It gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Noah Lemelson, whose first novel The Sightless City debuts on July 20 from small press Tiny Fox.
The Sightless City is your first full-length novel, though you have written and published short stories. What drove you to write a full length book, the first in a trilogy?
I started writing in college, mostly short stories. It was always on my mind that I wanted to one day write a novel. Short stories are an amazing medium, but the truth is that while most people I know read at least some novels, very few non-writers I know actively read short stories.
I tried to bridge the gap by writing a series of linked short stories, using Dan Simmons’s Hyperion as an example (which itself was based on The Canterbury Tales, but I haven’t read that because I’m basic and I need my pilgrimage stories to involve time-traveling space gods.) Originally The Sightless City was supposed to be one book, but I grossly misjudged how much material I could fit into just one book.
The trilogy is described as being steampunk/apocalyptic/fantasy/noir. What do those terms mean to you and how do they relate to The Sightless City?
I’ve never been a genre definition purist; I write what I want and figure out the labels later. I’ve called it steampunk, dieselpunk, science-fantasy. Brian Evenson, my CalArts mentor, called it rustpunk, which is pretty rad in my humble opinion. In the end I was drawing from a lot of different stories in a lot of different genres, and I had built a world that fit them all together.
I built the setting with the desire for a wild-west-esque frontier (The Wastes), filled with fantastical technology (powered by æthermantics), but of a manageably small space (so no space opera galaxy spanning madness). I’ve always been drawn to post-apocalyptic stories, or rather, post-post-apocalyptic stories, once the dust has settled and people have to figure out what this new society among the ashes would look like. The original short story structure allowed me to focus on different genres for different characters. Marcel plays off some noir clichés (with a twist) while Sylvaine almost falls into the magical school subgenre (though more technical college than wizard boarding school.)
A question I often ask writers is to what extent traditional genre boundaries such as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime and Romance (for example) have broken down. What are your thoughts on this?
I’m not the best person to say, because truth is that most books I read tend to be at least a few years old, so I’m rarely on top of current publishing trends. That being said, I have read a lot of recentish books lately that blend genres. Low Town is great fantasy noir, Boneshaker mixes steampunk with zombies. But even back in the day Dune was blending fantasy and science fiction, so I think this is hardly new. I’m a fan of New Weird, like Perdido Street Station, or whatever Jeff Vandermeer writes, which has always been a blend of genres. Personally, genre labels feel to me like the Dewey Decimal System, important for organization and I appreciate that there are people organizing it all, but genre-labels on their own I find to be kind of stiff and dull.
Your first degree was in Biology before you moved on to an MFA in Creative Writing. What prompted you to make the change from Science to the Arts?
In short, I wasn’t a great scientist. I don’t think I was terrible, but there comes a point where you really, really need to either enjoy lab work, or be obsessive over theoretical details. I’ve always been a big picture guy and pretty clumsy, neither is great for working in the lab. I still love to read pop science magazines, but I’m not the sort of person who reads Cell or Nature for fun. (And thank god there are people who do!) I think I’m still trying to answer similar questions that I was interested in when studying biology, questions about human nature and our place in the world.
The principal city in your novel is called Huile and the plot pivots on a war for a precious resource, aether-oil. What can you tell us about this substance and its importance to the world?
Æther-oil functions both as fuel for normal vehicles and powerplants, as well as the basis of Ætheric Engineering, which allows Engineers to manipulate machinery with a snap, and imbue machines with preternatural abilities that bend or break the laws of physics. Basically, it’s how you get a twenty-thousand-ton æroship floating in the air.
Just as in our world, resources are key to military and political conflicts, and the fact that Huile sits on a deep well of æther-oil is what makes it central to the story. Blood has been spilled for control over it before the book begins, and the fight isn’t over.
When you started world-building, how did you begin? Did you start with the world or with the plot?
I created the world years ago when I was a teenager. (You know, a normal teenager activity.) I had an idea of having a posse of different characters out in the Wastes sharing their stories of why they all wanted to kill the same person. The novel ended up mutating quite a bit since then, but that original structure allowed me to explore a variety of distinct characters and POVs.
Your protagonist, Marcel Talwar, is a veteran and a private investigator. How does he get drawn into the investigation that puts his life in peril?
I won’t give away the plot, but on some level, Marcel wants to be drawn into a harrowing and heroic investigation. He’s a young man who grew up on pulp adventures, and is on some level, trying to replicate them, as a way of avoiding his deeper problems, such as the traumas he’s developed as a soldier. Of course, when the truth does come out, it’s not at all what Marcel was expecting, and he quickly learns the costs of playing hero.
You talk about the importance of writing novels with flawed and complex characters. Tell us more...
For me it’s just more interesting. The world is flawed and complex, and I think even with good intentions its often not possible to cleanly untangle the problems we face. I think people that struggle with those difficulties are more relatable. I also think its interesting to examine the complex motivations that often push people forward. Are their intention pure, are there reasons beyond the ideals that one tries to do something heroic? Do these imperfections matter, and how much does intent matter when the outcome gets messy? I’m not claiming to answer these questions, but I think they are more interesting than “Good Guy hit Bad Guy with Sword.” (Though those stories can have their own value.)
You have also mentioned the importance of evil in your story, contrasting ideological evil with pure selfishness. The Fantasy genre in the loosest sense often pits Good against Evil. What role does this theme play in your work?
A lot of the trilogy is about internal and internecine conflicts. Characters often spend as much time fighting amongst their own side than against their enemy. I find that the world often works like that, the side that wins is often the one that can hold its internal contradictions together long enough. Unfortunately, this is often the eviler side. But there is a self-destructive aspect to both selfishness and many cruel ideologies, since they always desire more than they have and by their nature must create enemies out of those they abuse or oppressive. That self-destructiveness can be what creates a chance for hope.
The world in which your stories are set has undergone an event called The Calamity. What is that event and how has it affected the world at the time of the story?
The details don’t matter too much to the story, but in short it was the climax of a terrible war, between the Principate and what would become the UCCR. A massive ætheric blast that tore the center of the continent into Wastes. Of course, both sides blame the other for The Calamity, and the tensions that caused this disaster still haunt the world. For most characters it is history at this point, and how they understand this history colors their political outlook.
Marcel Talwar discovers that he is being manipulated by someone in his circle. How does he deal with this revelation and how does it change him?
Once again, I won’t go into spoilers, but as the book goes on Marcel is forced to reckon with the fact that the story he has been told, that he has told himself, in order to move on from the past and feel comfortable with the present, has been a lie, meant to serve forces that he would oppose were he even aware they existed. Of course in order to accept this truth, he would have to take culpability for the, perhaps unintentionally villainous, role he’s played so far.
How do you expect the story to develop over the next two books of the trilogy? And does it have a series title?
I have the trilogy mapped out pretty well, and though the books follows a larger narrative arc, the genre conventions are going to change pretty significantly. The second book is looking to be closer to a western in many ways. Right now I don’t have an official title, but my working title for the series is A Dawn of Rust. We’ll see if that actually sticks.
The Sightless City has already received a First Place Award in the 2019 OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction. What does that mean to you as a writer at the start of your career?
It was really excited for my book to be recognized, and I really appreciate the honor. At the time I reached the short list, I didn’t have a publisher or agent. (Still don’t have the agent.) When you work on a book for years, the grind of querying agents and getting denied can really get you down. It was really validating to have someone say, “hey, this book’s pretty decent!” It was also a great thing to add to my query letter, which didn’t hurt.
What is your writing routine?
Sit in front of the computer long enough for my guilt to compel me to write.
What inspired you to write genre fiction in particular, and what books have you enjoyed?
It’s what I’ve always read. I was as a kid (and still am!) a big sci-fi buff. Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Octavia Butler, Stanisław Lem, Ursula Le Guin, I love them all. In particular I have to recommend The Left Hand of Darkness as my favorite sci-fi book, particularly for people who might be turned off by the more spaceship and lasergun fare. I also think Lem is deeply underrated in the US. Dune is not especially underrated, but it's famous for a reason! For fantasy, I grew up reading The Bartimaeus Trilogy and Lord of the Rings, but I’ve since gotten more into New Weird. I highly recommended Perdido Street Station and the Ambergris Trilogy.
About Noah Lemelson:
Noah Lemelson is a short story writer and novelist who lives in LA with his wife and cat. Lover of Science Fiction, Fantasy, New Weird, and Punk. He received his BA in Biology from the University of Chicago in 2014 and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2020. He has had several of his short stories published in both print and online magazines, such as Allegory, Space Squid and the Outsider’s Within Horror Anthology.
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