Stephen Palmer interviewed

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SP: Yes. These things do tend to reflect my concerns and interests. I think because of the lifestyle choices that we impose upon ourselves in the Western world, we have become increasingly separate from natural cycles.

So this pagan idea of the eight-fold year, the eight eighths of the year creating a whole, is seen as being quite outrageous — quite bizarre almost — in modern society.

Yet it is an extremely ancient form of calendar and these pagan cycles have got a bit more depth and length of time to them than, say, the Gregorian calendar. So I’m a part-time pagan, really — and it is interesting to see how these old festivals actually mark the seasonal significance within the year.

You do start to become more aware of these cycles and on another level that you are living in a natural world and these things are part of it too.

It’s actually much easier to contemplate down here in the South West. I mean, it would be quite hard in a completely urban environment where the obvious changes are less noticeable.

SP: Oh, absolutely! James Lovelock is one of my heroes. Absolutely. When his biography came out a few months ago I nabbed a copy straight away. It is a marvellous book, and it’s one of those theories that have the mark of genius about it because it is so simple and so beautiful: it embraces so much and explains so much in basically one sentence. It’s one of those theories that . . . in a sense I don’t like calling it a theory as it’s now basically accepted by a large number of people. It has almost become mainstream now, although it’s normally called ‘Earth Systems Science’ because ‘Gaia’ is still a dirty word.

So what do you call it? The Gaia . . . hmm. You can’t call it a hypothesis and you can’t call it a theory because it is slightly more than a theory now. So, Lovelock’s Gaia ‘thing’ has been a very, very big influence — especially the immensely powerful ideas concerning interlinking and self-regulation.

SP: Well, partly from my political interests and partly because I also believe very strongly in ‘acting local and thinking global’. I’m a great, great believer in diversity, bio-diversity, and the diversity of cultures.

I am fascinated by this idea of different cultures working interdependently with each other. You know, partly independent, partly dependent is far better than a huge monolithic national body.

Former Yugoslavia, for example, doesn’t reflect this because it was part of a six nation, super-nation yoked together by Communism and was completely artificial. The same can be said for a lot of African countries. In fact, probably most African countries are completely artificial and this is why they have these amazing straight-line boundaries that basically mean very little to the people who live there.

Unfortunately I think a lot of people regard independence as isolationist and the idea of interdependence is something that people don’t have much understanding of at the moment – and that I think is wrong.

SP: Well, Muezzinland is set in the mid 22^nd Century, and is essentially a quest. The princess Nshalla, with the help of her friend Gmoulaye — who is a kind of tribal warrior woman — go searching for the princess Mnada who has fled the royal palace, looking for the almost mythical Muezzinland.

They start off in Ghana, go north to Mali, cross the Sahara desert into Morocco, cross the Atlas and eventually arrive in Fez where the end of the novel is set.

Behind the scenes is their mother — the Empress of Ghana — a seemingly sinister and powerful woman who is pursuing them through the various means at her disposal — android agents, orbitals et cetera.

Then there’s the aether, which is a kind of telepathic cyberspace, there are people with implanted biochip augmentations, transputers, AIs and a kind of tribal mysticism called the aether lore. So there’s a lot going on here — a fusion of cutting edge technology and a form of neo-tribal culture that again owes a lot to the ideas around the people/planet relationship.

SP: Flowercrash starts with a little hint of an ice age that has been produced by artificial means. In the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream comes up from the Caribbean and travels north, then dives down around Iceland — this is why Europe is 15 degrees warmer than America at the same latitude. Now if that current stopped — which it has done on many previous occasions — it’ll certainly make Europe much, much colder and there’s the potential for it to tip over into a mini ice age. So in Flowercrash, this idea of a current stopping temporarily and an ice age occurring creates a canvas for the emergence of new cultures.

So, basically there are three competing cultures in this small habitable area. One of them is very male-centred, very masculine, violent and aggressive. The second is just very totalitarian and the third culture follows a female goddess ideology. Now, the latter culture are trying to create the kind of conditions whereby the first two cultures will wither away through non-aggressive means — because that would be the humane thing to do, and the natural, good culture would then flourish.

Both Muezzinland and Flowercrash are being printed on demand by Wildside rather than by a publishing house because its almost impossible to get anything sold these days if it is SF or fantasy.

SP: Essentially through John Betancourt and Sean Wallace. I’m in touch with Keith Brook who runs the Infinity Plus site — I’ve never met him but I’ve e-mailed him and talked to him loads of times — he’s a really nice chap.

He was having his first trilogy reprinted by Wildside and through him I heard that Sean Wallace was looking for British authors.

So I e-mailed Sean and said "Look, I’ve had two novels published, are you interested in working with me?" He checked my website out first, worked out who I was then got back to me and said "Yes that would be fine." So we basically took it from there.

I decided that I wanted him to work with Muezzinland and Flowercrash. This was because I had previously written this disastrous attempt at a near future thriller — which is not my thing at all — I just felt that it might have a better chance of being published. And that also taught me the lesson that it’s best not to write something that your heart’s not in.

So it was basically a fluke and it was at that point that I became aware that something was going seriously wrong with Science Fiction. I was aware that other authors were also struggling and not selling anything unless their name happened to be Banks, Baxter or Hamilton — who sells loads. So at that point in time I was actually searching the net for hints as to what was going on in terms of other forms of publishing.

One of the great things about the Wildside deal is that it’s very, very rare in publishing for authors to have any control over the covers of their novels. So I’ve done the cover for Muezzinland, using the same style as Memory Seed and Glass which have these very distinctive split covers: a top half, a bottom half and an object in the middle. My friend George Cairns has done the cover for Flowercrash and he’s done a fantastic job. He’s an expert in 3D modelling, and created this stainless steel which we then imported into the cover and it looks really good.

SP: This is probably because I don’t do hard SF, my stuff is really more Science Fantasy. I was compared to early J. G. Ballard and Mervyn Peake (which is like the ultimate honour — I think the reason for that was the intensity of the scenario that really made people think of Peake — I mean Gormenghast is wonderful). I was also compared with Storm Constantine and John Wyndham — inevitably because it was a disaster scenario.

It’ll be interesting to see whether people realise that Flowercrash is actually the third part of the Memory Seed sequence — which was the original reason for writing it. I’m actually going to promote it as a standalone novel because if I did say this is the final part of the Memory Seed sequence everyone who hasn’t read the first two will think "Oh well that’s part three".

Flowercrash can be read without any reference to Memory Seed or Glass. But there are links, and people who have read the previous novels will see this as the conclusion of what I’m trying to say about how we should live our lives. It’s a compromise, but that’s okay.

J. R.