Reading in the dark - 13 Days of Halloween: Day 3 Interview with Lucy Snyder
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13 Days of Halloween: Day 3 Interview with Lucy Snyder
Kes: This is the second posting, formatting errors have been fixed.
I have to confess, I'm not the biggest fan of zombie stories. I know it's a snob thing, but I like my undead with attitude and, when you have maggots for brains, there's not a lot of RAM left over for creating the perfect bon mot and the witty comeback.
That was before I found out about Lucy A. Snyder's stories and discovered just how much attitude a zombie could dish out.
Lucy A. Snyder first appeared on my reading radar a couple of years ago when I first read the following lines:
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Cybermancy is the hottest new trend in information technology. Companies worldwide are eagerly deploying cybermantic networking strategies to open doors to a whole new reality of profit.
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That story was "Your Corporate Network And The Forces Of Darkness"
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050620/network-darkness-a.shtml
and it is one of the many dark gems collected in Lucy's most recent book, _Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (And Other Oddities)_. _Sparks and Shadows_, a collection of Snyder's science fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry, was also published earlier this year.
To read more about Lucy's many and varied works, go to her Web page
http://www.sff.net/people/lucy-snyder/badgerlinux.html .
The Interview
1. You often get categorized as a horror writer, and yet you write across all sorts of genres -- dark fantasy, poetry, science fiction; how do you see horror as a genre-crossing form of storytelling?
LAS: I think that I've been identified as a horror writer mainly because of my associations rather than my publications. I joined both SFWA and HWA, but I stuck with HWA. In recent years I've gone to Camp Necon and World Horror more often than Readercon and Wiscon. Why? I have to say that horror writers have more fun (every day is Halloween!)
It's often said that science fiction is the literature of ideas, fantasy is the literature of myth, and horror is the literature of fear. The three go together quite nicely if you're willing to think as well as feel.
Enjoying dark literature is a bit like enjoying hot peppers, and a good cook can put the spice in most anything and come up with something tasty.
2. In both your dark fantasy collection Sparks and Shadows and your newest humorous story collection, Installing Linux On a Dead Badger, you use the tropes of horror--zombies, hellhounds, even dangerous children--to tell stories with a subtle but definite political subtext. Do you see yourself as following in the tradition of female horror writers like Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson, even Mary Shelley, who all used horror tropes to tell what were at times very political stories?
LAS: I've got every admiration for Carter, Jackson, and Shelley; it may be that I'm following in their tradition, but it was not a conscious choice on my part.
Politics are important, and so I do think about them a lot. On a very practical level, the political climate can affect popular tastes in fiction, and as a working writer I have to be aware of that. When people think about politics and books, they mostly think about censorship. And, sure, censorship is an important issue for me. But the effect of politics goes far beyond that. The biggest booms in the popularity of horror novels and movies have happened when we've had Republicans in the Oval Office. Maybe that's just coincidence, but I suspect not. For another example, the popularity of the space program -- the funding of which is highly politicized -- has affected the popularity of science fiction, and vice versa. (URL: http://cem.colorado.edu/articles/articles.php?article=NASA)
On a storytelling level, I recognize that the actions and inactions of politicians can profoundly affect peoples' lives, whether those people realize it or not. I also think about gender as it relates to character conflicts. And gender issues are intimately tied to cultural beliefs, which in turn shape and are shaped by politics.
Ultimately, if something's stuck in my head long enough, eventually it goes down on paper.
3. Many of your stories such as "Burning Bright," with its theme of a woman rescuing her male lover from a tower where he is imprisoned, seem to be subverting fairy tale tropes. Do you see horror as being connected to the older, darker fairy tales?
LAS: Absolutely. Many fairy tales -- particularly Hans Christian Andersen's -- are incredibly dark. Take "The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf", for instance. Halfway through the tale, the nasty little girl ends up paralyzed and starving with crippled flies crawling all over her eyeballs. That's pure horror.
Many horror stories are moralistic and cautionary, just like the old fairy tales. I think in that regard, horror is more strongly connected to fairy tales than most fantasy fiction is.
4. I personally think you write the best zombies, ever. Do you watch a lot of zombie movies? Or do you feel zombies are one of the universal metaphors for life in the 21st century?
LAS: I've certainly seen my share of zombie movies, but I haven't, for instance, seen Romero's entire catalog.
Zombies do present interesting metaphoric possibilities. If vampires often represent the addictions and abuses of the rich and powerful, then zombies surely represent the grinding existence and simmering resentment of the working stiff.
Zombies may be fearsome, but they're not sexy, smart and strong like vampires. A vampire may lose his soul, but a zombie loses its mind, its will, its ability to speak, ultimately even its body. Fear of disease and death and loss of identity are all tied up in the popular image of the zombie, but zombies are also useful as generalized threats.
Most writers and moviemakers realize they can't portray a white protagonist being menaced by a howling horde of bloodthirsty, dark-skinned savages without some well-earned accusations of racism. But there's still visceral satisfaction in seeing an outnumbered hero bravely blasting away at an evil, relentless mob of Other.
And that's where zombies come in handy. The reader/viewer won't feel very sorry for the zombies, because although they were once human they surely aren't any more, and there's no helping them. Vampires sometimes find cures and triumphantly return to humanity; the best a zombie can usually hope for is to get its head blown off.
I smell replacement of racism with classism in that, an objectification of the working poor that says they're socioeconomic roadkill. Pity them, avoid them, but don't try to help them: a better life would be wasted on them because they're too stupid to maintain it.
There's the implication that anyone working a mindless job is in fact mindless. Americans hold fast to the notion that smart, talented people will naturally rise to superior stations in life, and that someone who's born poor and stays poor is never merely unlucky but inevitably unworthy. But recent studies have indicated that there's no strong correlation between intelligence and wealth (URL: http://tinyurl.com/32bo7t) and that class mobility in the U.S. is more limited than people think (URL: http://tinyurl.com/dq82n).
My husband, who's a very good novelist, worked part-time as a custodian at a suburban temple for a while. The rabbi and the older members were really enthusiastic about his books. But an annoying minority -- mostly the college kids -- seemed pretty hostile. Their attitude was, "The janitor wrote a book? Well, it can't possibly be a very good book! He won an award? Well, it can't be a very good award!"
These born-wealthy undergrads seemed deeply threatened by the idea that "the help" could do something intellectual and artistic better than they could. Or maybe they were threatened by the idea that if they followed their bohemian dreams they, too, might end up having to scrub some toilets along the way. And maybe it's just something they picked up in school; I've seen subtler expressions the same prejudice at every university I've attended. Whatever the reason, they wouldn't acknowledge that, although he was working a necessary, dirty, physically damaging job for them, he was not their inferior. At every turn they tried to emphasize his status as a mindless, shuffling zombie with a broom and minimize any evidence to the contrary.
Anyhow, I know that many people aren't interested in metaphors, and to them a zombie is simply a cool undead monster and an opportunity to show off their makeup skills. People have a lot of fun at zombie walks; maybe 10 years ago the same folks would've dressed up as vampires at Halloween instead, but vampires got a little too popular and now I think many people see them as sort of old-fashioned.
Zombies, for now, are still hip and adult. I'm waiting for the inevitable kids' cartoon and tie-in cereal, though.
5. References to technomancy or cybermancy are woven through a lot of your stories. Are you ever going to write the cybermancy grimoire? And where did your concept of cybermancy come from?
LAS: Arthur C. Clarke once said that sufficiently advanced technology is, to the user, pretty much indistinguishable from magic. And to ancient people, magic and science weren't clearly separated. There was often a very methodic, logical approach to creating spells and potions, but the problem was they were based on faulty understandings of how our bodies and the natural world actually function.
I've worked tech support for several years now, and I regularly encounter bright, educated people whose computers are an utter mystery to them. I expect I could probably convince some of them that their computers are actually run by tiny invisible demons. They don't call us seeking technological enlightenment so much as a fast over-the-phone exorcism.
And so I'd been interested in playing with magic-as-technology for a while, and my interest just happened to gel in the stories in Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (URL: http://www.sff.net/people/lucy-snyder/badgerlinux.html). A cybermancy grimoire? I very well might write one someday.
6. Can you remember the first horror movie or book that made you sit up and think, I want to create stories like this?
LAS: I actually cut my reading teeth on science fiction and fantasy, and when I was a teenager that's what I wanted to write. However, courtesy of my tendency to have vivid nightmares, much of what I began writing turned out to be horror. Once again, if it's stuck in my head, I inevitably start writing about it. Once I quit fighting the horror urge, I started reading and viewing horror much more widely.
But the book that first made me want to become a writer was Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. The whole series is wonderful; I was very sad when L'Engle passed away this year.
7. Do you celebrate Halloween? Do you have any special ways of celebrating it?
LAS: Halloween is probably my favorite holiday, but since I've worked nights the past several years I don't often get to celebrate it. This year I'm taking a vacation day to dress up like a zombie, put on horror movies and hand out candy to the neighborhood kids.
Current Location: library
Tags: 13days, horror, writing
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The rest of the interview didn't make it after the cut.
Thanks--I'm operating on sleep-dep and an alternate computer, my main one is off to get fixed, so I'm feeling a bit impaired thisweek.
The formatting issue has been fixed.
Most writers and moviemakers realize they can't portray a white protagonist being menaced by a howling horde of bloodthirsty, dark-skinned savages without some well-earned accusations of racism. But there's still visceral satisfaction in seeing an outnumbered hero bravely blasting away at an evil, relentless mob of Other.Interesting you should bring this up. The upcoming videogame, Resident Evil 5, is drawing a lot of flack for the fact that is set in an African village, so all of the zombies are black. And they get shot up by a white protagonist. See this article, for example.
This interview was a joy to read! I read the Dead Badger story a while back but I didn't follow up and find out about the book--I ordered it within five minutes of reading this interview.
The comments about zombies and race and class are particularly appreciated--I'm the one of my friends who always gets really deep about race in genre movies and they never want to hear it. So thanks!
Thank you for replying and for buying Lucy's book, I am thrilled to hear there is another fan out there. I would also recommend her _Sparks and Shadows_ collection, as it had a couple of other political stories in it, but the politics never interfere with the stories being good stories, either. And it has a couple of pieces --I'm not sure if they are non-fiction or not--that were so darkly funny...I mean, how can a female not love essays titled "The Dickification of the American Female" and "Camp Songs: Innocent Fun or Diabolical Brainwashing Plot?" ?
![[User Picture]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/55321916/61691) | | From: | ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) las |
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| Date: | October 23rd, 2007 05:49 pm (UTC) |
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Thank you very much! I really appreciate your ordering my book :) |
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