the the white folks in the red that was inspired by a just by photograph. 158 00:17:32,770 --> 00:17:39,260 It was one of the wildlife photography, the year finalist, sorry, possibly even the winter that year. 159 00:17:39,260 --> 00:17:51,590 And it's a photo of a red fox holding a dead white folks, which is the result of environmental change. 160 00:17:51,590 --> 00:17:59,270 Essentially, the red foxes are moving further north. The Arctic Fox territory is shrinking. 161 00:17:59,270 --> 00:18:07,410 And it's it's utterly tragic that these red foxes predate on on the white because they're smaller and. 162 00:18:07,410 --> 00:18:13,830 And I think I've always had a huge love of the natural world, a love of animals in particular. 163 00:18:13,830 --> 00:18:25,300 And more recently become more more interested in how we look at animal intelligence, how an animal intelligence differs from ours. 164 00:18:25,300 --> 00:18:31,230 And new science is being scientific studies that are exploring this area. 165 00:18:31,230 --> 00:18:38,690 I guess I'm interested in that sort of concept of animism and how we relate to other non-human beings. 166 00:18:38,690 --> 00:18:42,390 I guess is as a sort of concept of how we look at these people in the world. 167 00:18:42,390 --> 00:18:47,490 And I think the story was was perhaps tapping into that that area of interest. 168 00:18:47,490 --> 00:18:51,630 So taking the perspective of not just the people living there, 169 00:18:51,630 --> 00:18:59,910 but the those of the other beings that we shared world with and and thinking about how interconnected we are. 170 00:18:59,910 --> 00:19:10,500 And I think, again, that's we're gaining more and more of an understanding of how our own future is inextricably connected with with these 171 00:19:10,500 --> 00:19:16,450 other non-human beings that we can't separate out the two and how we think about how we address climate breakdown. 172 00:19:16,450 --> 00:19:22,610 We can't look at climate breakdown without also looking at, you know, rewilding, for example. 173 00:19:22,610 --> 00:19:30,630 Mm hmm. It's a really interesting kind of sectional representation of kind of what's happening in academic theory about 174 00:19:30,630 --> 00:19:38,430 non-human animals or human animals can theorised by someone like Almatov Ghosh and the Great Derangement, 175 00:19:38,430 --> 00:19:41,940 thinking about how when we when we think about climate change. 176 00:19:41,940 --> 00:19:51,780 And these concerns, as you say, we cannot ignore questions of rewilding and, you know, creating alternative ecologies. 177 00:19:51,780 --> 00:19:57,660 And I'm thinking a little bit now about characters that function as a sort of political or politically 178 00:19:57,660 --> 00:20:03,520 engaged vehicles for for different kind of political narrative or alternative political narratives. 179 00:20:03,520 --> 00:20:05,910 Your characters are all kind of politically engaged. 180 00:20:05,910 --> 00:20:13,490 And I would argue that the Red Fox and the White are equally kind of representations of Pernot, perhaps political with a capital P. 181 00:20:13,490 --> 00:20:18,210 But let's call it the small lowercase P political viewpoints. 182 00:20:18,210 --> 00:20:23,280 And, you know, they are all forced into some kind of political engagement. 183 00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:31,520 But as with the Red Fox and the White and with so many of your so many of the characters in the Cyrus trilogy, 184 00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:35,280 and they tend to work outside of the systems they're in, 185 00:20:35,280 --> 00:20:46,380 which seems to seems to be a kind of position that that I suppose my I as a reader, I'm assuming on your part as the author. 186 00:20:46,380 --> 00:20:51,210 I guess I don't sort of think consciously about that. And it's really interesting that that's something you've picked up. 187 00:20:51,210 --> 00:20:58,920 But I suppose in terms of characters, I am drawn to characters who are outsiders, 188 00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:05,220 perhaps purely because that's instantly a source of friction there in terms of the sort of 189 00:21:05,220 --> 00:21:09,870 plots that you're trying to create in the and the power dynamics that you're looking at. 190 00:21:09,870 --> 00:21:17,800 Someone's operating outside the system. But I think I will say. 191 00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:27,330 The way I see so speculative fiction in this sort of small people's school census is really is a sort of false experiment angle. 192 00:21:27,330 --> 00:21:34,540 You know, the idea that fiction can sort of pose a blueprint, can ask questions, 193 00:21:34,540 --> 00:21:41,920 can put forward possible futures or ideas, can ask questions of the reader. 194 00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:48,970 I don't see fiction as being there to give answers. But I think you can, you know, in creating a sort of dissonance with our own world, 195 00:21:48,970 --> 00:21:57,760 it can offer ideas that might otherwise seem inaccessible or impossible in some ways. 196 00:21:57,760 --> 00:22:02,800 Perhaps that's why they're they're operating outside of recognisable systems. 197 00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:11,530 Yes. I love that. You know, your characters, much like the form in which they're represented, are operating outside of a recognised system. 198 00:22:11,530 --> 00:22:19,660 I'm thinking, I think a lot about what we what we do when we when we pretend that art is not political. 199 00:22:19,660 --> 00:22:27,010 Small p political. And I've been thinking a fair bit about H.G. Wells and Henry James is argument in 200 00:22:27,010 --> 00:22:33,130 1915 by Henry James said the literature is art and art is art for art's sake. 201 00:22:33,130 --> 00:22:38,290 And H.G. Wells said, no, it has to be for something higher. Literature is like architecture. 202 00:22:38,290 --> 00:22:46,660 What do you think about the implications or what do you think all the implications of treating a novel like a piece of political philosophy? 203 00:22:46,660 --> 00:22:57,070 I think fiction is is both. And I think there's an opportunity for fiction to put forward ideas, for discussion, for consideration. 204 00:22:57,070 --> 00:23:02,080 But I also think there's a danger in treating fiction is as pure philosophy. 205 00:23:02,080 --> 00:23:06,820 You know, any any novel, once it's out there is open to the interpretation of the reader. 206 00:23:06,820 --> 00:23:14,250 And that could be interpreted in so many different ways. I think it needs to be considered as a sort of open. 207 00:23:14,250 --> 00:23:18,270 An open hand, in a sense, an open question rather than a dogma. 208 00:23:18,270 --> 00:23:23,760 If that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Dialogic as opposed to prescriptive. 209 00:23:23,760 --> 00:23:27,840 Exactly. And when you were writing dystopia, when you are writing dystopia, 210 00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:33,630 which I suppose is kind of what what writers tend to do at the moment when they're thinking about the future, 211 00:23:33,630 --> 00:23:38,100 no more of the 1970s feminist utopias writing a dystopia. 212 00:23:38,100 --> 00:23:47,260 You're making kind particular formal choices, which we've discussed. But what what draws you to the dystopic or as opposed to the speculative? 213 00:23:47,260 --> 00:23:51,180 I think it's quite interesting. I mean, thinking has changed brownness in a way. 214 00:23:51,180 --> 00:23:58,470 I think at the time I was writing this saw as project dystopia did very much feel like the way to go. 215 00:23:58,470 --> 00:24:00,810 It felt like the way to express these ideas. 216 00:24:00,810 --> 00:24:08,340 I think there's a huge attraction in the idea of the beautiful Rooy and I think trying to be a close race on this. 217 00:24:08,340 --> 00:24:12,720 That sort of sense of something that's broken and gone but retains its beauty 218 00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:16,680 somehow is the sort of lone wanderer making their way through this world. 219 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:20,730 And in a sense, that's that's how Ramona is operating. 220 00:24:20,730 --> 00:24:34,410 I think since writing that that trilogy, I want to move my work in a direction where it both recognises the stakes of climate breakdown. 221 00:24:34,410 --> 00:24:41,730 And what we stand to lose was also presenting a future narrative that identifies where we could get to. 222 00:24:41,730 --> 00:24:50,160 And that's certainly the approach I've taken in the novel that I'm looking to place at the moment, which is based on the Great Barrier Reef. 223 00:24:50,160 --> 00:25:00,070 I think dystopia is weirdly comforting in some ways because it's got that focus on the lone survivor in that sense of individualism. 224 00:25:00,070 --> 00:25:06,360 It doesn't really ask us to think collectively or find solutions. 225 00:25:06,360 --> 00:25:10,830 And I think that's something that, for example, Kim Stanley Robinson's work very much does. 226 00:25:10,830 --> 00:25:14,470 It looks well, you know, this is these terrible things are going to happen. 227 00:25:14,470 --> 00:25:19,600 But how do we how do we work from there? What? How do we get back to to a better way of living? 228 00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:25,660 Yeah. Robinson loves the committee. He does. Yeah. 229 00:25:25,660 --> 00:25:30,900 I mean, I'm equally kind of more and more interested in the individual experiences of of larger thing. 230 00:25:30,900 --> 00:25:36,570 I mean, it's the great question of, you know, of Western identity. How do we get back to collective living? 231 00:25:36,570 --> 00:25:44,370 And I think that the pandemic is forcing us to think really seriously about that and to think about local living 232 00:25:44,370 --> 00:25:51,970 and community living rather than look like slightly more individualise but global experience of of the world. 233 00:25:51,970 --> 00:25:58,320 But I wanted to talk a little bit more about your latest published novel, Paris The Draught, which is also very political. 234 00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:03,960 But a city novel, an ode to the City of Lights, Paris and a time travel novel. 235 00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,430 And those are really, I mean, novels about Paris and time travel. 236 00:26:07,430 --> 00:26:13,440 There's a kind of really important traditions in 20th and 21st century literature. 237 00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:17,040 And you bring those those traditions together, really interestingly. 238 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:22,470 And it's kind of a departure from the Cyrus project and some of your short fiction, though, not all. 239 00:26:22,470 --> 00:26:27,720 Yes. It's one of those novels that is a bit of an anomaly, I think, from the rest of my work. 240 00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,900 It was a novel that I just felt I had to write. I think everyone has one of those. 241 00:26:31,900 --> 00:26:36,180 You have to get Eco-System. I lived in Paris for about 18 months. 242 00:26:36,180 --> 00:26:40,830 I worked the night shift in a bar for most of that. 243 00:26:40,830 --> 00:26:49,620 There's something very surreal, slightly dissonant about working the opposite time of the day to everyone else. 244 00:26:49,620 --> 00:26:50,160 In that sense, 245 00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:57,350 it's kind of emerging into the day after a long shift and seeing everyone on their way to work and smelling fresh bread in the bakeries. 246 00:26:57,350 --> 00:27:02,130 And I think I just saw something in that experience that could be linked to the speculative, you know, 247 00:27:02,130 --> 00:27:09,090 what happens if you expand that experience further, if the world literally turns upside down, if you literally find yourself falling through time. 248 00:27:09,090 --> 00:27:18,030 So I think it was pulling something out of that particular sort of atmosphere or feeling that led to the idea of introducing time travel. 249 00:27:18,030 --> 00:27:23,820 It does pull together a lot of different strands. And I think it's one of those books that even works for readers or doesn't. 250 00:27:23,820 --> 00:27:31,230 It's a bit of a Marmite line, I think. And looking forward, what kind of narratives about the future do you hope to see? 251 00:27:31,230 --> 00:27:38,640 All right. You said you've you're currently looking to place a novel. Any any hints about what that's about, as in the novel? 252 00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:45,000 I'm hoping to places set on the Great Barrier Reef. It's has three storylines. 253 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:50,610 A 19th century strand, a present day strand and a future strand. 254 00:27:50,610 --> 00:27:55,770 And that's kind of exploring some of the ideas I've talked about so very much. 255 00:27:55,770 --> 00:28:01,830 A climate breakdown novel focussing on the impact of time to down on the reef. 256 00:28:01,830 --> 00:28:10,680 And I'm very interested in those different intelligences. I think in terms of what I'm reading about future, I love usual no Harare's work. 257 00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:18,510 I find that incredibly just easy to. With very clear sighted and so many different ideas and then to think about. 258 00:28:18,510 --> 00:28:24,940 I'm reading a lot of environmental works again, thinking about rewilding. 259 00:28:24,940 --> 00:28:31,730 Izabella Trees non-fiction book Wilding about the project at the Knepper stage in Sussex 260 00:28:31,730 --> 00:28:36,960 is it feels like a sort of blueprint for the future in terms of fiction and reading. 261 00:28:36,960 --> 00:28:45,300 I was recently really inspired by reading This Is How You Lose the Time more by Amal Belmokhtar and Max Gladstone. 262 00:28:45,300 --> 00:28:54,270 And that presents in a really beautiful, stylistic, illusory sort of way to possible pathways for humanity. 263 00:28:54,270 --> 00:29:03,030 I think that type of fiction, it's it doesn't have that sort of it's not taking that grounded, realistic approach of Kim Stanley Robinson. 264 00:29:03,030 --> 00:29:08,970 It's taking a much more evocative sort of way of conceptualising future. 265 00:29:08,970 --> 00:29:17,050 I think both those approaches are fascinating and kind of picking up where we might be going. 266 00:29:17,050 --> 00:29:24,240 I'm really interested in that idea about where we might be going as a as the sort of springboard from speculation. 267 00:29:24,240 --> 00:29:34,860 Some of my researchers suggested to me that the word speculation through very many roundabout etymological links, comes from Thera's for theory. 268 00:29:34,860 --> 00:29:39,750 And so we're theorising about what might come, which is about storytelling, 269 00:29:39,750 --> 00:29:44,250 essentially, which goes back to these kind of smaller stories, the personal stories. 270 00:29:44,250 --> 00:29:48,000 I mean, this is how people communicate their their experiences. 271 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:56,550 They're going as far back as the Decameron, which is a moment of shaping what comes after the black plague and what you know, 272 00:29:56,550 --> 00:30:01,710 what the rest of European renaissance is going to look like when you think about about narrative. 273 00:30:01,710 --> 00:30:06,480 I mean, how how am I suppose as a fairly leading question? 274 00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:14,220 But how how do you see the role of narrative when we think about the future and what 275 00:30:14,220 --> 00:30:21,440 kind of narratives of dominate for you as potentially influential or dangerous? 276 00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:33,210 It's a question you both types of narratives. I think narrative is something we have to be very careful in how we're using. 277 00:30:33,210 --> 00:30:43,770 I think it's hugely important that you remember me, remember the power of words of what a single word or single tweet or a single image can do. 278 00:30:43,770 --> 00:30:49,230 I'm thinking most recent about, for example, 279 00:30:49,230 --> 00:30:59,580 the kind of horrific narrative we're seeing around migrants arriving in the UK and acknowledging why and how those narratives are being used. 280 00:30:59,580 --> 00:31:08,130 Why are we suddenly having stories about this on the front page of them to detract from everything else that is that is breaking down right now? 281 00:31:08,130 --> 00:31:15,140 So I think as Reuters, we have a responsibility to think about. 282 00:31:15,140 --> 00:31:21,010 How we're using narrative, what we're trying to say, how it could be. 283 00:31:21,010 --> 00:31:28,600 Interpreted and co-opted. And at the same time, I think we we have a responsibility to be true to ourselves, 284 00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:36,790 to talk about the things that we're passionate about and not to feel constrained as writers whilst also 285 00:31:36,790 --> 00:31:50,110 taking the respect and the responsibility that we owe to the treatment of the subject we're addressing. 286 00:31:50,110 --> 00:31:56,380 Narrative features. For those writers and speculators listening, 287 00:31:56,380 --> 00:32:04,540 stay with us now for writing prompts and exercises designed to encourage putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard, 288 00:32:04,540 --> 00:32:17,100 as well as a reflection on the writing process. This section is designed and presented by Lewyn Greenberg. 289 00:32:17,100 --> 00:32:26,870 Our first exercise this time is a technical one. E.J. Swift says that in her practise, the characters or sitting in forms form. 290 00:32:26,870 --> 00:32:32,550 In other words, we can shape and structure our writing. According to the content. 291 00:32:32,550 --> 00:32:39,470 Let's play with this idea a little merging into with a few techniques we've tried in other episodes. 292 00:32:39,470 --> 00:32:46,140 Start by writing a couple of paragraphs about a busy market square in a place you've never been to. 293 00:32:46,140 --> 00:32:52,770 It might even be on a different planet. Described the sights and smells and sounds. 294 00:32:52,770 --> 00:33:00,150 Describe the activity, include some dialogue. Pause now and write. 295 00:33:00,150 --> 00:33:08,250 Suddenly, an unexpected event happens. A troupe of dancing elephants might come through and maybe a loud noise and attack. 296 00:33:08,250 --> 00:33:11,950 There may be an apparition of some sort posed now. 297 00:33:11,950 --> 00:33:21,310 And right. Now, make all the characters human, alien, animal disappear. 298 00:33:21,310 --> 00:33:26,430 Pause. Right. And then come back. Describe the scene. 299 00:33:26,430 --> 00:33:34,700 Is it silent and still or is something still moving? Have the tension and pace increased or decreased? 300 00:33:34,700 --> 00:33:36,980 From whose perspective are we seeing the scene? 301 00:33:36,980 --> 00:33:46,540 Is it first or second or third person, omniscient director who is fleeing the scene if there is no one there? 302 00:33:46,540 --> 00:33:57,870 Reread passages from some of your favourite books and consider how the form matches content. 303 00:33:57,870 --> 00:34:02,430 Like other writers in the series, E.J. Swift plays with temporal structure. 304 00:34:02,430 --> 00:34:12,000 She bends time and lists narratives in an ecological context to experiment with this technique, outline a story with nested timelines. 305 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:19,650 Not just any story needs to have an animal as a central protagonist describing how they build their nest. 306 00:34:19,650 --> 00:34:22,260 Consider the onion layers of the story. 307 00:34:22,260 --> 00:34:35,720 You might go backwards or forwards in time or generation, going one layer deeper each time and then coming out again. 308 00:34:35,720 --> 00:34:40,730 That's it for this episode of Narrative Futures. Thanks to E.J. Swift for the brilliant discussion. 309 00:34:40,730 --> 00:34:47,000 And as always, Tillawi Greenberg for his thought provoking prompts in the next and penultimate episode. 310 00:34:47,000 --> 00:35:00,390 I'll be chatting to Ken Loof about realism, alternative technologies and imagining a future we might not be around for. 311 00:35:00,390 --> 00:35:04,346 Narrative features.