Alistair Rennie was born in the North of Scotland and now lives in Italy. He has published short fiction in Electric Velocipede, Shadowed Realms and The New Weird (edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer), and has forthcoming work appearing in Weird Tales, Fabulous Whitby (edited by Liz Williams and Sue Thomason) and Electric Velocipede. The following interview proceeded from the conversation we had about Alistair Rennie’s short fiction contribution to the New Weird anthology, published by Tachyon Publications this spring.
On behalf of Fantasybookspot.com, I’d like to welcome and thank Alistair for being our guest ‘On The Spot’.
Lawrence: Let’s start with the New Weird anthology and your short story “The Gutter Sees the Light That Never Shines”. Overall I admit to enjoying the New Weird anthology “on balance”. There were some short stories I enjoyed reading more, and of course there were some I enjoyed reading to lesser extent. All in all I thought it had some great moments and yours was certainly one of them.
Alistair Rennie: Thanks. It's great that you got so much out of "The New Weird" anthology. I think the great thing about it is that it's full of material, fiction and non-fiction, that makes the reader think, not only about NW but about genre fiction as a whole.
Lawrence: The great thing about the New Weird anthology is indeed that it makes you think about genre fiction and the 'state' genre fiction is in. One of the (other) strengths of the anthology however is that different readers get different things out of the anthology and probably enjoy it all 'equally' (if the level of enjoyment would be comparable) as much.
Alistair Rennie: Absolutely. You can see this in the reviews and responses on forums and blogs. There is an engaging lack of consensus about which aspects of the antho stand out most, whether its the stories, the non-fiction or the New Weird itself. People are enjoying it for different reasons. Reviews have been full of praise but differ widely in terms of where they give it. And there's wide-ranging opinion about the stories, which is exemplified by reactions to mine, as it happens. My story's taken a couple of slaps but also some praise. And then there's the reaction to the whole notion of the New Weird as a movement/subgenre, which seems to combine an aura of scepticism with a sheer desire for it to happen--or a sheer desire for it not to happen with a reluctant suspicion that maybe it is. There are all kinds of gradations of enthusiasm and denial. It's strange to think that there are sceptics casting aspersions on the validity of a subgenre that casts aspersions on itself. But it's weird, after all, so it all makes sense (in the relative sense of not making any).
But, as you say, the distribution of preferences for this or that aspect of the anthology are as various as the anthology itself. And it does seem that "The Weird" has become the watchword for a particular quality, style or a vibe in genre fiction that many people respond to with excitement.
There's no doubt that a collection that generates these kinds of reactions has a peculiar strength, which is largely due to the effect of the New Weird itself. But it's also a consequence of the approach of the editors. They've been quite fearless in their approach, and clearly innovative. And they took chances, too, of which I'm a living proof. The result is incendiary and, to add to that, there is a marvellous appropriateness about a New Weird anthology being co-edited by one of its fiercest opponents who is also regarded as one of its foremost practitioners.
Lawrence: Moving on to the (now almost infamous) SF Site review of the NW anthology. Personally, and I think that is the reviewer in me speaking, I thought it was a (crying) shame your story was dismissed out of hand, without even engaging it on textual level.
Alistair Rennie: Heh heh, yes, that review wasn't very kind to me. The first thing to realise is, that with a story like "The Gutter", where violence is taken to a certain extreme, you've got to be prepared for the fact that some people are not going to like it. Writing something like this involves a certain risk. I think it's inevitable some people are going to dismiss it because of the gore, which appears to have happened here.
It's best to take these things in your stride, though, and hope that people (like you have) either simply enjoy it for what it is or else recognise where it's coming from in terms of the stylistic approach and the underlying influences. It's the kind of violence you find in graphic novels, comics, Manga, anime and video games. It's exaggerated and brutal and blurs the lines between the darkly comic and serious drama.
Lawrence: Interesting you bought up the 'gore', was it inspired particularly by one sort of branch, author or comic? Admittedly, I have not read all that much graphic novels/comics. I did play my fair share of "brutal" video games and have seen a lot of anime - your fiction does generally seem to have those attributes. Although it is not as over the top as some of the stuff Japanese sometimes produce, yet it blurs these lines quite nicely.
Alistair Rennie: There wasn't really any one example of visual or graphic media that inspired me but just the general sense of stylisation, the energy of pulp combined with the very direct dramatic stimulus of graphic and visual forms, and the potency of course of the actual designs. And then, you only need to think of Gaiman and Moore to appreciate the literary influences in graphic fiction, and of the "Half Life" series for the same in video games. With stories like "The Gutter", I've certainly been conscious of trying to reverse the trend--creating prose fiction that incorporates the effects of visual and graphic media.
But there are also historical works that have influenced me--"The Odyssey" and "The Voyage of Argo", the early Scottish/Welsh epic "Y Gododdin", Scottish Ballads, Elizabethan revenge tragedy, Marlowe's "Tamburlaine". These works are resplendent with a brutal physicality that carries a very powerful dramatic impact.
The essential thing for me is to make the gore a consequence of dramatic action, not simply improvised slaughter. I'm not interested in doing gore "tastefully", because violence is never tasteful. But I am interested in doing it dramatically. And if there is improvised slaughter, which I think there probably is in my case, it has to have dramatic consequences.
Whether I actually manage to pull this off, I don't know, but it's what I aim for. And it's not a glorification of violence, that much I know, because I abhor violence. And I'm actually aware that, to some extent, the violence in my stories is an expression of my anxiety of violence, given that there is so much of it these days, much of it sanctioned by the people we elect to look after our welfare.
Lawrence: There does not seem too much anxiety for violence in your character’s motives though, “the Gutter” for example, is a far-cry from a pacifist. The Meta-Warriors are not on friendly, peaceful terms either. How do you justify the gore if you abhor violence? Don’t the two get tangled up in the process?
Alistair Rennie: The simple answer is that it wouldn't be an expression of anxiety without an expression of the causes underlying it, which, in this case, means creating bad characters who do bad things.
Also, there is a difference I think between the instinctive emotional reaction of abhorrence and its intellectual translation into a powerful political or moral position like pacifism. I'm not so much interested in formulating distinct intellectual positions in fiction, or illustrating a particular moral dilemma, so much as creating emotional effects out of extreme situations (which are suggestive, perhaps, of intellectual positions without formally stating them).
But it's not so much about getting tangled as allowing yourself to operate on different levels.
Would I deny that the abhorrence of violence is accompanied by a primitive animalistic thrill of its attractions? No. And in fact I think we exercise, and exorcise, our attraction to violence through things like fiction, video games and contact sports, which is a healthy thing.
Dark Fantasy/Horror is specifically an arena for the expression of abhorrences which opens up a safe space for confronting characters and scenarios that would ordinarily cause terror but, in the context of fiction, are capable of causing excitement and titillation. The contradictory logic of deriving pleasure from terror is essentially a form of catharsis, where gore and violence form an essential part of a process of emotional gratification or release.
So, I justify the gore by its dramatic function; and, to this extent, I feel that gore in fiction justifies itself.
On another level altogether, I think it's important not to put restraints on whatever it is you're portraying in fiction, otherwise it becomes an exercise in the inhibition rather than exhibition of whatever you're portraying - which, again, is why I wouldn't attempt to portray violence in any other way than gratuitous, because violence is gratuitous. This, admittedly, is a bit of a pompous appeal to artistic integrity which I'm not sure really sticks.
What does, though, is the question of motive, because the characters in my story don't really have one. I was very attracted to the idea of creating a scenario where characters engage in actions without motive where the absence of motive becomes the motive in itself. These are characters who don't function according to any moral criteria or ulterior aim beyond their mutual destruction. So it's interesting to make them do what they do and see what happens.
Lastly, I also think that sensationalism is a grossly undervalued and misrepresented effect of fiction. The negative value we apply to it is something we've inherited from our forefathers (using that word advisedly), and it needs to be ditched once and for all. Genre fiction (what used to be called Romance) was often dismissed as "sensationalist", which was another way of saying that it was morally damaging, sub-literary and all that kind of thing. Video games are the ultimate "sensationalist" medium of today, and notice how they get the same bad press that genre fiction used to get in previous centuries. The panic and disapproval over the corruptive influence of video games is just as it was with eighteenth-century romances read by women. Of course, video games will addle your brain if you play them for hours on end without pause, but that's nothing to do with content. The point is, sensationalism derived from something so innocuous as reading a book is something to be coveted. It's almost like turning stone into gold. No ill-effects, no hangovers, no crippling illness--and yet the buzz you receive is as good as anything in life. And this is also a reason why violence in fiction is perfectly justified: you get to experience it without the harmful consequences. It's really a form of play. Like video games.
So, all this to say that the Gutter was intended as an affectionate portrayal of unmitigated bloodlust.
Lawrence: So, where do we find the Gordon Freeman in your fiction? Do you notice a trend in (cross-) influence of video games and fiction?
Alistair Rennie: The overlap between games and films is now a given. And there's no doubt that many games are formed around plots and dialogues as you find them in novels and films. I played "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" recently and it very much feels as if you're participating in the events inside a novel. There's no doubt this will increase to more sophisticated levels, and it's something to look forward to. I wonder sometimes if video games are not the modern equivalent of pulp fiction, offering the quick-fire thrill of engaging in fantasies that requires very little cerebral effort on our part. They are by far the most effective means of escapism we have today, which I consider a good thing. And they are also in themselves a form of fiction.
Whether we're seeing more of an influence of video games in prose fiction is another matter. It would be difficult to gauge to what extent this is happening in any unconscious way, though it surely must be. I saw that Jeffrey Thomas had a post on his blog citing video games as an influence on his work, so we can add that to the evidence. And many writers are committed gamers. So it's hard to believe that at least one or two of them are not consciously adapting their experience of video games to their fiction.
Where's my Gordon Freeman? There is only one Freeman, and how could anyone compete with him? But he's probably the best example of a character in video games who resembles a character from prose fiction. And it stands to reason obviously because of the part that Marc Laidlaw has played in the development of the game. I really hope the success of Half Life will encourage more collaboration between game designers and writers, because there is a lot of scope for enriching the whole gaming experience exactly as we've seen with Half Life.
But, anyway, I can't give you a Freeman. But I do have a character who's central to most of the Meta-Warrior stuff I've written. He's called BleakWarrior and he'll be making his debut in "Weird Tales" later this year. He's got none of Freeman's charms, though, and he couldn't use a gravity gun to save his life.
Lawrence: Apart from the violence (an element I did enjoy; a bit in the same vein as I enjoy Richard Morgan's work for example - have you read him?) you also know how to tell a great story. Certainly had me grinning all the while, with its playful, sometimes almost "casual" creativity.
Alistair Rennie: Yes, I've read "Altered Carbon", a terrific book. And I'm very influenced by Cyberpunk authors, so Morgan's development of Cyberpunk, integrated with noir, hits the spot for me. I'm also very influenced by Sword and Sorcery (R. E. Howard and Moorcock). It always comes as a surprise to me that hardly any S&S has really been written. So the imminent release of "The Steel Remains" excites me a lot.
Lawrence, you've made my day when you suggest a "casual creativity" in "The Gutter".
The sense of a casual, random development of story is something I very deliberately aim for with the Meta-Warrior stuff. This is partly because it's appropriate to these kind of characters, whose existence is without definite purpose, and partly because the overriding sense of a lack of purpose is one of the purposes of the story itself. It is also partly because I have only vague ideas about who and what these characters are and what will become of them. I deliberately maintain a plan of not planning too far ahead in order to maintain an alertness to a perpetual exploration of random possibilities. There is no telling what will happen next or who will appear or what they (the Meta-Warriors) will do or what they will be capable of doing. It's a kind of chaos in motion for which I've applied a kind of spontaneous logic and over which I've applied only a minimal amount of authorial control.
That's all a bit melodramatic. But it's a principle that I hold to when writing these stories. And it's probably indicative of the way I write as a whole. I don't plan entire plots in advance but pursue vague ideas that will only become clearer as I approach them through the story. I find that there's a point, if all goes well, where you cease to write a story and where the story starts to develop its own internal random paths for you to follow. The story reaches a point where it starts to write itself.
Lawrence: The story writes itself, still there is the hand of the writer. You have come a long way to reach the point where you are at right now, I’m sure. How has the journey been so far?
Alistair Rennie: Actually, that's a strangely difficult question to answer. I will use a metaphor! It's been like a river journey, just letting myself get swept up in the current, occasionally careering through the rapids or getting bogged down in stagnant pools. I think most writers probably experience the excitement of their journeys in brief episodes that quickly give way to the need go on, which is what it's been like for me. But the New Weird experience has been hugely exciting, no doubt about it.
Lawrence: That does makes me wonder, what attracted you to New Weird fiction? Was it after, say China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, that you thought "I really want to write NW fiction"? Because with the setting like the one you picked in "the Gutter" you could have gone different ways.
Alistair Rennie: I have to confess that I've never read China Mieville. I know, that's bad. I've had a copy of "PSS" for over a year and still haven't got round to it. I will soon, though, and it's a pretty safe bet I'm going to enjoy it.
Before I found out I was going to be in this anthology, I really wasn't aware that I was writing stuff that could be defined as New Weird. I had started writing stories that I was calling Sword and Debauchery, which is probably quite self-explanatory. But then they started to develop into the whole Meta-Warrior thing and, well, I was entering the territory of the New Weird.
Plus, I only discovered that certain authors I'd read (Jeffrey Ford, Jeff VanderMeer and K. J. Bishop) were associated with the New Weird after I'd read them, and I hadn't really given it much thought.
But I was significantly influenced by these writers for a variety of reasons. Ford and VanderMeer were a revelation in terms of their uninhibited use of language and the way they reveal how fiction is not so much a question of playing by the rules as playing with them. They are similar writers in this respect but, because they are similar in this respect, differ greatly.
But if I was to pinpoint the most direct influence on me from among the writers in the "Evidence" section of the antho, it's Bishop. It's not just that "The Etched City" is one of the most engaging books I'd ever read. Bishop draws on a whole range of influences and ideas from disparate sources in order to fuse a perfectly self-contained world that establishes its own internal logic out of a weirdness that, in the context of the world she creates, feels perfectly normal. I distinctly remember reading "The Etched City" and realising that you could create a world out of incongruous things simply by doing it. I'd been shying away from some ideas I'd had at the time because I thought they were far-fetched or unworkable. I wasn't savvy enough to know that the best thing to do was to pursue them with total rigour. So, when I read "The Etched City", I got savvier and pursued.
Lawrence: Michael Moorcock (not the least) once remarked: “If you want to write fantasy then read everything but fantasy.” Do you still read genre fiction?
Alistair Rennie: Yes. I started off reading horror and fantasy as a kid then deviated for long years reading all kinds of stuff, later because I spent a long time at university, studying and teaching a bit. During that time, the genre fiction I read was purely historical (mostly nineteenth-century but also much further back in time). For the past six or seven years I've been playing catch up with contemporary stuff, and also reading some writers I'd never read before (Zelazny, Vance, Leiber). This also explains why I'm a little behind on writers like Mieville.
So, I sort of conform to Moorcock's maxim in reverse. And there's no doubting the wisdom of his remark. Fantasy is invariably better when it's invested with a wider range of influences, as Moorcock has shown repeatedly. Or if you think about George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire"-- part of the success of this series is that it depends as much on realism as it does on fantasy in order to produce its formidable impact. The sense of material and moral veracity is actually fore-grounded against the peripheral menace of the fantastical. To this extent, it's hard to imagine that Martin isn't as steeped in Balzac or Henry James as he is in fantasists like Robert Louis Stevenson or Tolkien.
Lawrence: Was this your first big publication?
Alistair Rennie: It was my first really big publication, yes. But I say this with some hesitancy, because my first published story was in "Electric Velocipede" which, with John Klima at the helm, has established itself as a very significant outlet for genre fiction. I was in issue #10 alongside Jeff Ford, Rick Bowes, Mark Rich, Tim Akers and Robert Freeman Wexler, with Andre Oosterman and me being the new kids on the block. So that was a big one. But, yes, being in a seminal anthology alongside some of the biggest names in genre fiction is quite something.
Lawrence: Any projects in the pipeline readers can look forward to?
Alistair Rennie: I've being doing quite a lot of stuff that's set in the same world as "The Gutter". And one of these stories will be in a forthcoming issue of "Weird Tales", some time this year. It's called "BleakWarrior Meets the Sons of Brawl", so you can tell that means more violence. But it's also safe to say that this story reveals a little more of who and what the Meta-Warriors are and what they're doing and why (sort of).
I've also got a couple of other stories coming up, one in an anthology called "Fabulous Whitby" which is being put together in part by Liz Williams. This one's called "Return to the Wrath of Penda" and has a quasi-historical rather than second-world setting. It's similarish to "The Gutter" but less extreme.
And then I'll have another story in "Electric Velocipede" #16, which is due out in autumn. It's a stand alone short story and quite different from the Meta-Warrior stuff. More towards the grotesque than gore.
Lawrence: A lot of short stories, I see. Do you feel comfortable sticking to short fiction, ie. “write what you know best” or are there tentative plans for a full-blown novel in the future?
Alistair Rennie: The Meta-Warrior stories are links in the chain of a bigger narrative that's coming together as a novel. So I'll see how that goes. But it's not so much about feeling comfortable writing shorter or longer stories for me. It's more a case of what kinds of stories I feel comfortable writing. I don't feel comfortable writing Science Fiction, for example. I don't seem to have the aptitude or the appetite for it. Whatever I do will tend towards Dark Fantasy. And it may, of course, tend to be Weird.
I would like to thank Alistair Rennie for participating in this 'On the Spot' feature. On behalf of Fantasybookspot, I wish him all the best with future projects.
-- Lawrence
The Gravel Pit
