Fantastic Metropolis

Gabe Chouinard: As a writer living inside these characters for so long, what kept you from getting depressed and throwing yourself off the Sears Tower? I mean, how can you keep this relentless pace while writing, when it’s hard enough to read it?

Matthew Woodring Stover: Now there’s a selling point, huh? “Dude, you GOTTA check out this book! Made me want to slit my wrists!”

Writing it wasn’t depressing at all. Just the opposite. Sure, everybody suffers—just like in our world. But the book isn’t about their suffering; it’s about why they suffer, and what they do about it.

One of the primary themes of 20th Century literature has been the way the world—society, reality, what you will—inevitably erodes our hopes and dreams; there is volume after volume about the death of everything that’s fun about being human. There has been a time when a story could not be considered serious literature unless its protagonist is crushed by the futility of existence—the existential void—figuratively, if not literally.

I say, screw that.

Suffering is the fuel in the engine that drives the world. All progress is the result of somebody being unhappy—then making a move to change whatever it is that’s dragging them down. Suffering is not depressing in itself; what’s depressing is helplessness. What’s depressing is giving up. That’s why writing the book wasn’t depressing: because when these people hurt, they do something about it.

For me, that’s the opposite of depressing; it’s what keeps me alive.

Gabe Chouinard: One of the themes that you return to again and again is the idea of a person’s sense of individuality, and the power one can gain by recognizing that individuality and using it to overcome any adversity. In some ways, that reminds me of the old punk ethic of “DIY”, do-it-yourself. Are there parallels here?

Matthew Woodring Stover: I can see some parallels. They’re not intentional; I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. But yeah, there is tremendous personal power in recognizing that your problems are Your Problems; no matter how much they may resemble everybody else’s, they are as individual as you are. A great deal of trouble is generated in this world by people telling each other “You can only be Happy (or Successful, or Righteous, or whatever) if you try to be more like Us.”

There will always be people who want to knock your corners off so you can fit more neatly into their pigeonholes.

And a lot of them, it seems, write book reviews…

Gabe Chouinard: So, you’re a bit of a non-conformist. Has it been that way all your life? Is that what drives you to write such non-conformist books?

Matthew Woodring Stover: I’m not a non-conformist. I’m an individualist. No, screw the “ist.” I’m an individual.

Non-conformists are still mental slaves to the society they reject; they still use the rules of that society to define themselves, but negatively. They even have a uniform—I should say, uniforms, depending on the Non-Conformist Flavor of the Month.

Pretty much all my life I’ve just gone ahead and done whatever I thought was the right thing to do. It’s not that I don’t care what other people think; of course I do. It’s just that I don’t let it stop me.

I don’t set out to write non-conformist books, either. I just try to write honest ones. At the end of the day, what I do best is still pretty old-fashioned: they used to call it swords & sorcery. I just think—I really, truly, profoundly believe—that swords & sorcery (fantasy, SF, whatever) ought to be more than junk food.

If that makes me a non-conformist, then modern fantasy and SF are in a shitload of trouble.

Fritz Leiber wrote a novel called The Silver Eggheads, in which the narrator/hero is a celebrated author of “wordwooze”—which is a literary narcotic produced by machine, churned out in endlessly thick-volumed series, offering readers little soporific vacations from their real lives—and making sure they’ll buy the next installment. Leiber intended it as a satire on publishing, but his satire has become the truth. Our bookstores are full of wordwooze. Every genre, not just SF&F. You can’t get away from the stuff.

Yeesh. I hate that crap.