Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Craig Smith (C.K. Smith), author of award-winning short story What's in a Name? and much more.
First of all, tell us how you came to be a winner of the George Floyd Short Story Competition with your story What’s in a Name? which appears in Earth 2.0: A Nottingham Writers' Studio Anthology, published by Big White Shed.
Following the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in 2020, Nottingham Writers’ Studio launched the ‘George Floyd Short Story Competition’. For the last competition, they received over 150 excellent entries with the very best 27 being chosen for the anthology. My story blends environmental prophecy and the American civil rights movement, so I guess that it ticked all the boxes for the competition brief! I always wanted to write a civil rights piece, so I am glad that it was my first story committed to traditional paper publishing and not an e-book.
Tell us about What’s in a Name? the title and the story’s plot or theme.
This ‘day in the life’ story is set in a mid-future Louisiana where two Black men struggle to eke out a living in the last days of capitalism, against a backdrop of environmental disaster. It was written in memory of the prominent civil rights pioneers Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Medgar Evers, and the victim of a fatal race crime, Emmett Till. The Shakespearean title was inspired by the fact that as far back as the 40s, studies indicated that the names we are given can significantly affect how we perform later in life. Given the right social stimulus, I hope that another ‘Stokely’ and ‘Medgar’ will rise again in the future and take up their forefathers’ struggles.
Why was it important to you to write about environmental issues and what can you tell us about the anthology as a whole?
Writing about environmental issues is not easy, but it’s extremely important. Ultimately, it should educate people about the dangers we are facing and inspire people to act and make changes to their lives. It’s easy to talk about the problems and restate the statistics, but providing solutions is where speculative writers can make the biggest impact. By imagining and sharing stories of new, creative environmental initiatives and practices, we should be able to motivate readers to get involved and make a difference in their own communities. Writing can inspire great change – that’s why it’s still such a fantastically dangerous medium!
The Earth 2.0 anthology provides a wide range of speculative visions of the future. It’s particularly pleasing that the stories cover mid to distant future time periods, which stimulate a lot of questions about humanity’s survival on this planet. I have also been working on an environmental children’s book with a talented illustrator called Chloe McNeill for the last year. It was written to empower primary school children to enjoy nature, and to be instrumental in protecting the environment. We can’t build the next generation of eco-warriors too soon! The book will be launched later this year through our fledgling company, Little Sprout Publishing.
All profits from Earth 2.0 will be donated to WaterAid. Please tell us about the charity and what it means to you as a writer.
We live in a world of plenty, where enough food is produced to feed everyone on the planet, and enough fresh water exists to sustain us all. WaterAid delivers clean water, toilets, and good hygiene to some of the poorest places in the world. Together with the World Food Programme, which is tackling starvation in over 123 countries, these two charities are trying to ensure that people have the basics for life on this planet – food and water. Not-for-profit writing can help to ease this suffering. Half of my Amazon bookshelf profits are pledged to charities. It’s important to give something back.
Who are the Nottingham Writers’ Studio and how did they start out?
NWS was established in 2007 with one clear goal: to be a home for all writers.
Housed in a one-of-a-kind venue in the heart of the Midlands, Nottingham Writers’ Studio is a place for people to come together; meet like-minded individuals, develop new skills, and become the best writer you can be. They share a building with designers, illustrators, and photographers, which works great for collaborations. I would like to thank Adam O’Connell at NWS for all his help and support. I would also like to thank my long suffering editor, Elizabeth Woodhouse, for all her help and support.
In your bio, you say that you write “in a Victorian house stuffed with dog-eared sci-fi paperbacks, poster art, cats, and curios.” Is your home the perfect space for a writer?
Probably not, but it works for me! I have been an avid collector of old paperbacks and music posters for years. I find something comforting and inspiring in being amidst organised clutter with cats climbing on my keyboard. My office looks like Hunter Thomson’s eclectic home in Colorado, minus the guns! I generally write to music, so having some vinyl stimulus on the deck also works for me.
Have you always loved speculative fiction and how did you first discover it?
Yes, I remember as a kid always loving sci-fi films like Mad Max, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, and Rollerball, which all portrayed terrifying visions of plausible futures. I was lucky enough to live close to a cinema where the elderly ladies that ran it did not care about 18 classifications, or X rated as it was known in the day. If you were enthusiastic, they would let you in! These films struck a chord in me and steered me toward writers like H.G Wells, George Orwell, J. G. Ballard, Nevil Shute, and Nigel Kneale, particularly his Quatermass stories. I was hooked on the genre from that point and have hoovered up as much as I can find to this day.
You worked in the Fuel Cell industry in marketing and engineering, plus 20 years as a development engineer. How has that technical and scientific background informed your writing?
It has fundamentally brought insight and rigor to my writing. Unfortunately, good ideas don’t become the next big thing because they should be. Fantastic concepts that could change our lives immeasurably sit collecting dust. The more something challenges the status quo, the more likely it is to be buried unless those making big money continue to make big money. It helps to understand these market dynamics if you want to predict when/if/how something will impact humanity. Writing white papers and technical magazine articles also helped build my writing muscles and ensure that my work is well researched.
For a writer of speculative fiction set in the future, or near future, does it help to have knowledge of the real dangers of climate change and tech, such as AI?
You need a solid baseline if you want to predict anything accurately. Since I was at school, I have always read New Scientist magazine and had a general interest in new technology and climate issues. It is important to read as much as you can, generally trying to stick to professional journals rather than the popular press. Knowledge of key industry periodicals is critical to establishing new trends and directions, particularly with emerging technologies like AI.
Tell us about some of your other works, beginning with EAT ME, a dystopian tale of the food industry and its future.
This was my first piece of published work and I still love the story concept. It’s based on a well-funded technology where you can grow a reactor full of meat from a simple biopsy sample from a host animal. Today, it’s possible to grow human meat in the lab as easily as it is to grow fish, pork, or beef. It is not hard to imagine celebrities, like the Kardashian family, selling a range of prime cuts to their fans that are literally made from them. EAT ME provides a chilling vision into the bioethics behind this technology and predicts how an industry selling human meat could easily become corrupted by big business. In essence, EAT ME is a fast-paced, speculative adventure story set in the mid-term future.
What about JANKER, a vision of future Britain where criminals are tagged in a new way? What inspired you to write this story and do you foresee it in our future?
In the UK, around 116 thousand people are tagged each year. If you are 15 minutes late home, then you can be arrested by the police for breaching your order. The Ministry of Justice has failed to achieve value for money in the management of the TAG scheme, which is where the inspiration for the story was born. In Janker, the criminal is fitted with an internal charge that will explode if it is not exposed to a light bed at a set time, which is installed at their home. These dire consequences ensure that Jankers do not breach their orders and do as they are told, saving money and time for the Ministry. The story follows the plight of Billie Nord, a Janker whose light box has failed and who is desperately trying to find a donor unit.
There is currently an epidemic of violent crime in the UK. It’s easy to imagine the government voting for explosive tagging or public hanging as a last-ditch response to gaining civic order, or to support a draconian, ‘Make England Great Again’, campaign.
How important is it for you to confront radical and challenging themes?
Unfortunately, we live in a time where radical and challenging themes are commonplace. The scope includes the failure of legacy political and social movements, AI ethics, environmental activism, Black and Indigenous rights and power, and Women's rights, to name but a few. I think it is important that we confront these issues through fiction writing, where themes can be expanded to their final nightmarish conclusion, giving people the chance to see what could happen if the current trends are left unchecked. Authors can raise awareness through their writing – I love words and all they can achieve – so let’s put them to good use!
In DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE you go off-planet and imagine the future of humanity following the Artemis program. What can you tell us about the story and the link to Alice in Wonderland?
This is my attempt at an Asimov-style story that embraces his unembellished style of writing. In essence, it is a vision of how your environment shapes you over time. In this case, the inhabitants of a lunar base are long forgotten by the world for 800 years, while war and environmental disasters ravage Earth. The inhabitants are physically mutated and have no idea that anything exists outside of their cave until the failure of their life support systems drives two brave souls back to their ancestor’s home world. This short sci-fi story takes you from the depths of the Moon to the sprawling Australian Outback, on the land of the Yolngu people, now a mixed collection of Aboriginal Australians who inhabit north-eastern Arnhem Land. “Down the rabbit hole” is a trope that refers to ending up somewhere strange, or a journey that is particularly problematic or unusual, as used in the novel, Alice in Wonderland. I love Lewis Carroll and the nonsense world he created. The title for EAT ME unwittingly came from the same origin.
TURN LEFT OR GET SHOT looks at a more idealised future. Do you approach this theme with scepticism or hope (or both?)
The title of this story has its origins in a photograph of a handmade sign in front of a police barricade during the Watts race riots in Los Angeles (1965). It’s a last-chance warning, just like the one that we currently face environmentally. In this story, an AI entity has taken over from our conventional leaders and nations to wholistically solve our problems and save humanity. Unfortunately, this transition from a selfish world to a sharing world is not for everyone! Humanity is great at reacting in the end times when our backs are against the wall, but forward planning and self-sacrifice are not prominent in our makeup. AI is hopefully free of our self-interest and can provide a positive catalyst for change. This is an optimistic and hopeful vision of how AI could save us from ourselves. For example, if an AI avatar popped up on all our computers today and asked if we wanted it to take over, end war and famine, and make things better, rather than sticking with the old political parties that have left us in fear for years - would you vote yes, or no?
In the fourth quarter of the year, you have a new book coming out, about “the Royal Family in dire straits and gender inequality”. Tell us more about this and the importance of humour in your writing.
Every story I have written has been a specific writing challenge, so I thought it was time to try my hand at satire. I enjoyed writing dark comedy with the Johnny Vega – Satan’s Bartender stories, but I wanted to use humour to expose the current issues in contemporary politics and the monarchy; to make a serious point. The story hinges on the hunt for a new monarch, which exposes the current weaknesses in the system and questions what we want from the Royal Family. I always liked the idea that the King or Queen could be much more than a highly decorated ornamental effigy, designed to entertain and amuse the watching masses. This story explores an alternative future for them and us. In writing comedy, someone must be the butt of the joke, or the joke must contain an element of truth. This is what makes writing comedy so difficult and rewarding. I have great respect for the late Sue Townsend, who did a wonderful job of satirizing British life for decades. Hopefully, my story will be entertaining for the reader and highly uncomfortable for those people currently in power.
Amazon
About Craig Smith:
C.K. SMITH is a Kindle author living in Nottingham, England. He writes in a Victorian house stuffed with dog-eared sci-fi paperbacks, poster art, cats, and curios. SMITH is a recent winner of the George Floyd Short Story Competition & was published in 'Earth 2.0: A Nottingham Writers' Studio Anthology'. His story ‘What’s in a Name?’ takes us to mid-future Louisiana where two Black men struggle to eke out a living in the last days of capitalism - ‘Smith’s tongue-in-cheek observation “What does colour have to do with anythin’ when we’re all bound for Hell?” could be a tagline for the whole competition!’
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