Edward Ashton Q&A
1. Mickey7 asks a huge philosophical question: if your body and memories can be perfectly reproduced, is the person who wakes up afterward really you? But you’ve also described the tone of the book as basically Mickey telling you his story over a drink. Which came first for you: the big idea, or the guy who had to live through it?
The ideas always come first for me. I’d actually been playing around with the idea of the teletransport paradox (the philosophical problem that you just neatly summarized) for some time before I started working on Mickey7. My first take on the concept was a short story I wrote back in 2014 called “Backup” (you can listen to it if you are interested). Mickey7 began its life as another short piece shortly after that. The problem, of course, was that Mickey refused to be contained to three thousand words, and four years later I had my first draft of the novel.
2. You’ve said that you didn’t realize Mickey needed to be a historian until the middle of your second draft. What clicked when you gave him that part of his identity? What did making him a student of humanity’s past allow you to do with this story about humanity’s future?
The idea of making Mickey an amateur historian was one of those that came to me late in the process, and then when it did seemed so obvious that I felt like slapping myself for not thinking of it sooner. Mickey the historian neatly solved two problems for me. First, it gave me a way to handle a lot of world building, which is always the trickiest part in this genre, in a way that felt organic to the story. More importantly, though, it added a layer of depth to Mickey’s character, and it made the fact that he has insights into the situation with the creepers that escape all of his fellow colonists much more plausible.
3. You have an unusual combination of credentials for a novelist: you’re a scientist, you teach quantum physics, and then you write incredible, funny science fiction. When you’re building a world like Niflheim, where’s the line between “the science has to work” and “the story is more important”? And is there a bit of science in the Mickey books you’re particularly delighted that you got to sneak in?
I’ve always felt that writing science fiction without at least acknowledging scientific reality is kind of like (to borrow a phrase from Robert Frost) playing tennis without a net. When I sneak in fun science facts, I like to make sure they’re accurate, and I suppose my background probably helps with that. My favorite little morbid tidbit in this book comes in the story of Alan Manikova, and in particular the way it ends. The idea behind The Bullet and what an object like that would do to a planet is absolutely accurate, and kind of terrifying when you think about it. That said, when the story needs something, I’m not above stretching the truth a bit here and there. There’s no such thing (so far as we know) as a magnetic monopole, and the theoretical maximum velocity for an antimatter rocket is around 0.3c, not 0.9. I will note, though, that my thesis adviser read the book and didn’t yell at me about any of that, so hopefully everyone else will let it slide as well.
4. After spending three books with Mickey, where have you landed on the question at the heart of his story: if your memories and personality can be perfectly recreated, is the person who wakes up still really you?
The answer to that question really depends on whether you’re a materialist or not—in other words, do you believe you’re just the summation of a bunch of synaptic patterns, or do you think there’s some emergent phenomenon going on inside your skull that’s more than that? If the former, then sure, Mickey3 is Mickey4 is Mickey5 and as long as they’re going to crank another one of you out of the tank, it’s a no harm no foul kind of situation. For myself, though, I can’t help but feel that there’s more to us than that. I wouldn’t step onto the transporter in Star Trek, and I sure as hell would never sign on to be an Expendable.
5. You’ve described yourself as someone who works from a rough map rather than a detailed outline, discovering a lot of the plot and characters as you go. What does that process look like in practice? Have you become more of a planner as you’ve written more books?
I’ve tried. Honestly, I have. Producing a detailed outline and then just filling in the blanks as you go sounds like a much more relaxing way to produce a novel than the way that I do it, but my brain just doesn’t work that way. Everything just sounds dumb when I try to put it into outline form, and all my best ideas (like making Mickey a historian) seem to come to me on the fly. As far as how this works in practice, basically it means that every book for me is a leap of faith. I go into it with a few character sketches, a philosophical or scientific concept I want to play with, and an extremely vague idea of a plot, and then trust that my brain won’t let me down this time. I’m eight and a half novels in now, and it’s always worked out so far.
6. When you finished Mickey7, did you already know there would be further books? What was the unfinished question that made you want to come back for Antimatter Blues and now again for Mickey Prime?
No, I didn’t know there would be a sequel, let alone a series. I didn’t know that I’d ever find a publisher for the first book. That said, I always try to write my books in such a way that they’re complete stories in and of themselves, but I also always try to leave the door to a sequel open at least a crack. In this case, obviously, the hook for Antimatter Blues was that antimatter bomb Mickey left buried under a rock like pirate’s treasure at the end of the book. The motivation in that case was less another question that I needed to answer than the fact that I’d spent a lot of effort creating what I thought was a pretty rich and interesting world, and I wanted to spend a bit more time in it. Hopefully, my readers feel the same way.
7. Now that the film, Mickey 17, exists alongside the books, has it changed the version of Mickey or Niflheim that lives in your own head at all or have you been able to keep the two completely separate?
I loved the film. I’ve seen it more times than I care to admit, and I’ll be seeing it again in a couple of weeks. It really hasn’t had any influence on my thinking about the world or the characters that I built, though. Mickey 17 obviously isn’t a beat-for-beat adaptation of Mickey7, and I think they just live in different spaces in my brain. Director Bong told me when we first got involved in the project that the book would always be my baby, and the film would always be his. I took that to heart at the time, and I still think that’s a good way to think about it.
8. Has there ever been a character who surprised you by becoming much more important, interesting, or difficult than you expected when you started writing them?
My characters surprise me constantly. In my most recent novel, After The Fall, there’s a secondary character named Dana who started in my head as a sort of stock antagonist. As the story grew and shaped itself, though, she just kept sticking her nose in, and the more I got to know her, the more I liked her. By the end, she wound up being something closer to a hero, which is not something I would have called in a million years when I was five chapters in.
9. What does a productive writing day actually look like for you? Do you have routines or habits you rely on, or does the process change from book to book?
My life doesn’t allow me to have fixed routines for getting the work done. I’ve got a pretty demanding day job, a family that actually likes spending time with me, and a pack of hounds who aren’t gonna take care of themselves. So, I’ve learned to write in the interstices. Twenty minutes in between meetings? I can get in one or two hundred words there. Got an hour after dinner and before the boys need to walk? That’s five hundred, easy. Keep that sort of thing up every day without fail for six or seven months, and you’ve got yourself a book. Maybe someday I’ll quit my day job and get a nice quiet writing hut or something, but for now, the chaos seems to be working for me.
10. Between After the Fall and the upcoming Mickey Prime, you’ve been busy! What’s next for you?
Speaking of chaos, I had the bright idea this year to agree to write two different books for two different publishers at the same time. One of them is working with someone else’s IP, which is not a trick I have attempted before, while the other one is my next book with my friends at St. Martin’s Press. One of the two is complete now, and should be back with my editors by the time you see this. The other is about half-way through the first draft. It involves a Just Some Guy ™ protagonist, a trickster god, and a choice between saving your love and saving yourself. It’s been a fun book to write, and I love it very much. Hopefully my editor will too.
Lightning Round
1. Best Mickey Barnes to have as a roommate: Mickey 1–8?
Five. He spends his entire life in the isolation tank, so you’d pretty much have the room to yourself.
2. One piece of science-fiction technology you’d volunteer to try
Lots of SF features one sort or another of rejuvenation technology. I could go for some of that these days.
3. One science-fiction book you wish you could read again for the first time?
Shakespeare’s Planet, by Clifford D. Simak.
4. Morning writer or night owl?
I write when the day allows it. I can’t afford to be picky with timing.
5. Music, silence, or background noise while you write?
Music usually, unless I’m into something really intense. For the ending of Mickey Prime, I needed silence.
6. Harder to write: the first sentence or the last?
Oh, the last, for sure. I’m always very conscious of the fact that you can ruin a year of hard labor if you don’t stick the landing.
7. Strangest place you’ve ever gotten a story idea?
“Machine,” by Regina Spektor.
8. A piece of writing advice you’ve happily ignored?
Never write in first person present tense. I really don’t get why some folks are so adamant on that point.