Speaker 1: You know as a writer that you've made it when
Speaker 1: your surname gets turned into something adjectival or Wellian or
Speaker 1: kafka esque. And somehow it's the writers who are good
Speaker 1: at capturing systems, capturing bureaucracy that are the ones that
Speaker 1: we most immortalize in this way. Of all the famous
Speaker 1: literary works about bureaucracy, maybe nuns better known or more
Speaker 1: cited than Franz Kafka's The Trial Joseph Kay an ordinary
Speaker 1: man who wakes up one day to find himself accused
Speaker 1: of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose
Speaker 1: very nature is never revealed to him, and eventually finds
Speaker 1: himself in a labyrinthine network of bureaucratic traps. The book
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen twenty five, and yet even today
Speaker 1: we're talking about its impact, its resonance, particularly anyone who
Speaker 1: spent any time on hold to sent link but and
Speaker 1: you contend to hit the shelves last year a new
Speaker 1: example of bureaucratic ineptitude and wizardry tied into one. It's
Speaker 1: a debut novel, and it became an instant best seller.
Speaker 1: On the surface, it's a time travel novel. Speculative fiction
Speaker 1: meets romance meets espionage, but underneath is a sharp satirical
Speaker 1: exploration of institutional control of what happens when government red
Speaker 1: tape meets the impossible.
Speaker 2: The book in.
Speaker 1: Question is called The Ministry of Time, and it's by
Speaker 1: Callie Anne Bradley, centering on a civil servant who's offered
Speaker 1: a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering
Speaker 1: expats from a cross history to test whether time travel
Speaker 1: is feasible. Her role is to work as a bridge,
Speaker 1: living with supporting and monitoring one of those expatriots, one
Speaker 1: of those time travelers. He's referred to as eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: and his commander Graham Gore, a former Victorian polar explorer
Speaker 1: adventurer by trade. The book follows Gore's attempts to adjust
Speaker 1: to this bizarre new world of washing machines and Spotify
Speaker 1: and feminism, following Gore and the Bridge during one long,
Speaker 1: sultry summer as they move from awkwardness to friendship to
Speaker 1: red hot passion. In Calian's futuristic world, time travel isn't
Speaker 1: just dangerous, it's heavily surveiled and wrapped in layers of permissions, protocols,
Speaker 1: and performance reviews. I'm Michael Williams, and this is read
Speaker 1: This the show about the books we love and the
Speaker 1: stories behind them. Tell me about your relationship with time travel,
Speaker 1: because it seems to me that as far as a
Speaker 1: storytelling convention or a genre trope goes, it is one
Speaker 1: that is peculiarly characterized by its need for rules and
Speaker 1: structure and rigidit here, and I'm interested in whether that's
Speaker 1: something that appeals to you and whether it created a
Speaker 1: challenge for you right out of the gate.
Speaker 2: I mean both things. Really, it appealed to me because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the stakes don't work without
Speaker 2: a certain amount of rigidity and without certain rules. I
Speaker 2: also think this is true of things like human relationships,
Speaker 2: community interaction, like these things depend on both agreed rules
Speaker 2: and certain level of stakes. So that definitely appealed to
Speaker 2: me when I first started writing, because I was more
Speaker 2: interested in the kind of after effects of having time
Speaker 2: traveled than the science of time travel. So I was
Speaker 2: being a bit vague about exactly how the rules worked,
Speaker 2: and I got I think it was almost a thousand
Speaker 2: words from one of my editors in a marginal note,
Speaker 2: like you have to explain how this works because otherwise
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. You can hop back in time and
Speaker 2: anything could happen, and you could you know, there's a timeline,
Speaker 2: whether everyone is just a flying monkey, and everything's absolutely fine.
Speaker 2: So even though I did the rules really appealed to me,
Speaker 2: I was also messing around with the rules until someone
Speaker 2: poked me with a stick to make me set them
Speaker 2: up properly.
Speaker 1: It's such a funny thing because the rules matter in
Speaker 1: an ideas sense, but they met her even more in
Speaker 1: a narrative sense, like, as you said, to set up
Speaker 1: the rules so you know where the stakes are. But
Speaker 1: the other thing that you need to do, and I
Speaker 1: think all time travel literature to a certain extent has
Speaker 1: to do, is find its own limitations. How do we
Speaker 1: ring fence this off so that it doesn't become completely weightless?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because also I think narrative demands a certain amount
Speaker 2: of linear focus, and I think that things like character progression,
Speaker 2: narrative progression, emotional progression requires a certain amount of as
Speaker 2: you say, ring fencing of the timeline. So if you
Speaker 2: were just throwing people around chaotically, there's nothing really for
Speaker 2: a reader to hook into. You want to be following
Speaker 2: someone watching the bounce around. I mean, maybe Calvino would
Speaker 2: disagree with me, certainly for a book like this.
Speaker 1: It strikes me that when we talk about rules or
Speaker 1: structural stuff, the other way to talk about that is
Speaker 1: the language. Settling on what the kind of agreed language
Speaker 1: is for an imaginary thing goes a long way to
Speaker 1: rendering it real. How quickly did the language of the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy around time travel come to I'm.
Speaker 2: So embarrassed to say very fast. I would say maybe
Speaker 2: the language of bureaucracy and the language of governmental rules
Speaker 2: came faster than the big idea stuff about how time
Speaker 2: travel works and therefore what affect emotional, psychological it has
Speaker 2: on characters. I don't know, there's something dark inside me
Speaker 2: that is really drawn towards bureaucracy. This is like with
Speaker 2: John McCarey. Thing I read. I started being John lacay
Speaker 2: very very young, before I really understood even the political context.
Speaker 2: And when you read something like Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy,
Speaker 2: where he's just refusing to explain what he means by
Speaker 2: the Lamplighters and the scalp hunters and circus and the cousins.
Speaker 2: Didn't know what was happening until a second reread when
Speaker 2: I was much older but still was having a great time,
Speaker 2: just a great time.
Speaker 1: I think. And I'm glad you mentioned that because it
Speaker 1: is and you know, that's one of the other genre
Speaker 1: conventions that you play with in this book. But the
Speaker 1: spy novel is always great for that, and is the
Speaker 1: if it asserts a world with language that feels authoritative
Speaker 1: enough you go along as a reader. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: you know. It was only listening to an interview with
Speaker 1: Mick Hare and I discovered that most of his terminology
Speaker 1: is completely his own fabrication. The park is not real.
Speaker 1: They don't talk about secondes, none of that stuff that
Speaker 1: he created entirely for the world of the book and
Speaker 1: just lives it straight faced enough that it feels like
Speaker 1: something true.
Speaker 2: You've walked into a room where people are talking like this,
Speaker 2: and you're like, well, I better not a long otherwise
Speaker 2: they're going to kick me out.
Speaker 1: To embarrass myself. If I'd be like, oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: know they were called the dogs, They're not. That's just
Speaker 1: a convenient lie.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's so good.
Speaker 1: There is something about that that's nice. But leaving aside
Speaker 1: the human element for a moment and leaving side the
Speaker 1: polar explorer element for a moment, the kind of overlay
Speaker 1: of time travel, bureaucracy and the spy novel in this book.
Speaker 1: The interplay is a linguistic one, you know. The ways
Speaker 1: in which you allow those three things to make sense
Speaker 1: and function relies entirely on that shared language and that reasoning.
Speaker 1: And maybe no more acute than the idea of the
Speaker 1: people who are out of their own time zones being
Speaker 1: talked about as expetrates.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so that's a very deliberate political choice on the
Speaker 2: part of the ministry to call them expatriates instead of refugees.
Speaker 2: And I do think what the ministry are very insistent
Speaker 2: on doing. One of the first things they start doing
Speaker 2: is making sure the expats are using correct language, both
Speaker 2: to describe the world around them, but also in terms
Speaker 2: of politically correct language. And I think there's two things
Speaker 2: that play for me there. One is the quite hopeful,
Speaker 2: i think and quite positive idea that we create communities
Speaker 2: by having a shared understanding of the world we're living
Speaker 2: in a vocabulary that we can all easily refer to,
Speaker 2: and so as a result, our sense of self is
Speaker 2: kind of built out of these words that were given
Speaker 2: for ourselves. So there's the expat Maggie Margaret Kemball, who's
Speaker 2: from the Great Plague of London, who is given for
Speaker 2: the first time in her life the word lesbian, and
Speaker 2: it's wonderful for her. It's really liberating and really affirming.
Speaker 2: Then there is also institutional language, which is often taking
Speaker 2: the language of radical systems, radical responses to injustice, and
Speaker 2: institutionalizing and defanging them. So it becomes about language that
Speaker 2: is correct rather than language that is empathetic. And I
Speaker 2: find there's an exciting contrast for me there because in
Speaker 2: one case, you've been given new language, new taxonomies that
Speaker 2: are really liberating, and then you're being given new languages
Speaker 2: and new taxonomies that are actually quite deadening and are
Speaker 2: encourage you to think of yourself as ticking boxes rather
Speaker 2: than actually thinking about the realities of other people. And
Speaker 2: that for me is like the big tension in the
Speaker 2: ministry and the big tension for the narrator.
Speaker 1: It is, I mean, the easy temptation is to look
Speaker 1: to aw Well for that example of the way in
Speaker 1: which an institution imposes language to deaden, but also to
Speaker 1: other I think that relationship between those who are of
Speaker 1: the project, whether it's the colonial project, whether it's the
Speaker 1: corporate project, those who belong and those who don't, and
Speaker 1: to create an outsider status through a language. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I really like the all Wel comparison because
Speaker 2: the Ministry of Truth is obviously. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: this book is called the Ministry of Time is because
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that. It's never actually called the
Speaker 2: Ministry of Time in the book. It is just the
Speaker 2: title of the book.
Speaker 1: Espec. They will play it against Sam. They've heard it.
Speaker 2: It's not that they haven't heard it. They haven't heard it.
Speaker 1: So how then do you build a protagonist as you
Speaker 1: have with the Bridge, who is part of that system.
Speaker 1: How do you find the human elements of a character
Speaker 1: who chooses to speak and chooses to kind of live
Speaker 1: in a system that kind of sends off the corners
Speaker 1: of that humanity.
Speaker 2: She was such an interesting character to develop because when
Speaker 2: I first started writing the book, she was nobody, She
Speaker 2: was nothing, She was just a cipher. And in fact,
Speaker 2: the whole first version of the book was written in
Speaker 2: the second person, so that my friends who were reading it,
Speaker 2: it was just as if they were they were experiencing
Speaker 2: this funny game about living with a polar explorer from
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. First of all, my agent said, I'm begging
Speaker 2: you not to write a book in the second person.
Speaker 2: I can't coward to sell.
Speaker 1: Your agent's a coward. I'm going to say it right now.
Speaker 2: Chris, if you're listening, please don't fire me. But he
Speaker 2: also pointed out that like a love story where one
Speaker 2: half of the love story is just a nothingness, and
Speaker 2: a story about complicity where one half of that is
Speaker 2: just nothing, it's just a blank space. It's just not
Speaker 2: very satisfying. So when I started to write her, I
Speaker 2: started to think about what in her past would mean
Speaker 2: that first of all, she's attracted to the idea of
Speaker 2: Victorian man, which is very separate to falling in love
Speaker 2: with the person Graham or he is a person, he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, he's a full human being. But attracted to
Speaker 2: the idea of this Victorian hero, this dashing Victorian explorer.
Speaker 2: And then what in her background would make her interested
Speaker 2: in both afraid of and attracted to the kind of
Speaker 2: control the ministry promises. And I often use the word
Speaker 2: control rather than power, because I don't think it's so
Speaker 2: much that she wants to wield power as she wants
Speaker 2: to be in control. She wants to be in control
Speaker 2: of a narrative. She wants to be in control of
Speaker 2: the way the language that about her is used, and
Speaker 2: in control of any given situation that she enters. So
Speaker 2: when I was writing her, and I was thinking about
Speaker 2: the fact that Graham Gore is entering a world where
Speaker 2: the British Empire has collapsed, and that was for him
Speaker 2: his kind of driving force. It's a background that's almost
Speaker 2: not worth acknowledging because it was just it would have
Speaker 2: just been over the navy like a tea cozy. I
Speaker 2: thought maybe it would be interesting for her to be
Speaker 2: British Burmese or British Indian, someone who has family who
Speaker 2: were formerly colonized subjects and was a mixed race, white
Speaker 2: passing person as I am, and therefore has like a
Speaker 2: complicated relationship both to how they're perceived, how they're talked about,
Speaker 2: and how they might be received by structural power. And
Speaker 2: then I thought this, I'm just being readers and generals.
Speaker 2: I'm just getting in my own way here. I'm British Cambodian.
Speaker 2: I know that's not like a former British imperial colony,
Speaker 2: it's a French part of the French Empire. But it
Speaker 2: just seems like I am trying to make things difficult
Speaker 2: for myself when I know what I could write well
Speaker 2: is a British Cambodian person.
Speaker 1: Do you think that trying to make things difficult for
Speaker 1: yourself was about assuring a reid that projected autobiographical angst
Speaker 1: or kind of personal storytelling in it, Like were you
Speaker 1: deliberately loath to open the door to that kind of reading?
Speaker 2: That is exactly exactly why I was getting in my
Speaker 2: own way like that, because yeah, I didn't want the
Speaker 2: bridge to be she obviously isn't me. I've never alas,
Speaker 2: I've never lived with her.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, the element of wish
Speaker 1: fulfillment means that as soon as the bridge is rad
Speaker 1: as you at all, it's like, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: just a personal fantasy.
Speaker 2: This is just a personal fantasy where I get to
Speaker 2: be complicit with the British coming, which I love doing obviously,
Speaker 2: we all love doing it.
Speaker 1: Our sacred dream where Australian's.
Speaker 2: Yeah I was. I was really really resistant to that,
Speaker 2: and over the course of the like the editing the book,
Speaker 2: because of what it was published, was I think draft
Speaker 2: nine of all the edits there was putting things in
Speaker 2: about Cambodia, taking things out, working out what of my
Speaker 2: family story I wanted to draw on what I really
Speaker 2: didn't what should be completely fictionalized. My mother occasionally says,
Speaker 2: you know, it didn't happen to me like this. It's like, yes,
Speaker 2: I know, it happened to like this to a fictional character.
Speaker 2: This isn't you.
Speaker 1: After the break, Callahne cheers the audience she writes for
Speaker 1: and explains why Terry Pratchett is so important to both
Speaker 1: her reading and her writing life. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: I read another interview with you where you mentioned that
Speaker 1: one of the talkings to you got from your editor
Speaker 1: was that you needed to take yourself, you needed to
Speaker 1: take the work more seriously. I want to know what
Speaker 1: that is and what that lack of seriousness was. Was
Speaker 1: it a confidence thing or was it a defense mechanism
Speaker 1: that as long as you were playing on the page
Speaker 1: the stakes were lower. As long as you were trying
Speaker 1: to do something serious, there was something at risk.
Speaker 2: This is such a good question. It's something that I've
Speaker 2: been asking myself quite a lot over the course of
Speaker 2: you know, I'm here for the Melbourne Writers' Festival, the
Speaker 2: Sydney Writer's Festival, the Ouplyan Writers' Festival. You know. I
Speaker 2: go up on stage in front of all these people
Speaker 2: who I've been seeing much bigger audiences than I ever
Speaker 2: had in the UK, and I talk as if I
Speaker 2: shouldn't be there or I'm slightly embarrassed to be there.
Speaker 2: And my imposter syndrome is just like coming out of
Speaker 2: my ears. And each time I do it, I think,
Speaker 2: I don't know why I keep doing this. It doesn't
Speaker 2: make people like me more. It's actually very honest, but
Speaker 2: I can't stop doing it at the moment, and I
Speaker 2: keep on trying to pull it back. It was the
Speaker 2: same with the book that I was insistent, partly because
Speaker 2: it came out of such a place of joy and
Speaker 2: a kind of playfulness, and I was writing a playful
Speaker 2: thing that became serious for friends who I didn't feel
Speaker 2: would tell me that what I was doing was cringe
Speaker 2: and silly. To take this game seriously and to start
Speaker 2: thinking more seriously about what the stakes were. As soon
Speaker 2: as I started to professionalize, what was that a game
Speaker 2: just for friends? Again? I had that immediate instinct like, Oh,
Speaker 2: someone's going to find this a bit silly. Someone's going
Speaker 2: to think fantasy wish performan, this is really boring, this
Speaker 2: is silly. I don't need to hear what this woman
Speaker 2: wants to do with this frozen dead guy. But each
Speaker 2: time that I kind of ran across that in me mentally,
Speaker 2: I was being received by people who were interested, who
Speaker 2: were interested in the work, who were interested in how
Speaker 2: it might develop.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why I fixate on that. You described the
Speaker 1: ways in which this book's origins were a shared game
Speaker 1: with friends, kind of shared pursued, and so those readers
Speaker 1: weren't an abstract group of readers or of faceless readers.
Speaker 1: There were people you knew who, presumably you were trying
Speaker 1: to delight and amuse.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing I want. I wanted them to
Speaker 2: hoot and holler. That was my entire intention for the
Speaker 2: first draft.
Speaker 1: Does seem like you've unlocked something slightly important. I think
Speaker 1: from a ridally perspective, is about the reality of that reader,
Speaker 1: rather than the abstraction of that reader.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the abstraction of the reader who might receive this
Speaker 2: well or might receive this badly, rather than the friend
Speaker 2: who is going to read me in good faith and
Speaker 2: trusting me. I had an interesting conversation with Tory Peters,
Speaker 2: author of stag Dance and De Transition Baby. I was
Speaker 2: talking about my second book, which I panned in and
Speaker 2: which has been quite a painful process and which has
Speaker 2: received quite severe notes, as severe as a you know,
Speaker 2: no editor is ever going to tell their also is
Speaker 2: that there idiot, and that nothing they've written is worthwhile.
Speaker 2: But it has had to have its publication date moved
Speaker 2: so that I can do edits. But I was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just been I was doing it again.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, it's terrible. I'm I'm just a very
Speaker 2: silly person. And she said, from what I understand, you
Speaker 2: wrote the first book for friends, and now it sounds
Speaker 2: like you've been trying to write the second book to
Speaker 2: please this abstract idea of the follow up reader for ministry.
Speaker 2: I think you need to go back and write it
Speaker 2: for friends again. And it's sort of ridiculous that it
Speaker 2: hadn't occurred to me to just think of it like that,
Speaker 2: because it's true. I think I need to go back
Speaker 2: to just thinking about the maybe five people who I
Speaker 2: would show it to in the first place, rather than
Speaker 2: the people who may or may not be disappointed by
Speaker 2: a second book.
Speaker 1: Now, arguably the most scandalous thing you've done in ministry
Speaker 1: of time is you've written a book where you've made
Speaker 1: smoking sexy again. Ah, like decades of people being like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not sexy, it's not cool, you shouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, okay, so I've got this charming,
Speaker 1: arctic excit Laura who is just relentlessly smoking and it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of heart Also, I wrote it during so in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, where you know, we were still more or
Speaker 2: less in lockdown in the UK, and I, yeah, I
Speaker 2: really wanted a cigarette. It's one of those fascinating things
Speaker 2: that is both terrible and might kill you. And there's
Speaker 2: no such thing as like you can't have a mutual
Speaker 2: amount of nicotine. You gotta have a neutral amount of
Speaker 2: tar in your lungs. Also, it's great if you are
Speaker 2: at a party and you know no one really smokes
Speaker 2: indoors anymore, if you just want to be like, I've
Speaker 2: got to go outside and have a cigarette, and then
Speaker 2: you don't have to talk to people for the length
Speaker 2: of the cigarette except for other people in the smoking area.
Speaker 2: Who are your Kindred Spirits?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we've really broken important ground on
Speaker 1: this podcast, absolutely, But it does, Like as much as
Speaker 1: that's a very funny, very specific thing, it does get
Speaker 1: to the heart of something I really love in this
Speaker 1: book that is very deliberate, which is thinking about different
Speaker 1: social moras in different times and the ways in which
Speaker 1: they land so differently. It's one thing to think of
Speaker 1: an idealized Victorian hero who's a particular kind of stoic
Speaker 1: and kind of soulful and all these things at once,
Speaker 1: but then to think about the politics of the day
Speaker 1: and the way they probably played out, and the assumptions
Speaker 1: and the baseline chauvinism and racism and unthinking bigotry that
Speaker 1: is bolted on. How important was it to you that
Speaker 1: you weren't actively ahistorical.
Speaker 2: It was so important. It's actually quite funny to remember
Speaker 2: how important it was to me and how deranged I
Speaker 2: became desperately trying to imagine what it would have been
Speaker 2: like for this, for Graham Gore specifically, but to a
Speaker 2: lesser extent also the other characters, how it would have
Speaker 2: been like to experience the twenty first century Like I
Speaker 2: was really taking this experiment very seriously, taking this game
Speaker 2: very seriously. I was, you know, I was doing things
Speaker 2: like reading this enormous book about the Victorian home because
Speaker 2: I wanted to just imagine what the curtains would have
Speaker 2: looked like, what the flooring would have looked like, and
Speaker 2: just how a house would have felt different to a
Speaker 2: man walking out of Victoria in England into twenty first
Speaker 2: century London, just how his body would have reacted differently
Speaker 2: to the weight of the clothes. Clothes used to be
Speaker 2: much heavier and much denser, it was colder, and they
Speaker 2: didn't have kind of modern innovations with textiles. But also
Speaker 2: things like being interested in British polar expiration as I was.
Speaker 2: As I am does eventually mean you have to admit
Speaker 2: to yourself that what you're interested in is an imperial project.
Speaker 2: There is no good reason for those men to have
Speaker 2: been in the Arctic or Antarctic. There's no good reason
Speaker 2: for them to have landed in the Inuit homelands and
Speaker 2: died there in droves, just like for stupid reasons, for
Speaker 2: stupid reasons that were never useful in fact for the Empire.
Speaker 2: Because the Northwest Passage was not traversible, was just a
Speaker 2: racist project. When you are confronted with that, I think
Speaker 2: you can either say, well, I'm different, I'm different and
Speaker 2: my interest is actually really good, or you can be
Speaker 2: willing to interrogate why you might be interested and where
Speaker 2: the friction lies. I spent a lot of time thinking
Speaker 2: about how I would be received by these people who
Speaker 2: I was studying with deep fascination and thinking of as
Speaker 2: fully rounded humans who had different responses to being in
Speaker 2: the Arctic, for whom their deaths were tragic. They were
Speaker 2: completely preventable. They shouldn't have been up there, but it
Speaker 2: was tragic. It's tragic when someone dies in awful circumstances. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: and the idea of a Victorian man being presented with
Speaker 2: a mixed race woman who has a job, he still
Speaker 2: would have done some real spicy microaggressions. I mean, you know.
Speaker 2: Of course, the narratu of the bridge also gets it
Speaker 2: wrong because she's so institutionalized, and again her ideas are
Speaker 2: more about being correct than being empathetic, and so she's
Speaker 2: teaching him stuff that isn't quite right. And then he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't really understand because what you're saying things to
Speaker 2: contradict the world were actually in. Yeah, that was a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. Yeah, I just don't think it would
Speaker 2: have been interesting to me to have Graham Gore, as
Speaker 2: you know, turning up to me like I actually have
Speaker 2: always thought of feminism was brilliant. Yeah, in my heart,
Speaker 2: it's always been the case.
Speaker 1: But it also as far as romance genre tropes go,
Speaker 1: you actually need that person with whom you disagree or
Speaker 1: you have a fundamentally different worldview. Part of the friction
Speaker 1: of that kind of mounting desire comes precisely from the
Speaker 1: ways in which he is alien.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think this is the thing about romance,
Speaker 2: right there has to be a reason that they don't
Speaker 2: immediately make out. Now that now that we're in a
Speaker 2: in a world where it is possible to just swipe
Speaker 2: write on someone, meet them immediately like them, that's it.
Speaker 2: There was no friction, there was no at tension, there
Speaker 2: was no difficulty to sustain a romance novel. There does
Speaker 2: have to be that there has to be something in
Speaker 2: the way of them.
Speaker 1: You've worked in publishing for years. There is clearly an
Speaker 1: intimate relationship between your reading and your writing. Tell me
Speaker 1: why Terry Pratchett is such an important writer to you, Wow.
Speaker 2: Where do I begin? So? I first started reading Pratchett
Speaker 2: entirely by accident when I was nine or ten, because
Speaker 2: I picked up a copy of Interesting Times, Actually, which
Speaker 2: is for anyone who isn't familiar with the Discord series,
Speaker 2: and Terry Pratchett is quite late on in the Discworld series,
Speaker 2: talks about characters who have already been established very much
Speaker 2: earlier on in the series, and is the kind of
Speaker 2: in the middle of a storyline kind of book. But
Speaker 2: I was very attracted to the bright colors and of
Speaker 2: the cover I started reading it. I didn't really understand
Speaker 2: what's going on, but he's just he's so funny. He
Speaker 2: doesn't patronize a reader, he doesn't talk down to them,
Speaker 2: but he does expect you to keep up. He expects
Speaker 2: you to be in on the joke. He'll make the
Speaker 2: joke and he expects you to be.
Speaker 1: In on it.
Speaker 2: And that's such a deliciously welcoming thing, especially when you're
Speaker 2: a ten year old girl.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I do remember one time I met him to get
Speaker 2: the truth his twenty fifth Discworld novel signed, and he
Speaker 2: just knew exactly how like a slightly cookie I think
Speaker 2: I would have been twelve by the twelve thirteen, how
Speaker 2: a slightly kooky teenager wanted to be spoken to. He
Speaker 2: was just a very empathetic man. The thing I like
Speaker 2: about the Discworld series is both that they are like
Speaker 2: just very funny. He was very very funny. He used
Speaker 2: a humor like a you know, he could play a
Speaker 2: humorous joke like a trumpet, and he could use it
Speaker 2: to make a very serious point. I liked that they
Speaker 2: were funny. I liked that they were also very serious,
Speaker 2: which is not to say that they were not funny
Speaker 2: in places, but rather than that, he took his characters seriously.
Speaker 2: He took his characters seriously and their realities and the
Speaker 2: responses that they would be engendering in a reader. And
Speaker 2: I think he took his readers very seriously as well.
Speaker 1: Actually, what as a writer do you hope you've taken
Speaker 1: from him, given that he was such a formative rider
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: Partly that a sense of joy is going to compel
Speaker 2: both the reader but also the writer. I really think
Speaker 2: he enjoyed writing his books. I really hope so that
Speaker 2: joy is a perfectly valid and perfectly brilliant way to
Speaker 2: be launched into a story. And also the funniness can
Speaker 2: be serious, that humor can be serious, and that it
Speaker 2: isn't lesser, and you don't have to apologize for being
Speaker 2: a humorous writer. You can, in fact have something serious
Speaker 2: to say and still be very funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I think that's all right. And I think
Speaker 1: for me, the other thing to come back to the
Speaker 1: structure of time travel or whatever is he was very
Speaker 1: good at having set up an entire world with its
Speaker 1: own internal logic, its own traditions, and presenting them in
Speaker 1: a way that was matter of fact. If he wasn't
Speaker 1: interested in an element, he wouldn't over explain it, but
Speaker 1: he would set up the rules have them be there
Speaker 1: as the underlying reality. There's no imposter syndrome in a
Speaker 1: Pratchet book.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. He knows what he's doing, and he
Speaker 2: knows that you're you know, you're you feel like you're
Speaker 2: in safe hands with the Pratchet book. Actually, this is
Speaker 2: something I think about with magic, the way he dealt
Speaker 2: with magic, which feels like a really pragmatic and thoughtful
Speaker 2: series of limitations, because quite often he says that there
Speaker 2: used to be raw magic when sorcerers existed and anyone
Speaker 2: could do anything, just throwing fireballs world. In fact, now
Speaker 2: in what is contemporary discworld, magic is very limited. There's
Speaker 2: a limit that you can do with it because it
Speaker 2: is a depleting resource. And there is like a very
Speaker 2: clear parallel to the way we use technology and the
Speaker 2: way we think of technology with the way he treats magic.
Speaker 2: It has unfortunately slightly changed the way I read other
Speaker 2: books with magic, and because every time I see someone
Speaker 2: who's just a wizard doing magic, I'm like, where is
Speaker 2: where is that energy coming from? Like, what's going on?
Speaker 2: What are the rules with magic in your in your universe?
Speaker 2: Explain it to me?
Speaker 1: And like it in a Bureaucred's just swinging into action,
Speaker 1: all that a pen and a pair. Then you're like,
Speaker 1: well this won't do.
Speaker 2: Sorry, we have to tax this and there are tariffs
Speaker 2: on this song.
Speaker 1: Sorry, you are misbehaving and we are going to ride
Speaker 1: you up. It's the only way. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: Kelly and Bradley's best selling novel, The Ministry of Time
Speaker 1: is available everywhere. Now, before we go, a couple of
Speaker 1: time travel shout outs that I wanted to give as
Speaker 1: a big fan of the time travel genre. The Time
Speaker 1: Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. If you haven't read it,
Speaker 1: it is well worth reading. Don't see the stupid film
Speaker 1: with Eric Banner and Rachel mccadams. The book is romantic
Speaker 1: and sad and divine, and also a mention to Kate
Speaker 1: Atkinson's life after life. It's a kind of littery groundhole day,
Speaker 1: but its tricksiness with timelines and time travel are very good.
Speaker 1: I mean Terry Pratchett ready to mention in this. He's
Speaker 1: very good at time travel too. So there are three
Speaker 1: time travel recommendations if you don't want to watch Back
Speaker 1: to the Future again. Also, before we get out of here,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard the news, Michelle Ducretze was awarded
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty five Stellar Prize for her fantastic theory
Speaker 1: and practice. We were lucky enough to have her on
Speaker 1: read this earlier in the year, so if you haven't
Speaker 1: given it a listen yet, go back to the archive
Speaker 1: and while you're there, rate, review, share, listen again all
Speaker 1: of the things put read this into other people's ear holes.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's show. You can find all
Speaker 1: the books we mentioned at your favorite independam bookstore read.
Speaker 1: This is a Schwartz Media production, made possible with the
Speaker 1: generous support of the OUR group. The show is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans
Speaker 1: and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Posey mcacky edits our transcripts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, See you next week.