Interviews with Cecilia Page Two, continued.
CDT: I cannot account for it - all I can tell you from my perspective is that as long as I can remember I have been interested in fantasy! My mother was crazy about fantasy and science fiction and I was brought up on a diet of it. I agree there must be something in the water. Isn't there some theory about invisible fashion waves that flow through the world - some theory like that - that's why all those inventions happened in the nineteenth century because of these invisible vibes. Something like that must be happening in Australia!
SFR: You could also argue the practical view that there are fashions within the industry itself.
CDT: For my part I've always been interested in fantasy and I've always known I was going to write a book (whether it would be published or not, I didn't know) - and it took me twelve years to write. Whether it was something that happened twelve years ago, I really can't account for it, but it is happening. And not just Australia. I think it's worldwide - movies, Harry Potter. I mean just about every second movie is really basically fantasy, even if it is disguised as adventure. There are lots of special effects that are pure fantasy.
CDT: That's true and I wonder if it's because - and this is just a theory - we're sort of isolated and we don't have to necessarily follow in any particular footsteps. We're free to be different. That's how I feel. I just want to listen to my own intuition. Perhaps other writers in other countries are subconsciously pervaded by the culture of that country and that makes their work come out the same as everyone else's. I don't know. I'm just guessing!
CDT: I have, and I've done that from outside that culture which just gives it another perspective, I suppose. Why I chose that is because I was brought up in quite an anglophile household where "British was best" and that has pervaded me. That has been my cultural influence from as far back as I can remember.
CDT: Yes. Absolutely. When I look back on it, there was never a time when I didn't want to write. My mother saved a story I wrote when I was … it must have been when I had just gone to school because there are these painstakingly formed, very round letters. There are about five words per page and maybe six pages. It's illustrated; it's got the prints of the horse and princess. I've still got this story and when I look at it, it comes back to me that I remember I desperately wanted to write a story. I wanted to create something that wasn't in the real world but that had come from me. I have been writing ever since I could hold a pen! And when I look back on what I wrote, it was more of a kind of therapeutic outpouring than anything else. At the time I though "Oh, I'm writing such wonderful stuff" and when I look back, it's not too impressive! But it was my learning experience.
CDT: For me, it comes from a whole lot of intuition. For example, flying horses - I did a bit of research and found out that in Earth's gravity, the largest animal that could support its' own weight and actually become airborne is only a few pounds in weight. Otherwise we would have flying horses and dogs and whatever! And I knew that the horses would either have to be miniature or that they couldn't fly. I don't care how big their wings are, thegravity of the earth won't let them fly and the gravity of the world I have created is the same as Earth. So that's why I decided to bring sildron, the anti-gravity metal into it, because it had to be possible - even though it's invented, it still had to be possible, psuedo-scientifically speaking. So having invented sildron, I'm thinking if this is an anti-gravity metal, it's going to be floating around the sky so then there has to be another metal that is the antithesis of it. I couldn't have had flying horses unless I had those two metals. That's an example. In my mind it has to be at least psuedo-scientifically possible, otherwise the world just doesn't ring true. Really, dragons couldn't fly unless you're in a very low gravity situation. Full size dragons couldn't.
Spinning wheels. I went and found out how they worked, even though there is kind of about one mention of them in the whole trilogy. But I wanted to know how they worked just because I felt the reader would somehow get an intimation of the fact that I knew what I was talking about. From some throw away line or the way I described something. I think for world building it is really important that you know how your machinery works and how your people make a living. I can't stand it when you have heroes journeying through an amazing land and suddenly there's a house in the middle of nowhere. People just living. And they've got bread and they've got cream and all the rest of it but no shops or farms nearby and no visible means of support. I can't have that. I have to stop writing and figure out that they have a gold mine under their house or something.
CDT: I try now not to read fantasy in case I do slip into someone else's cliché. Although I am aware that I have been influenced by Tanith Lee. She's a friend of mine and we've talked about this, as I'm sure the beginning of The Ill-Made Mute was somehow subconsciously influenced by her beginning of The Birth Grave. And she's quite happy about that - they are completely different beginnings. I mean even Shakespeare ripped off Romeo and Juliet from someone! There's nothing truly original, though there is an original way of putting it!
CDT: That's a good question! I consciously avoid them, I think. I feel nobody can do elves like Tolkien, so I'm not even going to try!
CDT: … yes. It is very much tied up with the landscape. I don't know if there is such a thing as "racial memory", but those stories have been passed down through the generations for hundreds of years merely by word of mouth and in order for them to have survived that long there must be a power in them that appeals to the human psyche. It certainly appeals to mine. There is a strangeness and a thrill about them that I love and in weaving them in I have tried to do two things; I have tried to bring them into the 21st century so that other people can love them too and also not to destroy them, not to touch them too much, not to destroy the thing about them which gives you a chill down the spine, the inexplicability of them.
CDT: It's my general writing style - not my general speaking style though! And also, I'm interested in art and I don't know if it's synaesthesia or not but I kind of equate words with colors and I want to use as many colors as are available in the English language palette, because I just love the sound and the look of words, even written down. Some of them look just fabulous written down.
© 2001 Ernest Lilley / SFRevu