I met Ted over a decade ago, when I attended the Clarion West workshop in Seattle. At numerous science fiction conventions and workshops since, I\u2019ve gotten to know him as a thoughtful, ambitious, and endlessly curious writer, as well as a good friend. What I\u2019m saying is, if you\u2019re sitting in a hotel lobby at 1 a.m. and want to debate the nature of language, Ted is always game. He and I spoke over several rounds of email this\u00a0June.<\/p>\n
Meghan McCarron: You published the first story in this collection in 1990, and the collection as a whole was first issued in 2002. Collectively, these stories have won 4 Nebula awards, a Sturgeon Award and a Hugo (and you\u2019ve won even more awards since). What\u2019s it like to look back over your work, and your career from the vantage of\u00a02016?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ted Chiang: <\/strong>The first thing that strikes me is the change in the status of science fiction over the last twenty-five years. Back when I first started publishing, science fiction was still very much a marginalized genre, and the word \u201cgenre\u201d itself had a pejorative connotation. I remember trying to get into a creative-writing class in college and hearing the professor announce that she wasn\u2019t interested in students who wanted to write science fiction or any other genre fiction because the department\u2019s goal was to encourage original writing. The idea that contemporary realistic fiction might itself be a genre was pretty much unthinkable then.<\/p>\n Obviously, there are still plenty of people who dismiss science fiction out of hand nowadays, but there are also plenty of people who pay little attention to the question of genre when looking for fiction to read. Now there are college classes devoted to science fiction; a writer like Nalo Hopkinson can be a professor in creative writing solely because of her work as a science fiction and fantasy author. I didn\u2019t really expect to see such things in my lifetime.<\/p>\n So when I look back on my career, it\u2019s sort of like being a polka musician for a while and then seeing polka music become cool. (To polka fans who are offended at the suggestion that polka is uncool, I apologize.) When I first entered the field, I did so with the expectation that I could only ever reach a niche readership. Now it seems like there\u2019s the potential to reach a more general audience.<\/p>\n McCarron: How do you think your writing has changed over that period? Has your writing been impacted by the growing popularity of science\u00a0fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m qualified to say how my writing has changed; that\u2019s probably a judgment for others to make. I haven\u2019t deliberately tried to make my work more accessible to readers who aren\u2019t familiar with science fiction. I do think more general readers have become acquainted with certain reading protocols that were formerly the province of readers of speculative fiction; for example, in the past a lot of people would have been baffled by stories that take place in a world like ours but with a different history than ours, but now that\u2019s pretty standard fare. Readers are more skilled at figuring out the background setting of a story even when it\u2019s not laid out at the beginning, and I\u2019m probably benefiting from\u00a0that.<\/p>\n McCarron: You and I were recently discussing that we struggle to imagine what we would be like if we had been born in a pre-literate culture, since written words are so embedded in our consciousness. You\u2019ve mentioned in other interviews that Asimov was your first inspiration to write science fiction. But what drew you to reading and writing, period? What\u2019s your relationship with them\u00a0now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>It\u2019s interesting to think about how profoundly we\u2019re a product of the culture we\u2019re raised in, even to the level of our modes of cognition. We\u2019d all like to think there\u2019s something essential about us as individuals that would persist no matter where or when we were born, but so many of the pursuits that define us are entirely culture-specific. Music seems to be found in all cultures, so maybe a musician would be drawn to music no matter what form it took in the culture she was born into, but what would I be drawn to in a culture without the written word? I doubt I\u2019d be a storyteller, because oral storytelling is all about performance and I\u2019m not a performer.<\/p>\n As for what drew me to reading, I was a voracious reader as a child, but there was a period in elementary school when I was more interested in nonfiction than in fiction. I remember reading stacks of books about animals in general and reptiles in particular. I also liked books about strange phenomena, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. I recall that in the fourth grade, when we were reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler<\/em> in class, I was also reading In the Wake of Sea Serpents<\/em> by Bernard Heuvelmans on my own. Wow, I haven\u2019t thought about that book in years. I suppose that was how I satisfied my appetite for strangeness before I discovered science\u00a0fiction.<\/p>\n Nowadays, I\u2019m distressed to say that my relationship to reading is changing. I\u2019m absolutely still a reader, but I know that my attention span is shorter now because of the internet. The critic Katherine Hayles has proposed a distinction between the \u201cdeep attention\u201d used when reading a difficult novel and the \u201chyper attention\u201d used when switching between many different tasks, and I imagine most of us have felt ourselves shifting from the former to the latter. I wish I were able to stop\u00a0it.<\/p>\n McCarron: That a shortening attention span is a problem for you is both fascinating and mildly terrifying, because as a writer you\u2019re not active on social media. Where do you spend your time online? Do you see any positives to spending time\u00a0there?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I think the internet has an impact even apart from social media simply because of the way it\u2019s changed our expectations of how often we should expect updates on anything. In the past you got general news every day, but for the latest updates in a specific field you were interested in, you got a magazine once a week or, more likely, once a month. Nowadays you can keep a bunch of browser tabs open on various websites that are being updated on an hourly basis, so you get accustomed to regularly switching tabs and reloading those pages to see what\u2019s new. And of course the articles online are usually shorter than articles in print, so your reading habits adapt. Everyone always had a threshold at which we\u2019d say, \u201cThis looks like an interesting article, but it\u2019s kind of long; I\u2019ll save it to read later\u201d; I think the more time we spend online, the lower that threshold becomes. <\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure what the positives of spending time online are, if by \u201cpositives\u201d we mean \u201cactually good for you\u201d rather than just \u201cseductive or fun.\u201d I suppose getting frequent news updates makes us feel more connected, either to the world as a whole or to a particular community. I\u2019m conflicted; part of me is definitely technophilic, and as a science-fiction writer it probably also behooves me to have some awareness of internet culture. But I wish I were better at using the internet as a vast library without also using it as a wall of TV screens all tuned to different channels.<\/p>\n McCarron: Your writing process is very distinct, and (from the outside anyway) seems highly systematic. You spend part of the year on freelance technical writing, and part of the year on a short story. I know you tend to do a lot of research, and always write the story\u2019s ending first. What\u2019s your process of composing and revision like? Do you write very differently when you do technical writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>The way it usually works is that I have an idea that I\u2019ve been turning over in my head for a long time: for example, the idea of a world where everyone is engaged in lifelogging. I think about different possible stories set in such a world; I can usually come up with a bunch of starting points, but I don\u2019t know where those would go. It\u2019s only when I come up with an ending that I can actually begin writing; I need to have my destination in mind. I don\u2019t have the whole story worked out in detail, but I have a general sense of what needs to happen. Sometimes I\u2019m able to borrow elements from the other starting points that previously seemed like dead ends to me, although not always. And of course, things evolve over the course of actually writing out the\u00a0story.<\/p>\n Technical writing is radically different from fiction writing for me; the only thing they have in common is that they draw on the sentence-creation part of my brain. I\u2019m not sure that technical writing has had a direct impact on my fiction, but I think the impulse that originally drew me to technical writing is also one that underlies my fiction, and that is a desire to explain an idea clearly. I think there\u2019s something beautiful about a good explanation; reading one isn\u2019t just useful, it can be pleasurable, too.<\/p>\n McCarron: Relatedly, you tend to bring drafts of your stories to the Sycamore Hill workshop in North Carolina (a peer workshop run by Richard Butner which I\u2019ve also attended). What role do workshops play in your writing process? Your larger writing\u00a0life?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I like to get feedback on my stories before I submit them for publication, and at Sycamore Hill I can get feedback from a lot of smart readers all at once. And of course, spending a week doing nothing but talking to other writers is terrific. Unlike a lot of writers, though, I don\u2019t find workshops useful for motivating me to write by giving me a deadline by which to finish something. On the occasions that I have hurried to finish a story in order to have something to bring to a workshop, the need to meet the deadline caused me to make bad decisions with regards to the story, and I wound up spending more time fixing those mistakes. So now I sometimes decline an invitation to a workshop if I think it would force me to unduly rush the writing\u00a0process.<\/p>\n McCarron: In addition to Sycamore Hill\u2019s peer-review model, you\u2019ve also experienced the Clarion workshop as a student, and you\u2019ve recently begun teaching there as well. What was your experience as a student? As a\u00a0teacher?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>Attending Clarion was a life-changing experience for me. Before Clarion, I hadn\u2019t known anyone who wanted to write science fiction; I barely knew anyone who even read science fiction. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who had read the books I\u2019d read and wanted to talk about the ideas I wanted to talk about. Within days I felt closer to them than to people I\u2019d known through four years of college. I was familiar with science fiction as a literary genre, but Clarion was my introduction to science fiction as a community of people, and it\u2019s hard to fully describe the impact of that.<\/p>\n I recently came back from my second stint teaching at Clarion; it was exhausting, but I had a great time. The caliber of students in recent years has been very impressive, far higher than when I attended, and I\u2019m not sure what the explanation is. Part of it might be that Clarion is better known now and so gets more applicants than it used to, but it also seems that there\u2019s a much greater interest in writing in general nowadays. Even ignoring the explosion in MFA programs, there are lots of classes available online or locally, so people are more likely to have had some experience in writing before attending Clarion.<\/p>\n McCarron: \u201cStory of Your Life\u201d concerns a linguist\u2019s personal transformation in the process of learning an alien language, and now the story is being made into a movie. What has it been like seeing the story transformed into the alien language of\u00a0film?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>That\u2019s a good way to put it! Film really is an alien language. Or at least it\u2019s a language that I have some fluency in as a listener, but one that I don\u2019t speak at all. I\u2019ve always been aware of this at some level, but I was definitely reminded of it when I was first approached about the adaptation of \u201cStory of Your Life,\u201d because it\u2019s not a story that I would have ever pitched to be made into a film. And this ties in with what we were saying about how deeply the written word is embedded in our consciousnesses. Because when a story idea crystallizes in my mind, what I\u2019m thinking about are sentences. I assume that if I were a screenwriter, I\u2019d be picturing scenes, and it makes me wonder about how deep are the differences between these two modes of storytelling.<\/p>\n The process of adapting a book for film is also mysterious to me. In particular I\u2019m thinking of the differences between the movie L.A. Confidential<\/em> and the James Ellroy novel it was based on. I read the novel after seeing the movie, and was really surprised by it. The plot of the movie is fairly complicated, but it\u2019s nothing compared to the vast, sprawling conspiracy in the novel. If I had read the novel first, I would have said it was impossible to adapt into a movie. But what the screenwriters did was take the protagonists of the novel and construct a completely new plot in which those characters could play the same basic roles. The resulting movie is faithful to the spirit of the novel even though it\u2019s radically unfaithful to the text. That\u2019s an approach that would never have occurred to me; I think I\u2019d be too reverent of the original to adapt anything to\u00a0film.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the whole industrial-production side of movies. Based on the tiny bit of the process that I\u2019ve become aware of, making a movie seems like trying to plan the invasion of Normandy and creating a piece of art at the same time. It\u2019s kind of a miracle that any movie turns out well, given the logistical nightmare that\u2019s required to make one. The process for the \u201cStory of Your Life\u201d adaptation has been relatively smooth, I think; not fast\u200a\u2014\u200ait\u2019s been five years since I was first contacted\u200a\u2014\u200abut there haven\u2019t been too many cooks involved. It seems like the project has managed to avoid the typical Hollywood disasters you hear about. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing\u00a0it.<\/p>\n McCarron: Are any of your other stories under option? Or do you have any stories you\u2019d especially like to see interpreted by another\u00a0medium?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I have a couple others stories that have been optioned, but they\u2019re still in the early stages of the development process so it\u2019d be premature to talk about them.<\/p>\n Some years ago I was approached by a director who wanted permission to pitch a cable TV series based on my story \u201cHell Is the Absence of God.\u201d Again this is not something that would ever have occurred to me, since the story seemed too relentlessly downbeat to ever appeal to a wide audience. But he envisioned a series that focused on people wrestling with questions of faith as they dealt with the repercussions of angelic visitations on their lives, and after some conversations he won me over; it sounded like a series I wanted to watch. The director pitched his idea to a network and they were interested enough to have him to write a pilot script, but eventually they got nervous about the religion angle and decided to pass. The window of opportunity for a TV series of that sort might have closed now that The Leftovers<\/em> has aired, but I would still be interested in seeing the story adapted into a visual\u00a0medium.<\/p>\n McCarron: You often describe your work as concerned with philosophical questions, or as a means of exploring scientific ideas or alternate histories. But that obscures how human your characters are. Often a great deal of the tension in your work comes from characters who are self-centered, aggressive, or cruel, and the resolution is often an epiphany resulting in moral growth or peace. Do you see your writing as also possessing a moral dimension?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I don\u2019t set out to teach any moral lessons with my fiction, but I also don\u2019t like writing about characters who are, shall we say, doomed. What I\u2019m thinking of are the James Ellroy novels I\u2019ve read (maybe because I mentioned him when answering your earlier question). He often has a protagonist who\u2019s on a path toward self-destruction, but has a moment where he sees an opportunity to redeem himself, and then decides not to take it; he heads toward his doom with full deliberation. I\u2019m not sure I could write a story like that; I can take some of that as a reader, or as a watcher of television, but I doubt I could live in that head space for the time needed to write a story like that myself. I prefer to write about characters who seek redemption when it\u2019s available.<\/p>\n And I suppose that, if abstract philosophical questions were the only thing I was interested in, I\u2019d probably write some form of non-fiction, like speculative essays. But I think philosophical questions are most interesting when they have significant consequences for a person\u2019s\u00a0life.<\/p>\n McCarron: How do you go about imagining a character who might embody or inhabit the questions you\u2019re concerned with in your stories? You accomplish the uncanny feat of pairing a massive, seemingly unsolvable human question with a specific human perfectly situated to grapple with\u00a0it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I don\u2019t have a specific procedure that I can describe, but your question does make me think of an idea that I heard from the critic John Clute: the notion that certain scenarios are easily storyable, meaning suited to being told as a story, while others are not. I remember once having a conversation with him during which he noted that climate change, as a topic, was not very storyable. I was inclined to agree, but felt that a lot of ideas don\u2019t seem storyable until someone actually does it. There\u2019s a Greg Egan story called \u201cLuminous\u201d in which the consistency of mathematics has become such a high-stakes matter that the protagonist is on the run from assassins because of it. So I suppose one of the things that interests me as a writer is finding ways to make philosophical questions storyable.<\/p>\n McCarron: Your work has primarily been published in science fiction magazines up until now, though I\u2019d argue your influences run the gamut from Asimov to Borges. What literary tradition do you see yourself in? What contemporary writers do you\u00a0admire?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I definitely see myself as working within the science fiction tradition. Asimov was a huge influence on me when I was young\u200a\u2014\u200aI read all of his work when I was in junior high and high school\u200a\u2014\u200abut I wouldn\u2019t say my current writing is very much like his. I didn\u2019t read much Borges until after college, and I\u2019m kind of glad I didn\u2019t; if I had read more of his work earlier, I might have given up on writing out of the conviction that there was no point in trying to do anything in his wake. I\u2019d say it was in college that my writing matured, after I started reading writers like John Crowley and Gene Wolfe. In particular I have to call out Edward Bryant; he\u2019s not well known, but of all the writers I\u2019ve mentioned, I think his work shows the clearest influence on my\u00a0own.<\/p>\n As for writers of contemporary fiction, let me mention some stories I admire: \u201cRalph the Duck\u201d by Frederick Busch; \u201cYou\u2019re Ugly, Too\u201d by Lorrie Moore; \u201cMen Under Water\u201d by Ralph Lombreglia; \u201cThe Bear Came Over the Mountain\u201d by Alice Munro; \u201cMemory Wall\u201d by Anthony Doerr; \u201cArchangel\u201d by Andrea Barrett; and \u201cMedium Tough\u201d by Craig Davidson.<\/p>\n McCarron: Many of these stories concern, on some level, the collision of different cultures or types of consciousness. You also have a significant international following. Has it been particularly interesting to you as a writer to see your stories translated and read by people with different cultural perspectives?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chiang: <\/strong>I\u2019m fascinated by the question of why a given writer\u2019s work is popular in certain countries but not in others. It\u2019s tempting to look for some generalizations about, say, what Japanese readers like or what German readers dislike, but there are so many different factors at play that I don\u2019t think anyone can say much with real certainty. I have wondered if the fact that my work isn\u2019t steeped in the nuances of American culture makes it easier for readers outside of America to relate to it. On the other hand, lots of very culture-specific novels have been immensely popular in translation, so that hypothesis probably doesn\u2019t hold water. I am conscious of my good fortune to be someone who writes in English, because English works are so often translated into other languages; if I were writing in Swedish, for example, it\u2019s likely no one outside of Sweden would have ever read my\u00a0work.<\/p>\n
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