I love how you interweave politics and personal motivations in the books. What kind of influences do you draw from and do you start with a character motivation or a political conflict or something else entirely?
That is such an interesting question, and such a difficult one to answer! Character is everything, really, in novels - but of course characters exist in entirely in context. Their social and cultural context, the context of their own personal history - and the context of the present moment, the immediate situation in which they find themselves. All of these will play a part in what comes out of their mouth or what actions they choose to take. Sometimes the characters themselves aren’t always aware of what is motivating them.
Of course, given my interests and inclinations, it JUST SO HAPPENS that most of the characters that I’m writing about are in the middle of, say, rebuilding a civilisation that has been destroyed after a terrible inter-quadrant war, or trying to build consensus about a relief mission to save a species whose sun has just gone supernova, etc. etc. While I do default to high stakes, even hyper-real, conditions in which the characters are operating, at the same time, I try to keep the motivations and the dialogue as naturalistic as possible. The kind of books that I like to read and to write are those that model a tapestry or a mosaic that represents the interconnectedness of life.
There’s an example that I use when I’m teaching creative writing. Arthur Dent, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, mostly wants to have a really good cup of tea. You’d think that’s a fairly straightforward motivation for a character. Unfortunately for Arthur, the place where he could get a really good cup of tea is his home planet Earth, which is destroyed at the start of the book. So Arthur’s heart’s desire is out of reach, and becomes a symbol for his loss, his grief, his deep longing and nostalgia for home.
On influences: part of what interests me about writing science fiction is that it allows me, as a writer, to move from real life examples to something more abstract. I wrote The Never-Ending Sacrifice after spending a year living in the US in the mid-200s and observing and thinking about how great powers organise their cities and their education systems and so on. But Cardassia in TNES isn’t the US in the mid-2000s. It’s necessarily also 1930s Germany (that’s from the show), with a lot of reflection on British imperialism (mostly as it relates to Irishness, which is my background). The book is about empires, not about a particular empire. I choose to write sf (rather than historical fiction) because I want to think in the abstract and not in the particular. The Crimson Shadow is about the rise of populism and fascism, and what we might to do prevent that. That’s always timely, and sadly turned out to be more so after publication.
Britain at the moment feels very like the Cardassia I wrote in TNES under the civilian government before Dukat takes charge. The crumbling institutions. The fraying social contract. The awful gap between rich and poor. The feeling that an authoritarian is waiting to sweep in.
If there’s one place where I am specific, it’s that I try to put people who are from contemporary beleaguered and oppressed groups into my Star Trek books. Because it seems like the very smallest thing that I can do, to say: “Yes, you will be here in this future.”
I’m not sure if that answers the question, so do ask more if you think I haven’t covered something!
