INTERVIEW - Jeffrey Thomas

I didn´t know anything about Jeffrey Thomas until I read his short story In His Sights, published in the volume 1 of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction in the end of 2007. Maybe because his was the opening story of the book, maybe because his protagonist, the chameleon-like detective Jeremy Stake, appealed to me somehow, I bought his first Stake novel, Deadstock, as soon as it was published. Even though the novel didn´t feel as strong to me as the short story, I still liked it, and was interested in reading more about this weird character. Then Thomas published the second Stake novel, Blue War, which I did like much better. More about that on a review which I will post after the following interview, which Mr. Thomas gave me by e-mail last week, and which he explains more about Jeremy Stake, the weird city of Punktown and past and future projects. Enjoy.

PWT - How did you came up with the idea of Jeremy Stake and his Caro turbida condition?

Jeffrey Thomas - Well, Stake found his origin in a short story I was writing for a book called Hardboiled Cthulhu, a Lovecraftian anthology for which I thought I'd do a story set in my Punktown universe. But ultimately I was too busy to make the deadline, and I sensed too that this story, then called My Little Deity, needed more room for its telling. So I gave the anthology a reprint instead, and when Solaris invited me to send them a Punktown novel, My Little Deity was expanded into Deadstock. In My Little Deity I saw Stake as a more conventional, world weary detective (mentally I pictured Sean Penn in the "role"), but when Solaris asked me to give them a character sketch of Stake I thought I should make him more unique so as to better cement the deal! So that was when I devised his mutant's ability to alter his face to take on the look of another person, consciously or unconsciously, if he stares at them too long. I asked my language-savvy younger brother Craig to help me devise a Latin name for his condition, something about his flesh being "restless." Craig gave me Caro turbida, and I thought that sounded scientific enough to better suspend the reader's disbelief about such a miraculous ability. I stretch science beyond its limits in my Punktown stories, dragging its taut screaming ends over the boundary of fantasy and the supernatural. I guess that's why my Punktown stuff is often grouped with that of the so-called New Weird authors. Anyway, Solaris also invited me to submit something for the initial volume of their Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, and suggested I write a story about Stake to perhaps draw readers into checking out Deadstock. That's where the short story In His Sights comes from. It takes place ten years prior to the events of Deadstock, before Stake becomes a private eye, and details his return from fighting in the so-called Blue War and how the aftershocks of that experience manifest themselves through his shape-shifting ability.

PWT - What is your relation with Vietnam? What did (do) you learn when you visit Vietnam?

JT - My relationship with Vietnam began with my relationship with three Vietnamese women - one in the USA and two in Vietnam - the last of whom I married! As of this writing I've been there six times, and hope to travel there many times more. The people are friendly, the food is utterly fantastic, the coffee is the best I've ever had, the country colorful, exotic and fascinating. For someone who'd never once stepped out of the USA until he was 47, Vietnam taught me what it would truly be like to visit another world and become immersed in an "alien" culture. I wanted to get that exciting, sometimes disorienting feeling across in Blue War, in which Jeremy Stake revisits the planet where he once battled a blue-skinned race whom I hint might be an extradimensional analog of the Vietnamese, or at least of terrestrial Asians.

PWT - Authors like Ian McDonald, Geoff Ryman, and Richard K. Morgan have a special relationship with other countries, different cultures and languages. Why do you think there is such a strong interest, on the part of Anglo-American writers, for the figure of the Other?

JT - I wasn't fully aware of that, because I'm very remiss in not having read those guys (I've been meaning to read Ryman's Air and something by Morgan for a while now), but I think it has to do with us being from countries that have a very important sense of themselves, so that - despite our assimilating people of other cultures into our borders/societies - we have a kind of uncertain or even wary feeling toward countries that we might perceive to fall within our shadows, or at least beyond our comfortable experience, if we even regard those countries at all. But those of us who are sensitive and open-minded, as one would hope writers to be, would want to get past that tentativeness, beyond the limitation of borders, to foster and nurture curiosity about other cultures. Refer again to my comment that traveling to Vietnam has been exhilarating for me in that it makes me feel I'm in a whole different place. I'm sure the other writers you mention are feeling something of that same attraction - and a reaction to past decades of speculative fiction that maybe looked to the stars but not to our neighbors. Does part of this reaction have to do with a self-consciousness making of amends or redressing past sins of omission - "white man's guilt"? Maybe. In part, is it simply about writers trying to plow fresh, colorful ground to enliven their art? Sure. But I also believe it reflects the shrinking of distances in this world, and the fusing together of so many different kinds of people. A future that doesn't anticipate and reflect more of that cultural fusion is going to be unrealistic, even for fantastical literature.

PWT - The city of Punktown, where Stake lives, is mostly (not only by its nickname, but also by its descriptions) a mix of cyberpunk-cum-weird. Yet, Stake seems sometimes to be out of place, working as a kind of old-fashioned, pulpish P.I., using even a porkpie hat! Doesn't it seem a little out of character for such a sensible and sensitive man like Stake to behave like a hard-boiled detective?

JT - Like the schizophrenic, chaotic amalgamation that is Punktown, Stake is a man of literally and figuratively many faces - contradictory, in that he takes money to solve other people's problems and at first may seem lackadaisical about it, until he ends up getting so personally involved that he often puts his own life at risk even when his employers would rather he back off. With his ever-morphing appearance, he has the ultimate identity crisis. Stake wears the porkpie hat as a kind of conscious prop, a signature of individuality for a guy who can't trust his face to render him identifiable even to himself. Maybe adopting the hard-boiled persona helps give him a role to hang onto, too, for a more solid sense of himself. But in any case, in Punktown anything goes, and I make no apologies for combining elements from any genre that strikes my fancy. Deadstock combines SF, horror and detective fiction. Whether it works for the reader or not, well, hell, it was fun to write so it would presumably be fun to read. Blue War combines SF with military fiction, the international thriller ala Martin Cruz Smith, etc.. Who knows, maybe my next Punktown novel will be a spy thriller, a romance, a dark comedy!

PWT - Is there some aspect of Stake ´s personality (or of his relationship with Thi Gohn) that you would like to explore in future stories? Speaking of which, can we expect further Stake stories in the future? Or, for that matter, any Punktown stories?

JT - I sure do hope to bring Stake back again. I have a set of notes for a third adventure for him, that would indeed involve Thi Gonh - his former enemy turned lover - and force them into adversarial roles, but I've put that aside for now in order to reevaluate it, and to work on other projects in the meantime. I have a military SF/horror novel in progress that's set in the Punktown universe, though not in Punktown itself, and which doesn't involve Stake. Currently it doesn't have a home. Later this summer, Raw Dog Screaming Press is scheduled to release my Punktown novel Health Agent, of which I'm very fond. I actually wrote it back in the late 80's! It's a detective-type thriller about a Punktown public health investigator on the trail of a brilliant, psychopathic artist who spreads deadly disease and other such biotech threats all in the name of his art. And this autumn, Dark Regions Press will release Voices From Punktown, a collection of more of my Punktown short stories, reprinted from magazine and anthology appearances (with a new story or two, to boot).

PWT - What are your next projects right now?

JT - Apart from what I've mentioned above, I've been writing a number of short stories for various anthologies. One of these that I just signed the contract for is for PS Publishing's Darkness on the Edge, edited by Harrison Howe. It's a collection of horror stories inspired by songs from Bruce Springsteen (and he recently gave the anthology his official sanction)! My story is The Room, inspired by the Boss's song Candy's Room, which by the way is set in Punktown. It should be a unique book! Also, I'm anticipating the release of my horror novel Letters From Hades from Fantasy Foundation, in Taiwan, for which it was translated into Chinese. But what I'd like to see next in the future is one of my books translated into Portuguese by some enterprising Brazilian publisher. Hmmm...any takers out there?