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Inception Interviews Storm... In 1990
Note from the Editor/Author: Below is the first half of an interview originally published in Issue #3 of Inception, the print magazine produced by fans and the precursor to this web site. This issue was the October/November 1990 edition and appeared before the release of Hermetech and Aleph, which were written but not yet published. The second half the interview will appear in the Winter 2006 edition.
In both the Wraeththu novels and in Monstrous Regiment you appeared to be examining a similar theme from opposing directions, that of the displacement or subjection of one half of the human race by the other, followed by a fairly rapid reversal into polarized gender roles.
In the Wraeththu, this appears in Thiede's engineering Pellaz and Caeru into the roles of Tigron and Tigrina, essentially a traditional monarchy with a King and Queen, although there are several instances of Har adopting an exclusively masculine or feminine role.
In Monstrous Regiment, the women have divided themselves already into "flamist" and "angeldt," recreating an essentially single sex society.
The Wraeththu trilogy and Monstrous Regiment can only be compared so much as a) I happen to be the Author of both, and b) they both address issues of sexuality.
Monstrous Regiment is not what I regard as a "serious" work. After writing the Wraeththu trilogy, I felt I should get to grips with writing a novel in the third person, as it would give the opportunity to offer multiple viewpoints from characters. The idea of the book was one had knocking around for a long time. I was not that happy with the result really, and now feel it needed a lot of re-writing in order to give the background material more body. This same fault, I think, was apparent in the Wraeththu trilogy, and one which I hope to rectify in future Wraeththu novels. Because I am so interested in investigating characters in my writing, there is a danger that other areas of the work are neglected. However, I do think that you can only learn from experience. That said, there are elements within Monstrous Regiment that I am pleased with.
I believe it is a trait of all human creates to gather together in (what they think are) exclusive groups. When I was writing that book, I was going through a phase of being absolutely sick to the gills about how women were so much more superior than men, men were bad, men were all rapists and killers. Actually (perhaps because I am unusually lucky or unique or something), my male friends are equally as sensitive and caring as women. Monstrous Regiment was my revenge on their behalf. I knew I'd get hammered for it, but still. What I was trying to say is that you cannot generalize; there are good and bad men and women, oppressive men and women, nurturing men and women. Saying al men are bad is like saying all dogs are killers. It is so pat to blame men for everything in the world. I find myself wondering: Well, who brings these macho beasts up from children, eh? In my opinion, women are often their own worst enemies. I still know people who are bringing up their little boys within traditional gender role stereotypes. In some, but not all, cases the children are demanding little monsters. In contrast to this, some of my friends have sons whom they have brought up within an atmosphere where they are encouraged to develop what are seen as feminine traits: openness about their emotions, taking part in daily routines usually prescribed to females. These children are mostly balanced and contented little boys. It is ignorant and naive to deny the influence a mother has on her children. I know that women often get a raw deal (and worse) in society, but men are under pressure as well. To me, having to conform to this hard-faced, macho, media-generated ideal must be hell. Women have each other. I'm not convinced men are allowed that in quite the same way (heterosexual ones).
Anyway, as well as being a vehicle for purging myself of anger, Monstrous Regiment was a good exercise in another respect. Until then, I had a dislike of writing in the third person. It seemed an awkward form for me, distancing me from the characters I was dealing with. Writing that book gave me insight into the craft of writing and helped show me the way to improve my work in the future. I have since written two more books in the third person and now feel, having got used to it, it's going to be a struggle making the transition back to the first person for the next book.
Monstrous Regiment was intended to be a "one off." I'd said what I had to say, the boil was lanced, whatever! But, because of my contract with McDonald, I ended up doing a sequel to it, Aleph. I was much happier with the result of that, having addressed problems I'd encountered writing the first. It is a very different book; the characters, as well as the writer, have matured.
The Wraeththu trilogy, on the other hand, is an on-going project to which I am deeply committed. The first three books address the genesis of Wraeththu, their initial (mistaken) belief that they are virtually gods in comparison to men. In fact, they are better off only in a physical sense until they can shed the same restrictions upon consciousness and reality which men had imposed on themselves. It is as if evolution had said, "OK, kids, here's the car, high performance, aerodynamic, great body work (of course), but there's no manual to teach you how to make it work for you and instructor to tell you how. You have to work it out." By the end of Fulfilments, a few hara had just begun to realize this. Hara tended to adopt "traditional" gender roles because that was all they knew; they had mutated from humanity, after all.
Ursula K. Le Guin attempted to depict a sexually equal society with the hermaphrodite race of Winter in The Left Hand of Darkness (rather like Swift, they regard the idea of separate males and females as perverted), but you appear to be rather more pessimistic about whether this can be achieved with the human race.
Concerning your last point, I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic about the human race being able to achieve either equality of the sexes or androgyny (on a mental level). Some people will achieve it, others won't. It depends on which reality tunnel you're skating down. The future of humanity, I feel, depends on the individual's freedom to express themselves in whatever manner they feel and being able to inhabit the reality of their choice. Some people are into androgyny, magick, etc., that's fine by me!
Le Guin, a later story, went back and altered all the pronouns from masculine to feminine, but retained the masculine forms for titles like king. I had a lot more difficulty with that version than the novel, and found it constantly challenging me about the way I envisage the characters. Did you consider how you were going to approach the Wraeththu along these lines, and why did you choose to exclusively use the masculine pronoun?
My work has been read as being exclusively "gay" in tone, in that people find it hard to envisage an androgynous being. Perhaps using the masculine pronoun was responsible, but after experimenting with various new pronouns, I decided to opt for the male, firstly because it is easier to read than an invented form, and secondly because I find "he" less gender oriented than "she." That is just my personal opinion. In future Wraeththu novels, perhaps those that are set in the future of the first three books, I may experiment again with inventing a new word to denote gender. Again, it must be remember than the Wraeththu themselves are experimenting with their new world. There is a character in my lately completed novel, Hermetech, who is a surgically constructed "intersex." For them, I use the pronouns SHe and hir, which are pretty well accepted forms for androgyny. I don't think they would work for Wraeththu, though, because they felt too feminine to me, which was fine for Zambia Crevecoeur in Hermetech but not so fine for a character like Cal.
I was interested in how the true-born Wraeththu, like Swift and Tyson, who had never known was it was like to be human, would differ in their attitude from their parents.
I did begin to investigate this in Bewitchments; the conversation Swift had with the girl Bryony, and his own reflections following them. True-born Wraeththu will not view humanity as a threat because, as a species, it is becoming extinct. Incepted Wraeththu were not sure of this and still feared a human "uprising." I have no particular interest in examining this as a theme for a story or a full-length novel, so I'll just let humanity die out gracefully. I am more concerned in getting to grips with the Wraeththu themselves, expanding their world and elaborating ideas from the first books. In a way, I wish that the trilogy had not been my first novels, simply because I can see the gaps in plotting and background now, and would like to rewrite them. However, I still think (Enchantments especially) they work as novels because of the subjective first person viewpoint.
Part 2 will appear in the next issue
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