We’re very pleased to be interviewing Andrew Bannister, author of SF Space Opera novel, Creation Machine. Here we discuss the debut novel, Andrew’s influences and future projects.
SFFWorld: Hello, Andrew! Welcome to SFFWorld. Many thanks for doing this.
My pleasure – thanks for inviting me. Lovely home you have here.
Q: We’re speaking as Creation Machine is about to be published in the UK. Can you tell us a little about it?
Well, it’s set in The Spin, which is an ancient artificial cluster of planets and suns. No one knows who made it, or why, but they must have been incredibly advanced and powerful compared with the societies in existence at the time the book is set. Even though the people in Creation Machine are advanced compared with us, they’re just primitives squatting the ruins of something far greater.
I’m really telling two main stories. The first is about Fleare, a young revolutionary soldier who’s ended up on the losing side in a civil war between her group, Society Otherwise, and the political-industrial combine called the Hegemony – which happens to be run by her father Viklun. She’s been a prisoner of war for three years until she is rescued by the disembodied remains of her former platoon-mate and lover, Muz, who has been reincarnated as a cloud of autonomous nano-machines. They set about reuniting their old squad and finishing unfinished business with the victorious Hegemony, and of course with her father.
Meanwhile, something’s going on right in the middle of The Spin. Most places keep their nasty hinterland on the outside, but The Spin never does the obvious. Deep in its centre is the Cordern, and the vile princes of the Cordern are the Fortunate Protectorate, a rapacious medievalist bunch who make a living by conquering, enslaving and asset-stripping anyone who happens to come close enough. The second-in-command of the Fortunate Protectorate is Alameche, who is possibly the most unpleasant person in the galaxy. When he hears of the discovery of an ancient artefact that seems to have been left behind the people who built the Spin, you just know it isn’t going to end well for someone.
Q: This is the first in a series?
Yes. There are three books at the moment. Creation Machine, of course. Then Iron Gods, which is set ten thousand years later – that is already written, and the good people of Transworld are going through it and probably saying things like, woah, he’s been drinking again. And after that, and set a hundred thousand years later, Stone Clock. I’m working on that now.
Q: When I read it and reviewed it*, one of the things that struck me most was how much Creation Machine is part of a fully realised universe, with a history and a backstory, before we even get to the events of Creation Machine. This suggests to me a lot of planning beforehand. Can you tell us a little about the world building that has gone on, before the novel was written?
I wish I could pretend I was that organised! For me, it’s all about the Dark Ages idea that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. I wanted a universe that the current inhabitants found baffling; something which at the same time defied logic and presented huge risks.
The idea of The Spin grew out of a lot of good science fiction tropes, of course. The Klemperer Rosette in the ‘Ringworld’ novels by Larry Niven, for example, or the earlier ring of artificial planets in Arthur C Clarke’s ‘The City and the Stars’. I just extended it, using the infinite special effects budget of science fiction, to a whole cluster.
Q: Ah: two favourites of mine mentioned there. You’ve mentioned tropes there, which would suggest that you’re using traditional SF elements in Creation Machine. Thinking of such ideas, then, what came first – the worlds or the characters?
Oh, the characters. I started with the idea of the indomitable woman imprisoned in a tower. But the tower had to be somewhere, so I thought of the Monastery. And the Monastery had to be somewhere, so I came up with Obel, the dying moon. And Obel had to be somewhere… It’s like standing in front of a mirror and pulling a loose thread hanging from your jacket, and watching the jacket unravel. Only backwards.
Q: I have said that I was pleasantly surprised how emotionally attached to some of the characters I got whilst reading. Do you, as the writer, have favourites?
Obviously I love Fleare. She’s just so unbreakable. She is honest and fierce and sort of bloody-minded, and she has this trick of standing a little back and observing, even when what she is observing is herself heading towards her own destruction. Without getting too serious, I think Fleare is the character I have most empathy for.
I like Muz, but I don’t love him. He is a slightly guilty pleasure – although of course he does sort of redeem himself.
However, a confession – I have a soft spot for the baddies. Alameche has no real excuse for his horribleness, and it is almost to his credit that he never looks for one. He hasn’t the slightest trace of self-doubt and, if I am honest, I am just a bit jealous of that.
Q: One of the things I loved was the variety of landscapes that the characters experience – there’s cold mountains, hot deserts, lush rainforest, volcanic landscapes and more. It gave me an impression of a bigger universe. What was the attraction for you?
I love the unusual and the chance to make a reader (ie myself) go ‘wow…’ So it’s back to the infinite special effects budget! Although, in truth, I don’t think I describe anything that you couldn’t find right here on Earth – except possibly for an artificial lava field, and I’m afraid you don’t have to look too hard to find people who would create one given half a chance.
Q: Was this use of landscape inspired by your ‘other job’ (an environmental consultant)?
Yes, in two ways. First, the concept of the ‘broken planet’ where a whole ecosystem has been completely vandalised. We can have a guess at what that might look like, because climate modelling is now just about good enough to indicate how apocalyptic that could be.
And second, the ‘over-engineered planet’. This stretches the imagination more because we don’t yet have the power to achieve it, but if we did it would be massive eco-vandalism. A bit like taking a natural landscape and replacing it with the landscaping of a supermarket car park. No, wait, sorry, that’s been done. It’s called Milton Keynes. (Editor Note, for non-UK readers: this is ironic.)
For what happens when that ambition goes wrong, you need to read Iron Gods (gratuitous plug).
Q: Is there one thing that you’re most proud of in this book?
(Laughing) that I finished it? Okay, more seriously. There is no one single thing, but there is this: When you write a scene or a chapter, you immerse yourself in it and it sometimes feels as if you are losing your sense of reality. The scene takes over, if you will. The sense of pride comes when, having set a completed section aside for a while, you go back to it and read it fresh and it affects you just as you had hoped it would affect a reader when you first wrote it.
This is multiplied when you get the same reaction from others. I am a member of the Leicester Writers’ Club, which I firmly believe to be one of the finest of its kind anywhere. Every week I would take a section of Creation Machine with me to the club and read it out, and these fine writers would give their considered critique – but when they were kind enough to give their praise? Those were proud moments.
Q: What was the one thing that surprised you most when writing this book?
The way that characters take over. Seriously. You set out with a perfectly viable plan, and you work at that for a while – a few chapters, say. Then, without consulting you, a character begins to develop a personality of their own; character traits, belief systems, nervous tics, the lot. At this point, if you’re lucky, you can let them take charge. You can give them situations to cope with and see how they do. Sometimes you have to give them a good talking-to, of course.
Q: Onto wider issues now. How long have you been writing for?
I guess I’ve been really properly trying to write fiction for about fourteen years. At some point very early in that timeline my wife suggested I should do an evening course in creative writing at a Further Education College, and she’s probably been regretting it ever since.
Q: I suspect that you’re a long time science-fiction fan. What were the books/comics/films that got you started? Have they influenced your writing?
Well, books to begin with. I began reading in the very early 70s when the three greats (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) were still going, and I read their library shelves from end to end. But then I started to discover edgier stuff, like short stories by Poul Anderson, Harlan Ellison and Phillip Jose Farmer, and then the great Roger Zelazny. Later of course I came upon Anne McCaffrey, Ursula Le Guin and Iain M Banks and, and… the list goes on a long way!
As for comics, as a near-future dystopia with kangaroos and shagging you can’t get better than Tank Girl. I also love Neil Gaiman’s Teknophage and Roger Langridge’s Diabolical Liberty. And just about anything else that appeared in Deadline, which had loads of very-near-future urban dystopia.
I think the most influential films must be This Island Earth, which I saw when I was VERY young; Blade Runner, and maybe Twelve Monkeys. Alien, of course. Oh wait, that list goes on too.
Q: Do you have an order to your writing schedule? Are you the sort of writer that produces detailed notes before ‘the big write’, or do you tend to have a brief outline and make it up from that as you go along?
No, I don’t do detailed notes because I know I’d be wasting my time. For Iron Gods, which I have just finished, I drew a Big Map on the back of a piece of wallpaper and watched it for a couple of weeks to see if it changed. When it didn’t, I started following it and kept fairly close to it for the first quarter of the book. Then one of the characters took over…
More seriously, I do generally have an opening scene and a closing scene in mind. I’ve already got those for Stone Clock, which is the third book of The Spin – even though I’ve written less than ten thousand words of it so far. Rather like bookends, perhaps, those scenes are; but they can always be changed.
Q: And one about the writing process itself. Do you work best when devoting huge chunks of time writing, or is it a case of smaller bursts, ‘when you have time’?
I’m hopeless at huge chunks! I spend an hour or two almost every evening writing. That’s it. If I try to go for longer I don’t produce anything useful. I listen to music while I write, and I reckon two records-worth is about my lot. Mind you, I spend much longer than that thinking. There’s a sub-routine in my brain that spends 24 hours a day thinking up books, whether I like it or not.
Q: What kind of books do you read for pleasure, any favourite authors? Can you read for pleasure? (I know a lot of authors who can’t!)
Oh yes! I can certainly read for pleasure. Most recently, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell; Cultural Amnesia by Clive James (I also love his poetry), Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, and a re-visit of Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks.
Q: Lastly, what can you tell us about the sequel to Creation Machine?
Iron Gods? Well, ten thousand years after Creation Machine The Spin is in decline. The boundaries of the formerly prosperous Inside have shrunk to a mere eleven planets, their trade routes are cut off, and all they have left to sell is the service of their vast industrial slave-colony – The Hive.
Then a group of Hivers escape. Led by Seldyan, they steal the last remaining legacy battleship, reverse the trance that has been imposed on it for eight thousand years, and head for the free colony of Web City. There, they realise all is not well – a new green star has appeared in the sky, sparking a socially repressive cult which is quickly taking over, leading Seldyan to wonder if Web City is any improvement on the Hive.
At the same time Harbour Master Hevalansa Vess, stripped of his role after the loss of the last ship, has his identity changed and is sent in to the Hive under cover to find out how Seldyan escaped. Wired into the living AI called the Mind Stack, he is forced to confront both his own past, and the institutionalised cruelty of the hierarchy he has been part of.
While Seldyan and her crew try to discover what has caused the new green star, Vess must choose between loyalty to the system that has promoted him, and his sympathy for the mass of people it treats as slaves. He must also work out how far he trusts Vut, the gestalt insect entity that increasingly represents his contact with the Inside.
Meanwhile the ancient ship, now with full access to its memories, has worked out the meaning of the green star for itself – and the existential threat to the Spin that it has been concealing for ten thousand years…
Q: That sounds brilliant. I look forward to reading it (hint, hint!) Obviously we wish you all the best with Creation Machine and the next developments. Many thanks for your time, Andrew.
You’re most welcome. In closing, can I say that Milton Keynes is a really nice place? Some of the nicest car parks anywhere. I’ll get my coat.
*The SFFWorld review of Creation Machine is here.
Interview by Mark Yon, April 2016 – SFFWorld.com © 2016
