WEBVTT - Part One: Cory Doctorow on Speculative Fiction for Social Change 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.920 Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to cool people who 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.119 did cool stuff, which is sometimes cool people who are 0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.239 actively doing cool stuff, because sometimes the people that I'm 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.480 talking about are still alive. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy, 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.760 and this week I am actually talking to someone that, 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.439 from my point of view, is a living person who 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.320 does cool stuff. Coridoctro. Hi, how are you Hi. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.680 I'm glad to be classed among these still alive. That's 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.480 one of my bucket list items I can scratch off now. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.640 Yeah, still being alive. Yeah. This is usually a history show, 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.600 as I think that people who are listening now, but 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:43.400 I also have been more recently interested in talking about 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:48.000 things that are currently happening, and you're one of the 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.920 people who talks about the things currently happening in a 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.159 way that I really appreciated. So I wanted to have 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.400 you on for people who don't know your work. You 0:00:57.360 --> 0:00:59.040 do a lot of things, and I think you know 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.080 that I originally know you as a fiction writer, and 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.360 I know you for writing and just an incredible number 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.160 of novels that I've read, including ones that are probably 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.119 very relevant to our listeners, like walk Away and more 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:16.080 recently The Lost Cause. But also you do nonfiction. And 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.319 I learned this word a while ago. Would you consider 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:20.760 yourself a public intellectual? 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:27.479 No, I hate that so much, like I strongly prefer activist. 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.720 I think public intellectual is like how you launder the 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:32.360 fact that you don't want people to think of you 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.240 as an advocate. Okay, for a specific perspective, if you 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.520 want to maintain the pretext of the you from nowhere, 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:40.560 I think you call yourself a public intellectual. 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:41.600 Okay. 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.319 I'd rather be a public demagogue than a public intellectual. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.280 I want to be on top of a fucking barricade 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:49.720 with a megaphone. I don't want to be like scratching 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:52.520 away in a you know, study with a glass of whiskey. 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.080 I mean, I'll take a flask of whiskey up to 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:55.800 the top of the barricade, don't get right. 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.040 Yeah, that's a good thing. It goes with the megaphone 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:01.520 very well, because if we're moving in as is sometimes necessary, 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:02.840 to climb barricades. 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.640 Hard on your throats, screaming through the megaphone, you want 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.040 something to cut the dust afterwards, a little anesthesia. 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.160 That's true. Okay. When you think of yourself, do you 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:13.519 think of yourself as a fiction or nonfiction writer first, 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.960 or like what do you what? What was your dream 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:17.480 as a kid? 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.120 Like, oh, definitely to be a fiction writer. 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:21.079 Yeah. 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:26.880 I came up through the first and last approximation of 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.519 formal apprenticeship for science fiction writers in the history of 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:31.840 the world. And it was all due to this one woman, 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:35.000 Judith Merril, who was great science fiction writer, editor, and critic. 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:40.320 And Judy had been married to Frederick Pohle and their 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.840 marriage broke up in sixty eight, which was also they 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.280 were in Chicago. It's when the Chicago police riots happened, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:49.240 and she decided she just couldn't raise her kids in America, 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.480 so she went into self imposed exile in torontok where 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:54.720 I grew up. Like all the best Americans, I'm Canadian, 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:57.960 and she just had this variety of gigs that she 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:01.920 used to create this thing that was really like, as 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.600 I say, a formal apprenticeship for science fiction writers. So 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:06.280 first of all, you should know she got the books 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:08.280 in the divorce and she gave them to the Toronto 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.640 Public Library System. They formed the nucleus of what's now 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:12.720 the largest science fiction reference collection in the world. It's 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:17.080 called the Meryl Collection. Oh amazing, Okay, she eventually let 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:18.800 us change the name to that. It was originally called 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.079 the spaced Out Library. She didn't want it named after her. 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:23.079 And when I was like nine years old, I went 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.440 and took a trip with the school to the spaced 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.920 Out where she was the writer in residence. And I 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.639 knew who she was because my dad was in radical 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.320 politics and so was she, and I knew her from 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.080 that because her other gig was introducing Doctor Who on 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:37.920 public television. 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:38.320 Oh wow. 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:42.000 OK. And when my mom was at Teachers College and 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.440 out in the evenings, my dad would cook dinner and 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:46.360 we'd eat it on the sofa with my baby brother 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.680 and watch Judy introduce Doctor Who. And she basically talked 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:52.320 about like where the tropes came from. And she was 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.120 like this tough old broad who chainsmoked and had iron 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.240 gray hair and a gravelly voice. And she would come 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:02.080 out and she'd say, like, tonight's episode is about time loops. 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.920 I remember we invented the time loop at a Futurian 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.600 house spaghetti podlock dinner in nineteen forty seven. I'll never 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:12.520 forget because Isaac Asimov was there and he would not 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:17.719 stop squeezing Cmcornblue's girlfriend's ass. He wrote thirteen stories about 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:19.560 time loops that night. I took them on the A 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.640 train to Rockefeller Center in the morning and threw them 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.479 over John W. Campbell's transom. He published them in the 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:28.080 ensuing year, and this is where the time loop comes from. 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.359 So I knew she was because I'd seen her do 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.560 the shtick every week. And she was like, kids, if 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.000 you write stories, you can bring them to me at 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.120 my library, okay, and I'll make them better for you, 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:43.200 like scenes to ten year olds. Right, And she's this 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:46.039 like towering figure in the field. This is to be 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.359 Canadian about it. It's like Retzki offering to help you 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:49.560 with your stick handling. 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:51.360 Right, It's okay, this is actually one of the only 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:52.360 sports figures I know. 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:54.960 Yeah, me too. And he's turned into a maga guy, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:58.560 which sucks, but no, yeah, and he started making the 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.600 shittiest rye anyway. So I had a subway pass I 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:04.440 used to go down and bring her my stories and 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.200 then she would put the writers who she thought were 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.000 kind of compatible into writing groups. So, you know, seven 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:11.400 or eight years later, she put me in a writing 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.719 group with Carl Schrader, and then eventually that group included 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.240 people like Peter Watts and Alan Weiss and a bunch 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.320 of other you know, science fiction writers from the city, 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:22.880 from the region, and it was just one of many 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:24.720 different groups that she'd started. We were all kind of 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.520 Judy's kids. I went to work at the science fiction 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:29.840 bookstore at Baca Books, which is the oldest science fiction 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.680 bookstore in the world, when I was about eighteen. That 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.200 store was started when she bullied a local fan into 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.560 opening a science fiction store. I sold my first story 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.159 to a Canada's science fiction magazine on Spec when I 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:43.400 was seventeen. That's a magazine that was starting. 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:44.479 I seld it on Spec. 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:46.960 No, this magazine was called on Spec. I did also 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.400 sell it on Spec. Like. They didn't commission it from me. 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:51.480 I sent it to them over the transom. Yeah, this 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.239 was how sharp fiction works. Yeah yeah, so or worked 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:56.000 changes from your to ear. 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:56.599 Yeah. 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.400 But that magazine on Spec was founded by two fans 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.720 out west who she bullied into starting a science fiction magazine. 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.080 I edited a volume of the Testrax Canadian science fiction anthology, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.440 a series she began. I worked on a Canadian science 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.159 fiction TV show as a consultant called Prisoners of Gravity 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.320 that was started by the people Who basically, like she 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.520 mentored when she was doing The Doctor Who Gig, It 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:20.839 was on the same public television network on TV Ontario. 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:23.560 She found this thing called Toronto Hydra that was modeled 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:25.360 on this New York thing that had happened during the 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.400 Golden Age where groups of writer would gather every like 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.200 six weeks for a potluck and you know, movable feast. 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:33.800 And so all the writers and editors and critics and 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.159 illustrators and filmmakers and TV people and everyone in Ontario 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.960 would get together, you know, like ten times a year 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:42.599 at this event that Judy started. So she was just 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:44.919 like a fucking machine. And she was you know, she 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:47.320 was an incredible writer and critic and editor. But like 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.160 her great contribution was this right that she created this system. 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.200 Even the weird alternative high school I went to had 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.440 this incredible writing workshop that I found out years later 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.720 Judy founded ten years before I got there through a 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.760 writers in the School grant, and it was modeled on Clarion. OK. 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:05.599 So when I got to Clarion, I knew how to 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:10.040 workshop because I had been doing Clarion workshopping at high 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:12.400 school through this world, and I spent seven years in 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:14.080 high school mostly because I just wanted to stay in 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.680 the workshop, like it was just she was just a 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:18.400 force of nature. So I always wanted to be a 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.200 fiction writer. Okay, as to like, do I think of 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.200 myself as a fiction writer or a nonfiction writer. I 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.920 am living in the very strange end stage of a 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.360 lifetime of removing all the Jenga blocks that weren't low 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:35.400 bearing from my life, such that every activity I engage 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:40.200 in now is something that cuts into multiple parts of 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.920 my life and work. So everything is doing double and 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.760 triple duty as an activist, as a writer, as a journalist, 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:51.000 as a novelist, and so it's very hard to like 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:53.360 kind of take one thing and say, oh, well, today 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.640 I'm doing fiction writing. You know. People say, like, how 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:58.960 do you know when it's time to write something up 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.200 as fiction or nonfiction? And I'm like, I usually do 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.400 both right, and usually what each one makes the other 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.760 one better. And sometimes they do them at the same time, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:08.800 sometimes they do them in succession. They don't always come 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.920 in the same order. And so I'm both and not 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.560 only am I both, but they are inseparable now because 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:17.560 all the things that I used to do that would 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.280 have just been in service to fiction I've stopped doing 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.559 because I wanted to do more of the other stuff 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.320 in my life, and so I double down on the 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.280 things that serve more than one pillar, and at the 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.600 expense of the things that were uniquely about one thing. 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:34.840 I mean, right now, maybe the one thing I'm doing 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:39.400 that's very fictionee is there's a writer who I quite love, 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:44.319 who's incredibly problematic, who I'm convinced we can write stories 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.319 in his mode and rehabilitate his mode without the He's 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.200 a pulp writer from the fifties, and it's just like 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.120 super homophobic and super sexist and often very racist and whatever. 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:56.079 Oh okay, it's not who I was guessing. I thought 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:57.920 that we were building up to Hinland. No. 0:08:57.920 --> 0:08:59.959 No, it's John D. MacDonald, the guy wrote Cape. 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:02.480 Okay, I don't know it, who. 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:05.640 Wrote seventy plus novels, including a couple of science fiction novels, 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.040 mostly hard boiled detective fiction. Travis McGee series is the 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.320 one he's best known for. I went on eBay at 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:13.960 the start of the summer and I bought everything from 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.520 someone selling like their dad's pulp collection, like seventy books 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.880 for seventy dollars, And I'm working my way through them 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:25.040 at the expense of books by people who I really 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.480 want to blurb and review, and I'm reading this instead, 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.280 and there's nothing in there that's in service to activism, 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:32.560 and in fact, the thing that really reminds me of 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.360 I once ran into a Werner VINGI at an event 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:39.400 in like August one year, and I was like, how's 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.679 your summer, and he said, oh, my god, I discovered 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.040 Terry Pratchett at the start of the summer, and not 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:48.959 since I was ten have I discovered a new writer 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:50.719 at the start of a summer where I could read 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:52.120 a new book by them every. 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:54.400 Day, Right, Terry Pratchett would be that. 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.160 And that's what I'm doing. I'm reading a new Pratchett 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:58.360 novel every day this summer. 0:09:58.480 --> 0:09:59.120 That's amazing. 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.880 Forty one Discworld novels, plus twenty plus and stillary other books. 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.600 And so yeah, Verner was just like working his way 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.040 through the cannon. And that's sort of what I'm doing 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.280 with John Dy McDonald, because the lesser books are really lesser, 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.560 but each one has like one or two just like 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.319 fabulous moves. He's got so many great moves. He was 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:21.920 Stephen King's favorite writer when he died. Stephen King tried 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:24.440 to convince the son to let him out this race, 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.440 like he's so many writers, favorite writer, but oh my god, 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.520 Like I'm reading a book now where he's like trying 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:33.000 to figure out who's murdering a bunch of people, and 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.000 one of them is a woman who's been killed, who 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:36.520 it turns out has been the lover of a woman 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.160 who we learned as a lesbian. And he goes out 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:40.880 to see this woman. It turns out she has been 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.000 the lover of this lesbian who was killed in an 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.160 earlier scene, and she is in with the butches, and 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:52.360 like the description of the butches, because I'm listening to 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:54.560 it on audio. I was like in the pool and 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.200 I'm just like doing my laps and listening to this 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:02.199 just fucking surreally, like just like it's like he had 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:05.400 a catastrophic brain injury between the previous chapter and this one. 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:10.360 It's so stupid, so bad, and it's sandwiched between two 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:15.880 amazing chapters, like beautifully constructed, beautifully written chapters, and it's 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.680 just like what the fuck, John? And so I'm working 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.600 my way through and making so many notes about like 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:24.880 I'm just gonna steal all the good moves right and 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:26.800 leave the shitty ones on the side of the road. 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:29.360 And I'm gonna I'm writing a pulp novel right now 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.000 called Once His Enemy Action, which is like a Bond 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:34.400 reference because three times his Enemy Action and Bond. 0:11:34.600 --> 0:11:35.320 Oh yeah, okay. 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.640 And I'm just like, I'm finding so many little grace 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.360 notes I just want to fucking steal, and I'm just 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.000 stealing them like crazy. Is this gonna be so good? 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.120 So I'm just loving it. 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:53.440 So this brings up a thousand things for me. But 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:58.240 the idea of taking a pulp mode and applying it 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.400 to the activist fiction or you know, there's a lot 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.800 of words that all sound bad. Activist fiction sounds bad, 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:06.800 Didactic fiction sounds bad. There's no way of saying like 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.959 fiction that gets across ideas that doesn't sound bad, except 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:14.600 science fiction. But like when I cite when I talk 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.559 about didactic fiction, like fiction that is meant to teach 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:22.840 a lesson. The people I reference are you, Lagwin Butler 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:24.000 and Heindline. 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.040 Holy shit, that's good company to be in. 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:28.600 And I think you do it the most like Heinland. Okay, 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.400 just to inside Baseball. But I don't mean this badly. 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:35.200 No he's good at it. He's got such shitty ideas 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:37.400 and he makes them sound so reasonable. 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.480 Right, right, totally, And so for anyone who doesn't have 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.160 any fucking clue what we're talking about. When writers try 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:45.560 to write about ideas, there's a lot of ways you 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.040 can do it. You can drape it in metaphor that 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:51.080 Laguin I think is a master of. Sometimes Lagoin's very literal, 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:53.520 but like you know, sometimes the entire book is a 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.360 specific metaphor things like that. You can also be really 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.720 fucking direct and hindline and you and I actually might 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.960 be pronouncing Highlight's name wrong, but I've read more books 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.080 by him than any other author because my dad was 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:05.719 really into him. 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:06.400 No, it's timely. 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:11.280 Like I remember you wrote a book called was it Pirates? No, 0:13:11.400 --> 0:13:13.240 it was the one about for the Win. 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.440 For the Wind. I thought you wrote a book for 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:16.800 the Wind. I'm like, this is going to be for 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:17.160 the Win. 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:21.600 And that's your most didactic But possibly so if you 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.240 ever want to read a book that just explains capitalism 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.720 and how it works by way of people who play 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.000 World of Warcraft, who gold farm, which is a thing 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:34.000 that people used to do for a living, especially not 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.800 in America. If you want to hear about gold farmers 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.720 unionizing and how capitalism works, read for the Win by 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.640 Cory Doctro, And you do it. It's not seamless. That's 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:46.800 the thing that's interesting to me about it. Right, You're like, 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.600 here's an aside about how capitalism works, about how like 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:54.840 money works, how different exchanges work. But it never bores 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.400 the reader. Sure right. You don't switch to an essay mode. 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:02.160 You switch to a dactic fiction mode. And I think 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:06.040 that you do this better than almost any other author. 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:07.480 Is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:09.400 you about it. I wanted to talk to you about 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:12.560 you know, kind of it's the big meta question. It's 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:15.120 the giant question like how do you use fiction to 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:17.320 unfuck the world? Or how do you use fiction to 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:19.920 ask the question how do you unfuck the world? And 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.200 what leads you to different methods of talking about this 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:24.080 stuff in your fiction. 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.960 We have these these alleged rules in fiction writing like 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.320 show don't tell. Yeah, And I think show don't tell 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.520 is actually advice, not a rule, and it's advice for 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:38.560 a thing that's not working. So we never really know 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:43.720 why fiction works. Like there's something foundationally irrational in the 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:46.760 process of enjoying fiction. Right, you're reading about someone who 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.280 you know doesn't exist, but you're experiencing empathy for them, 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.880 which is like not a it's not a reasonable thing. 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:54.920 It's like, facially, it's it's kind of stupid right to 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.120 experience empathy for things that don't exist. Like, it's one 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.320 thing to experience empathy for even like an a animal 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.200 or an ecosystem or whatever, but for an imaginary thing weird, right, 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.880 And so we don't always know, like we don't understand 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.720 exactly what's going on, and so when we encounter something 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.920 that doesn't work, we make guesses about why it's not 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:16.920 working or how to make it better, which are often 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.960 two sides of the same coin. So one thing we 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:25.440 know about fiction is that it is much easier to 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:28.680 get a reader in the mode where they experience empathy 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.280 for imaginary things that they know don't exist when you're 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:37.360 using drama. Yeah, and there's something about that that kind 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.560 of triggers the kind of empathy response that then makes 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.520 the esthetic work of the fiction start to happen. But 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.680 notice I said it's easier to do it that way, 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:48.760 not that doing it in other ways. Not that being 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:54.600 discursive or expository is bad. It's just hard, right, right, 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.320 So like if you were, like, if you're trying to 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.680 do like a dance routine, say my kid is a 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:02.080 com headitive dancer. She's on a hip hop dance team. 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.880 So there are aspects of the choreography as they're getting 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.360 closer to the competition where they'll go, this trick would 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.480 be amazing if we could pull it off, and we can't, 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.440 and better to do a less impressive trick better than 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.560 this impressive trick. Badly, the judges will like it better. 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:21.680 And I think that if you're critiquing someone's fiction, right, 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.000 if you're an editor, or you're in a writing circle 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.600 or critiquing circle, or if you're instructing someone. I was 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.000 your clarion instructor at one point. Ye, then you encounter 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:32.120 something that's not working, you go through it and you're like, well, 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.440 there's this like giant chunk of exposition here. And it's 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:38.840 not that this giant chunk of exposition could not be 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.440 made to work. I just don't know if this writer 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.400 can make it work, or you know, like I don't 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:46.920 know how to tell them how to make it work. 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:48.400 So I'm going to say, stop trying to do this 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.240 fucking hard thing and do an easier one. Right, But 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.640 exposition that works, Holy shit, it's great. Right. We still 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.800 read fucking Moby Dick, a book that's just about like 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.320 exposition about whale hunting, right, it's a techno thriller about 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:02.960 whale hunting. 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:06.119 Yeah, Kim Stanley Robinson will make me read about landscapes 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:07.240 in it Arctica. 0:17:06.840 --> 0:17:08.000 And Mars totally. 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.680 Now I look at geography different because I have read 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:12.480 hundreds of pages of that man. 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:14.840 One hundred percent. So yeah, So, like there's so much 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.879 of this right in genre, and genre is not afraid 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.159 to do it, you know, like if genre has a 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.000 thing that a move that doesn't want to make because 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.960 it doesn't want to bore you, right, right, which like 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.720 there's boring fiction that's really good, right, Like there's lots 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:33.240 of plotless kind of character study fiction. It's very subtle 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:37.240 and whatever that you know, science fiction, fantasy, pulps, thrillers. 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:40.119 We just don't want to try doing it right. That 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:44.320 is fucking hard to do well, to be boring and interesting, 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:46.600 Like it's it sounds like a contradiction until you find 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:48.280 someone who does it well, and they're like, oh, I 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:50.800 just like, boy, I just like I read this whole 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:52.879 thing and when I was done, I just felt like 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.399 I've been knifed in the guts. And I no, I 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.480 didn't never saw the blade, and I just don't know 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.000 where it came from. And like, yeah, with genre, you 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.160 always know where the blade is, right, there's a great 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:04.879 will and give some bit. Where he's interview in the 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:08.000 Paris Review about writing science fiction, He's like, I'm in 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:10.960 a lineage with dash ol Hammett. I'm a pulp writer. 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.360 I can plot. My tractor has wheels on it when 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:18.280 I you know, like I sit down to write a 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.960 story and I get that thing in gear and it 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.800 just starts to fucking move. And that's who I am, 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:25.800 and that's how I write. I might be florid, I 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:28.440 might be poetic, I might do all this other stuff, 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.720 but I am a plotting writer, and I'm a genre writer. 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:34.720 I'm a plotting writer too. There's always a lot of 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.879 stuff happening, but it might have exposition, and you know, 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.479 you want to rate a plot. He writer read Neil Stevenson, Right, 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:42.760 this is a guy who's got so much stuff, but 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.439 also a guy who's never afraid to do exposition. Right, 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.000 there's a bit in cryptonomcons sixty three hundred words about 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.960 eating cereal that is so interesting and cool, and I'm like, 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.800 I just want that expanded to full novel length, right, 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.720 like write his thesis about eating Captain Crunch, which like, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.160 it's so good and unless a writer could never pull 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.040 it off. And Stevenson, especially as early books, they've got 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:07.280 problems right there. Every book is flawed in some way 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:09.440 or another, right, right, he got a lot of shit 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:10.200 for his endings. 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:12.239 I think writing a novel is the hardest thing I've 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:14.800