Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview JE Solo, whose first full-length novel Phreak was published in 2020.
Tell us something about Phreak and how you came to write it. Who is Phreak?
Phreak is a response to witnessing the darker side of the culture of capitalism—something I think most of us can relate to these days. I wanted to write about systems, and how the human being gets caught within their machinations. I created a character who is at great odds with the rigid system they are born into, and who has to overcome this system in order to survive. I wanted to show how embedded this culture is within these systems by making it present even in the physical structures of the world that I built—so it is set in a deeply dystopian place. I was also very interested in the epidemic of conspiracy theories that have been evolving alongside of modern technology, and so I created a world made of conspiracy theories.
Phreak is the main character of the novel and we see the world through their experiences, we witness what they see, feel what they feel. Phreak was born with a condition called synesthesia—they perceive things others cannot. So, for example, scents are perceived as trails of colours, sounds are seen as landscapes. They feel other people’s pain. Phreak’s differences make them an outsider in a world that doesn’t value uniqueness. These differences are also an asset that offer many unusual solutions to the challenges that Phreak encounters.
Phreak is your first novel but you have written and performed in many other media. What challenges did writing a full-length novel present?
Writing a novel was intense. It took a very long time. Coming from music and performance, which are mostly collaborative, it was an adjustment working in such a solitary form. My process in writing fiction involves full on solitude and no interruptions, and that can sometimes be impractical. Setting up my life for writing was a bit of a challenge.
Once I had been through a few drafts I started working with editors, and that was a great experience, and really helped me bring the novel to where it is today. I went through multiple edits – and sometimes that could be arduous, where you get to the point where you just don’t want to look at it anymore, but ultimately it was worth the pain, and I had a lot of support from the editors at the House of Zolo.
Your bio describes you as a “trailblazer in machinima, hybrid-reality, and live and networked performance art.” Can you tell us something about these?
I’ve always been interested in pushing the parameters of available technologies in performance, and would often take things to the limit in my stage work. Around 2002 I started exploring virtual reality spaces as sites for performance. Online synthetic environments were a whole new platform for presentation and I fell right into them. I shifted from theatre to performance art, experimented with projecting VR environments onto stages and vice versa (hybrid-reality), created events that happened online, networking different artists and virtual worlds. Things became much more international. I got into machinima (screen capture animation) as a way to document some of the performances, but then it became a focus of its own. So, now I make machinima videos as creative projects.
Being present as technologies have emerged has kept me on the cusp of new things. I’m now working with headset technology and just finished a VR based project that incorporated AI and machine learning software; and I’m about to start a new project that brings a quantum computer into the creation process for song lyrics.
Weirdly, most of what I do IRL doesn’t directly translate that well to virtual reality. So, I haven’t been bringing stage work or musical performance to the web because, for me, it’s just not the same thing. There is something about the experience of a live concert or a live theatre show that is not transferrable, the live event is a conversation, and you kind of have to be there.
I feel lucky to have VR as a place to work during the pandemic and one thing I have been doing is live book readings in social VR spaces. There were a number of Canadian public appearance dates booked for the launch of Phreak, and all of these were cancelled because of the pandemic. So, it is great to have places to connect with people and share something of the book with them.
Do books, particularly eBooks, have unexplored potential for introducing other elements such as music or images?
Yes, I think the way we consume and experience media has changed radically over the last two decades, and incorporating media to enhance the experience for the reader makes sense. It also makes the eBook format more of a creative playground for the author.
The blurb for Phreak says “In an alternate, near-future world where corrupt government and corporate interests rule the smallest details of Island life, an unusually sensitive child is born.” What is the importance of fiction and imaginary worlds in a present where dystopian nightmares seem to be turning into reality?
Phreak is definitely a riff on the present, but it takes things a couple of steps further, and is a suggestion for what is coming next. At the same time, Phreak has multiple meanings. I’ve reduced the term “phreaker”, referring to the early phone hackers in the 1970s, to a verb phreak, essentially meaning to hack. Phreak is the character’s name; phreak is also what the character does; and finally, phreak ends up being a directive for the reader.
Phreak is about how one individual fights and overcomes an unjust system, and I hope there is something informative or inspirational in there for the reader. Essentially, I think Phreak is about resistance, and to me this is what is important about choosing this subject matter and exploring solutions and/or consequences of the decisions we are making in the world now.
What was your inspiration for the world of the Island?
The Island is a fictional place, set in a future Canada, but I spent forty years living and working on the island of Newfoundland. So, that has been a major influence on my work, and the world of Phreak could be viewed as a highly fictionalized, very near future, Newfoundland-like place.
Are you planning to write a sequel?
I left the ending open for the possibility of a sequel, but have no plans for one at the moment. A novel of this type takes a great deal of time, and I’m not ready to make that commitment again quite yet—but it is something that may very likely happen in the future.
You are working on a collection of short stories. Tell us more!
After the novel I wanted to work on some much shorter pieces, to explore a bunch of ideas that interest me. I’m finalizing a collection of very short stories that are part scifi, part magic realism, and that focus on the weirder side of technology and modern life: a woman’s estrogen patches turn her into a super hero; a man buys a haunted video camera from the second-hand store; a young girl follows her father to find out where he sleepwalks every night; a family brings Nana out for a Sunday drive, and things take a sinister turn. I have been having a lot of fun playing with this short format.
You have a substantial track record as a musician and performance artist in Canada and around the world. How has that affected your writing?
Science fiction has been the basis of most of my theatre work, so I developed many ideas through working in theatre and performance that have become the beginnings of writing projects. Also, because I like to explore technology, and emerging technology, this lends itself to thinking about the future, about what is coming, about what the possibilities—both good and bad—might be.
Also, working in these different disciplines prepared me for the kind of writing I am doing now. Songs, plays, performance works, always start with the written word for me, and everything follows from there. I have been getting lots of practice working with the written word over the years, and this is definitely a benefit to me as I explore writing fiction.
Dr Jeremy Turner in conversation with JE Solo: Meta Creation in NEOS VRIn what way does being a writer and performer in Canada differ from America?
My American collaborators are struck by our access to Canadian arts funding. Funding drives a great deal in terms of arts and culture in Canada. What America has that Canada doesn’t have is population, and that brings more opportunities, more networks for touring, more access to wider markets. For writers, it seems to me that America offers a much more diverse market in terms of the genres. CanLit can be quite exclusive and closed. This is changing with the rise of small and medium sized independent presses and more and more access to self-publishing tools, which is very encouraging.
How important are ecological and alternative themes to your writing?
These themes are of primary importance and remain the focus of most of what I do. Many of the longer stories that I tell involve the destruction of the world in one way or another, usually by an act of resistance by one person, who ultimately brings about a new world. I am very interested in the idea of transcendence, which may be why I spend so much time focused on virtual reality, and I’m committed to the idea a peaceful, equitable world. Sometimes the only place to make that world real is in fiction, but I believe that the act of envisioning and articulating that kind of world is an important part of bringing us closer to it.
"The Asteroid" - an example of an avatar-based performance:What are you planning to do next?
One of my virtual reality projects has just been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, and it involves working with quantum computers. So, I will be putting a lot of energy into that this year. I also hope to release my collection of short, short stories this year, and I’m pretty close to having a finish draft. I expect those two projects should keep me busy through 2021.
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About JE Solo:
JE is a well-known writer, multi-disciplinary performance and media artist, and musician best known for their work in East Coast music, and as a trailblazer in machinima, hybrid-reality, and live and networked performance art. JE Solo's first novel Phreak (House of Zolo, 2020) was short-listed for the Writer’s Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Fresh Fish Award. JE is the recipient of the Media Arts Prize and the Dramatic Script Prize from the NL Arts and Letters Awards; the Linda Joy Award from the Atlantic Film Festival for their screenplay, the machine; and the East Coast Music Association’s Stompin’ Tom Connors Award for their accomplishments in music. Their work has been published by Perro Verlag, Truck, Room, Playwrights of Canada Press, Newfoundland Quarterly, TOFU Magazine, Reverb Magazine, Canadian Theatre Review, and Switch Magazine, among others. Dozens of JE's stage plays, videos and performance art works have been presented across Canada and around the world including at ISEA, File Electronic Language International Festival, The IOTA Institute, Women From the Future, Courts Critiques, Festival of New Dance, and the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.
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