INTERVIEW: Ekaterina Sedia
Ekaterina Sedia has become one of the leading dark fantasists working the genre. With her unique world building and emotionally vibrant characters (even if said character is a clockwork robot!), she’s made quite a mark on the world. Her two novels, The Secret History of Moscow and The Alchemy of Stone, have received universal praise and adoration.
Born and raised in Moscow and now living in New Jersey, Sedia’s third book, House of Discarded Dreams, comes out in 2010. Open Your Eyes author Paul Jessup interviews the talented Ekaterina Sedia for Apex Magazine…
Paul Jessup: There are a lot of politics (gender and otherwise) that take place in the Steampunk city of The Alchemy of Stone. Do you consider yourself a political writer, or was this just a choice for that book?
Ekaterina Sedia: I think I’ve said it in several different interviews, so forgive me if I repeat myself again: I think all writing is political. Alchemy may seem to be more explicit about politics than many genre books, but it is only because this book is about ruining a status quo, not preserving it
PJ: This destroying of status quo- was this a direct rebellion against other Steampunk literature which seems to celebrate Victorian values?
ES: Well, not necessarily — but I guess it was an oblique reaction against works that celebrate gadgetry of the industrial age without talking about the human cost of industrialization.
Alchemy is obviously echoing some of the aspects of the Russian revolution, and I tried to include at least some recognizable components.
Industrialization and increased human cost is one of them, as well as turning of the agrarian populations into industrial ones; another one is ethnic scapegoating.
PJ: The practice of alchemy in the story is very detailed and very realistically drawn. Did you do any study in actual alchemy for the book?
ES: Well, I did read a lot about alchemy, and then faked most of it.
PJ: It comes across as very complex. Did you mean for Alchemy to act as a replacement for science in this book, making it more science fiction than fantasy?
ES: I wanted alchemy to be a science with a strong spiritual and ethical component.
PJ: My favorite character in Alchemy was the soul smoker. What was your inspiration for such a unique profession?
ES: Heh. I always liked the idea of sin-eaters — people who for a small payment accept sins of others. Soul-smoking was just a twist on that — I wanted him to be basically a provider of a necessary but despised service, kind of like a rat catcher, so I placed him in a ghost removal business. Not really glorified but rather mundane and embarrassing. And the fact that he had to live outside of city limits was based on many medieval towns where executioners were not allowed to live within city’s walls. So he’s an amalgam of sin eater, rat catcher, and executioner. I do love him.
PJ: I also liked the fact that he still kept in touch with spirits, like he was a jailer for the dead.
ES: That too!
PJ: What made you decide on using the gargoyles as a complementary narrative to the otherwise third person story?
ES: One just doesn’t see enough stories written in first person plural POV. I liked the idea of them having a single unified voice, a single consciousness, because that made losing others more dramatic – like losing limbs and parts of oneself, really, and the fact is that they are so old that all time to them is this very long unending present. I couldn’t get that across except in how they talked.
Their voice is the voice of the city itself, of its history.
PJ: You’ve got a book called House of Discarded Dreams coming out from Prime in 2010. Can you tell us a little about it?
ES: It’s about horseshoe crabs and colonialism. And grandmothers and psychic energy babies and old-timey ambulances and Jersey shore. Or if you prefer to look at it that way, it’s a story of a child of Zimbabwean immigrants who travels on a journey of self-discovery in southern New Jersey.
PJ: To be honest, it’s one of the most unusual and interesting stories I’ve ever read to date. In the story the grandmother tells a lot of nested stories. Are any of these based on actual Zimbabwe mythology/folklore?
ES: Man fish is the only one that is a real Zimbabwean urban legend. The wazimamoto are Kenyan, I believe, and the rest I made up.
PJ: In HoDD, almost everything seems to come to life, from a house, to cars, to a ball of psychic energy. What made you consider taking such a fantastical approach to the story with such grounded and realistic characters?
ES: Well, it all has to balance, doesn’t it? Alchemy was a little bit like a puppet play, and I wanted HoDD to have a much more real feel to it. And once things are grounded in the real world with real sensibilities, those seem to bleed into the fantastic too.
PJ: Does fashion play a large part in your fiction?
ES: Some of it, historically based fiction especially so. Although I am working on a story that takes place entirely in a 19th century second-hand shop Historically based thrift shopping is the best.
PJ: That sounds like an awesome story! Where does it take place?
ES: St Petersburg
PJ: Another thing I noticed in Alchemy (I know jumping back a little here) was the attention paid to the sense of smell. Is smell a key element for you in fiction?
ES: Oh yes. Olfactory sense is so deep, I cannot experience the world without it I can deal with lack of visual description, but lack or absence of smells usually takes me out of the story.
This is why in HoDD, the absence of smell becomes a sign of things going wrong
PJ: Right, which is actually one of the more unsettling pieces in the whole story.
ES: Thanks!
PJ: Which says a lot for a story with creepy vampire colonists in it :) I also noticed that cities play a large part in your works. Do you think of the city itself as a character?
ES: Well, to a point, I think. In Alchemy, since the city was pretty much created and personified by the gargoyles, it had to take on some of their personality.
In historical fiction, history of the place also is relevant. So it’s not so much that setting is a character but that a where of the story determines most of everything else.
PJ: Do you find the relationship between character and place easier to form when it’s historical or realistic, or when it is completely imagined?
ES: The realistic and historical is easier; in case of completely imagined one, I opt for a fable-like or fairytale feel in real history, much of the gravity is already there.
PJ: Well, that’s about all I have for now. Thanks again for taking the time to do this.
ES: My pleasure!
Buy The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
Buy The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia
Buy Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup
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