Breaching the Kitchen

When one is not a published writer but desperately wants to be, it feels like there’s a fabulous party going on – a party with writers and hors d’oeurves, musicians and champagne flutes and witty people – to which you are not invited. Instead, you are outside trying to convince security to let you in, or else gazing longingly at the serving staff as they bustle through the kitchen, because even though they aren’t actually guests, they’re still closer than you to the action. Such is the desire to enter the party that longing acts as a spur: we redouble our efforts and persist, no matter how difficult it can be.

On Thursday this week, I received an email from my publisher, the wonderful Paul Collins, asking if I had heard of Australian writer James Roy, and would I like to meet him. I replied in the affirmative on both counts, and was subsequently invited to attend a gathering last night. Unknowing of who else would be there or what the occasion was, I accepted.

It was, to say the least, a fantastic evening.

There were wonderful librarians. There were witty people. There was even someone I already knew from Twitter and whose blog I read. But most of all, there were writers: David Miller, who knows my friend Simon; George Ivanoff and Meredith Costain, with whom I went to the recent sales conference; Kirsty Murray, whose brilliant new novel, Vulture’s Gate, I bought and read in a single sitting just two days ago; Michael Pryor, whose Laws of Magic series I discovered and loved earlier this year; and Isobelle Carmody, who was lovely enough to complement the cover and blurb for my novel. It was at this point that I temporarily lost the ability to form coherent sentences, because I mean, really: Isobelle freakin’ Carmody liked my blurb. Babbling followed. But hopefully in a good way.

There was delicious food, good company, a roaring fire, plenty of champagne, friendly roaming animals and cake for James Roy’s birthday. I had a blast. I managed not to completely embarrass myself. (Except for the babbling. But I covered that.)  Once all was said and done, I made my way home in two parts, chatting first to Angela (aka LiteraryMinded) on the train about writing and books and all things shiny, and then later catching a cab, where my silver-bearded 60s-rock-loving driver made me laugh with jokes about Keith Moon, Gene Pitney and Bill Bailey. The night could not have been better.

And as I slipped in quietly through the gate, I was  struck by a sudden, beautiful thought. I’ve finally breached the kitchen. I’m in the party. And yes: there are hors d’oeurves.

Brave New Worlds

There’s a particular sci-fi/fantasy subgenre to which I’ve always been partial: dystopia. Writers of all shades have been understandably fascinated by it, from George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to Isobelle Carmody and Joss Whedon. There’s a dreadful allure to the idea of society reaching its technological peak, dissolving into cataclysm and then rebuilding from fragments, or else morphing into some non-functional travesty as the ultimate consequence of current politics. Dystopia is a potent combination of our most powerful fears and hopes: fear, that we will destroy utterly what is safe and familiar, and hope, that we might yet survive the experience. It evokes a deeply satisfying narrative cynicism, wherein the reader can sit back and feel utterly validated in their belief that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, because that’s what humanity does, as well as providing fertile ground for in-jokes, like future archaeologists confusing the jukebox and the iPod.

Still, there are different kinds of dystopia. Forced to choose between the societies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, the latter is unequivocally preferable: it’s certainly warped, but compared to the inescapable brutality of Orwell’s London, Huxley’s alternative of sex, clones and soma looks like a candyland. In books like Scatterlings and Obernewtyn, Isobelle Carmody’s dystopia hinges on a struggling, semi-agrarian, post-nuclear holocaust world, where technology is elevated to the level of magic (and where actual magic makes an appearance, too). Unsurprisingly, the most popular dystopia is also the kindest, stretching to the borderlands of straight sci-fi. To paraphrase Joss Whedon’s summary of his comic, Fray, this version of the future is much like everyone else’s: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and there’s flying cars. These four variations more or less encapsulate the different subgenres of dystopia: political warning (Orwell),  what if (Huxley), neo-feudalism (Carmody) and same-but-worse (Whedon). Creatively and imaginatively, it’s the latter two which hold the most sway; and with examples like The Fifth Element and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, it’s easy to see why. 

Because for all it hinges on distruction, dystopia can be devilishly joyful. We savour it, not sadistically, but because it represents the ultimate escapism: seeing the rules and restrictions of our own society wrecked, inverted and removed. Just as children fantasise about blowing up their school, adults fantasise about society crumbling – not out of anger or a desire to hurt, but simply because they, like their younger counterparts, don’t always want to attend. On this base level, dystopia is the glee of impractical opportunism: without actually having to live through a cataclysm, we thrill to imagine what role we’ll take in the new order of things, or wonder how that order might arise. Although the characters struggle, the audience doesn’t: instead, we live vicariously through survivors of a world which would most likely break us.

We’re funny like that.

Since Huxley’s novel, brave new world has become synonymous with an ironic, stunted dystopia, drained of hope: we hear the phrase, and any laughter is mocking. But Huxley was quoting Shakespeare, as his book makes clear: Miranda’s lines from The Tempest. A naive girl raised on an unknown island, Miranda has never encountered villany or vice; and when finally confronted with the prospect of other people – schemers, drunkards, sages and politicians all – she is overjoyed.  ‘Oh, brave new world/that has such people in’t!’  Here, then, is the ultimate source of Huxley’s cynical title, and a perfect metaphor for dystopia: beautiful youth embracing a more treacherous future than it can possibly realise.

Which is why, in another dystopian in-joke, the Reaver-world in Joss Whedon’s film Serenity is called Miranda. Meta-cathartic, ne?