Fantastic Metropolis

Timothy J. Anderson: You’ve been seeing your short fiction published over the past 23 years. What do you think people expect from an Ursula Pflug story?

Ursula Pflug: I think Glenn Grant got it right in the Tor anthology Northern Suns which he co-edited with David Hartwell. It’s a reprint anthology of Canadian speculative stories; “Bugtown” was originally published in Transversions, the excellent magazine Sally McBride and Dale Sproule founded, which is sadly no longer in existence due to all the usual reasons. Glenn said, and I’m paraphrasing here as I lent out my copy, that my stories often took place in grim environments, their characters facing both inner despair and despair caused by circumstance, but that the miraculous would then enter in, often in small ways, lending grace to both the characters’ lives and their surroundings. I think that’s a fair description of what I do. I could go on to say that the darkness in my stories is an attempt to deal with the dark in the world that it reflects. I’m not happy with my head in the sand. “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” and so on. But there is always joy; it’s a poetic dancing in the rubble mentality that many of my characters assume, often aiding their chances of survival.

Timothy J. Anderson: In Green Music, where many of your stories come together, the suicidal Marina flirts with “dancing in the rubble” and it doesn’t help her. Or does it? In science fiction, people are often victims of external forces, although their downfall may be due to their own flaws. Would it be fair to say Ursula Pflug turns this on its head—that her protagonists are victims of internal forces and given the opportunity for victory by the external world?

Ursula Pflug: I think Marina is a victim of external circumstance. She doesn’t like the world as it is, much, and isn’t able to numb herself very efficiently. Whether this is a gift or a character flaw is open to interpretation. I think there are people like this, and that we need to listen to them. Being a person who can triumph over their environment doesn’t necessarily make one the best repair worker. Marina wants things fixed, not to have herself fixed in such a way that she can muddle obliviously through life, which is what she sees most people as doing.

Timothy J. Anderson: The world of your stories is at once commonplace and fantastical. How does that relate to the way you experience the world?

Ursula Pflug: That is the way I experience the world. I think the magical intersects with the mundane on a daily basis. Frankly I’d prefer a bit more of the fantastical, especially in the technology department. A flying carpet or a teleporter would be nice, especially as I don’t drive.

Timothy J. Anderson: The assumption of magic by children is a recurring theme in literature of the fantastic, and your stories are no exception. What kinds of magic did you possess as a child—and is it hereditary in any way?

Ursula Pflug: The answer would have to be the doors and windows to other worlds. Every time we see our world from a new perspective, it’s as if we’ve entered another dimension, and when we’re very small we’re quite happy to experience these transpositions as literal—it makes them quite a bit more exciting. The scene in Green Music where Marina describes to Danny the time machine she and her sister built as children—that’s one of two or three snippets of more or less literal autobiography in the book. My mother painted doors and windows, including elements of surrealism, or magic realism. One well known painting, entitled “Kitchen Door With Ursula,” looks from the interior of a kitchen out into a winter landscape. But in the reflection of the open door’s glass a little girl sits reading—and the reflected landscape is a springtime one. People don’t see it right away, and when they do they’re startled and pleased. My daughter is a poet and this sense of a slightly shifted reality also infuses her work.

I think I’m part poet in my use of language; my dialogue has been heavily influenced by writing for the theatre. There’s often several layers of meaning in my stories, with a tendency to veer towards the esoteric. Again, I think that reflects the way I experience life; on many levels simultaneously. This layered quality is something I try to describe in my work. Occasionally editors will try and have me pull a few threads, finding there are too many, and while there may be insight here I resist this as I personally prefer a sense of woven mystery when I’m reading and think there must be others out there who feel the same. Extremely structured uni-levelled plots often bore me to tears.