The inimitable Mr. Keith Leonard has tagged me to participate in The Next Big Thing, a series of self-interviews that doubles as a kind of poetry chain letter. The questions are the same for everyone.
What is the working title of the book?
I have two full-length manuscripts I’m sending around: Love, Machine and Saudades for Time Travelers.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for Love, Machine came from this fascination I’ve had since I was a kid with the human body. For a long time I thought I was going to be a doctor, and even now I’m amazed by the mechanical and chemical intricacy of living things. I watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a kid, and really identified with the android character, Data. I’ve always wondered what (if anything) would make artificial life like Data intrinsically different from biological life, especially in a ship of Theseus-type future in which it’s hard to tell where human beings end and their tools/machinery begin. The book concerns itself with those questions: what does it mean to be human, and what happens as technology begins to impinge more and more on the human form and experience?
As for Saudades for Time Travelers, that one grew out of my interest in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The idea is really elegant and amazing: anything that can happen, does happen. Every possible outcome of every possible event occurs in some parallel universe somewhere, and as long as either the universe is infinite or spacetime is infinitely divisible, there are an infinite number of such parallel universes. That got me thinking about how everything from tiny moments in an individual life to global events could have played out differently, and why if there is this infinitely huge multiverse, how weird it is that we only experience (and are therefore so attached to) one particular history. Saudades tries to break out of that single history a bit and become emotionally attached to stories that “didn’t happen,” or rather, may have happened somewhere/somewhen else.
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry!
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
This is tough. The speakers in both books are similar insofar as they’re not fully immediately present: they’re always looking forward or back, into another life or history or experience. For Love, Machine, I think Hugh Laurie (based on House), Brent Spiner (based on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Samantha Morton (based on Minority Report and Synecdoche, New York) would be great choices. Voices that are precise, often blur the line between human and mechanical, always seem to be thinking about something bigger than the immediate experience. For Saudades for Time Travelers, I’d love to get a single, shifting voice—maybe David Tennant. Capture that wonderful mixture of wonder/excitement and nostalgia. I don’t know. I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Who.
What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Love, Machine: What does it mean to be human, and how will human technology change this?
Saudades for Time Travelers: Can you be homesick for places that don’t exist?
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
It took me about a year to write each one. I wrote the first draft of Love, Machine between the summer of 2009 and the summer of 2010; I started writing Saudades in the first half of 2011 and finished the initial draft the following March. I remember there wasn’t a lot of time between finishing a first pass of Love, Machine and starting work on Saudades. I was a little surprised by that.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Love, Machine was inspired by my interest in the human body and my desire to explore it figuratively (rather than literally, as a doctor or surgeon). As for Saudades for Time Travelers, I’m not as sure. I’m really moved by the idea that there are potentially an infinite number of parallel worlds in which things played out/are playing out slightly (or radically) differently. It makes missed opportunities and close calls resonate in ways they otherwise wouldn’t.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Both manuscripts contain references to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, many of which aren’t explicitly called out. If/when these manuscripts see the light of day, see if you can find them!
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
There are projects I’m thinking about or starting work on that may be best suited to self-publication, but these two aren’t them. That said, neither has found a publisher yet.
My tagged writers for next Wednesday are: