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Ambergris Gets a Little Bigger

interview with Jeff VanderMeer by David Lynton

With thanks to Russell B. Farr and Cat Sparks.

Jeff VanderMeer's dark and surreal city of Ambergris first came to light in 1996, with the publication of Dradin In Love (Buzzcity Press). Since then, the city has grown into a metropolis of weird cultures; harbouring a rich and convoluted history centering around the mysterious Greycaps.

Jeff's new novel Shriek: An Afterword (Tor Books) has just been published.

Narrated by the character of Janice Shriek, it tells the story of her brother Duncan, a historian whose memories of a doomed love affair and a dark secret that may kill or transform him. This tale also involves a war between rival publishing houses, and the rivalry with the grey caps, waiting underground for their chance to recover the city that was once theirs.

Like Middle Earth, you get the feeling that Ambergris could have existed, or does exist in some form. Was this kind of world building intentional for you, and what do you think it is that separates the city of saints and madmen from its fantasy peers?

I'm not trying to re-create the wheel. I'm trying to provide an echo of the real world. Most of the most ridiculous things in Ambergris are taken from real-world histories. A lot of readers get a kind of déjà vu feeling when they read about Ambergris because I'm basically re-casting and re-imagining real history and real cities for the background. I don't get off on including long lineages of elves and other things like that, like Tolkien seems to have, though. And although I liked Tolkien when I read him, it was more for the hell Frodo had to go through than for his world-building. I'm reading George R.R. Martin's fantasy cycle right now and it strikes me that Martin's a far better world-builder than Tolkien. I think Tolkien was going after the fabric of myth. Martin's going after the fabric of reality.

Reading the war scenes in Shriek reminded me of the street fighting in Berlin at the end of World War 2. As the Ambergris novels are written as a history of sorts, what research did you do for the novel in terms of utilising real world history?

I have read extensive military history - multiple accounts of the Battle of Stalingrad, the rape of Nanking, the fall of Shanghai, the taking of Berlin during WWII, and about three thousand pages of detailed analysis of Napoleon's battles. The war scenes are definitely influenced by Stalingrad, the fall of Berlin, and the current conditions in Iraq. The thing about a city is, you can be besieged or actually have fighting in the streets…and calm in another part of the city. There are very surreal juxtapositions during war. I wanted to speak to that.

Disease and infection seem to be a factor in your books (e.g. the Thackery T Lambshead Guide). How did these subjects influence your writing and do you have a particular affection for mushrooms?

I like mushrooms because they seem truly alien, like squid. They seem like they arrived from outer space, in a way. They're unexpected and bizarre, neither plant nor animal. As for disease and infection, these are part of our lives, as is decay. We think they're things that we have held at bay with modern science, but we still die of them in large numbers. I see infection as part of life. We see infection in everything, from internet memes to our physical bodies. As for the disease guide — it's like Angela Carter said: better to laugh at death than to simply accede to it.

There seems to be a blurry distinction between truth and fiction in Shriek. Duncan Shriek's History of Ambergris, although claimed to be delusionally fictional by several characters, may indeed hold some truth. Is history open to interpretation in this city?

History's open to interpretation in any city. I find history texts endlessly fascinating for what they tell me about the historian as much as what they tell me about events in the past.

When did you start to build the world of Ambergris as a writer?

At Clarion East in 1992, I wrote a story called "Learning to Leave the Flesh," which was reaction to all the writing rules we had been given. I thought it would be interesting to break all the rules, or most of them, by writing something plotless, something not action-oriented, something that was structured and held together in a different way. That was the proto-Ambergris story. I remember that the story infuriated some of my fellow students, who claimed it was self-indulgent. Some didn't understand it, either. I was convinced it was the start of a new direction, though, and stuck to my guns with it. I got some really good comments on that story from editors, including a nice handwritten rejection from The New Yorker, but no big magazine or anthology would take a risk on it. But when it came out in City of Saints, it was the story I got the most positive comments on, next to "Transformation" and "The Cage".

Anyway, after writing "Learning" I told myself I wanted to take that same setting, make it more fantasy-ish and remote from the real world, and then make it more active. "Dradin" is the first Ambergris story written thereafter, in 1993.

What role do you think the independent presses play in the genre? Do you think this role has changed significantly over the last 30 years, and do you think their role will change in the future?

There's a lot of liveliness in the indie press because there's a real need for niche publishing right now. There are books and authors that the big presses don't think are commercial enough. Oddly enough, I think the indie press might be more vital in the literary mainstream right now than in genre, because there's more experimental stuff being done there that the big presses won't take. I think the major role good indie presses in genre serve right now is to publish short story collections, which the big publishers won't touch. This probably means the commercial presses are finding a niche for slipstream/New Weird/Next Wave/Interstitial/Superstitial/Romantic Underground/Cross-Genre/Post-Homage/Post-Modern/Surreal/Magic Realist/Differently Gifted...er, Fantasy. Which is a good thing.

You've met a bunch of the Australian genre writers, and have taken an interest in SF published in Australia. Where do you see Australian SF, in terms of quality on a world stage?

I really love a lot of Australia writing and writers. I have never met more interesting or fun people. Ben Peek, Kim Westwood, Trent Jamieson, K.J. Bishop, Geoff Maloney, and tons more-there are lots of writers coming out and established writers who are first-rate.

If I were an Australian writer right now, I'd probably be thinking about two things: First, how to make sure cultural cringe never got given any kind of credence ever again. I mean, you come to Australia and it's a strong, vibrant, rational country and you think, "Er, these people persist in promoting the idea of cultural cringe... and yet that doesn't make any sense." So, I think writers need to stop talking about cultural cringe. Seems like it's old news. Give me a break. Secondly, I'd be looking inward to Australia and outward to the Pacific Rim for inspiration and be ignoring the US/UK/Europe entirely, or at least make it a secondary influence. Writers really need to stop looking to Europe and the US for their influences. There are so many cool influences coming at you from Asia and the Pacific that it's ridiculous. I could see a whole new kind of literature and outlook coming out of a cross-breeding of Australian and Asian writing. But that has to come from the writers on the ground who are open to that kind of thing — and actively seek it out. Nobody can tell somebody who their influences should be, but that's the issue.

You have said that you are enjoying the Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series by George R R Martin. Certainly Martin is an exception to the rule, but do you see any merit in the proliferation of so much fantasy that is essentially the same?

Yes, but I think you find that condition in every kind of fantasy. As we begin to see more and more cross-genre writers, you're going to see Fantasy-Lite in that area, too. It just so happens that Tolkien and others like him became the model for commercial fantasy. But what if Gormenghast had been the model instead? Then today we'd all be bemoaning the crapulous paint-by-numbers of Terry Brooks' latest New Weird Lite. So I'm kind of hesitant to deal in generalities. I think you find good and bad writing in every genre and mode of writing. I do agree that the medieval heroic fantasy is by and large played out, except when someone totally reinvents it, like Martin.

If so, can the quality of writing take a paint by numbers fantasy to another level?

All quality writing in a paint-by-numbers fantasy does de-emphasise how horrible the book is.

Who are you writing for?

I'm writing for myself. If I can entertain and please myself then I hopefully will be entertaining and pleasing others, as I am as much a reader as a writer.

Your blog frequently mentions music and film reviews. Can you tell me about the impact that they have had on your writing?

I always listen to music when I write, and I gain a lot of insight into fiction from really well-crafted films. Without music, I can't set the tone or mood I want to set. And film I get a lot of visual cues from — from the great directors. I can riff off of those images, just as I can use the way a film is edited to help me understand structure in art.

If an Ambergris novel was to be made into a film, who would you have direct? Any favoured actors? Would you play one of the roles yourself?

If Shriek were made into a full-fledged novel, Linda Hunt would play Janice Shriek. Duncan Shriek would be Phillip Seymour Hoffman, the actor who played Capote — he has a kind of shambling strength to him. Mary would be played by a fresh-faced unknown, or Scarlett Johansen. Sybel would be played by an Orlando Bloom type — but someone not quite as known and not quite as slick. The director would be the guy who did City of Lost Children and Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet). Either that or by the guy who directed Damage (Louis Malle). Depends on the screenplay.

You have your fingers in many pies. Novels, short stories, and even poetry. You work as an editor, essayist and reviewer. Do you think that it's important for writers to involve themselves in their craft as much as possible?

Every writer is different. I'm lucky enough to be both right and left brained, so to speak. My natural element is fiction writing and the heavy-duty creative/imaginative side, but I am also very comfortable editing, serving as a publisher and PR guy. And I like to write non-fiction. Others focus on just one or two things. The only problem with doing more than one thing is that people have a tendency to think you can't possibly be serious about all of them. But I am.

Your blog states that you live with a wombat, a possum and a lesser cormorant. Are you starting a zoo or travelling carnival of some description?

Those are our cats: Jango, Shoshona, and Jackson. They look a bit like a wombat, a possum, and a lesser cormorant.

Do your dreams factor in your work at all?

Nightmares do. I have to write nightmares into my stories to get them out of my head. The bit about someone cutting into Martin Lake's hand in his dreams in "Transformation" was a nightmare of mine that I had to write into that story so I wouldn't keep dreaming it myself. Usually dream-stuff makes into scenes in my stories, not as actual dreams, though. I found early on that my work was so surreal that if I added dream sequences, the whole thing became too unmoored, not enough anchored to anything real.

What's a typical writing day in the life of Jeff?

There really isn't one. Sometimes I write a lot of fiction, sometimes none. But I am always writing something — non-fiction, blog entries, short stories, etc. I like to keep busy and in practice even if I'm not writing a novel.

I have encountered people (only 1 or 2 of course!) that have said that "nothing" happens in the kinds of books that you write. Too much description and not enough action. How would you respond to this?

I would imagine it would be more than one or two! Hey, that's a reader's prerogative. But it depends on what you call "action." A lot of novels are about 70% dialogue and some readers think that means something's happening, I think because we expect that much dialogue because of TV and movies. However, the wonderful thing about fiction is that it is not a film or TV. It's something much more interesting and the possibilities of what you can do and how you can engage the reader's imagination.

About half of what I write comes out of a place that is about character obsession, and this can make it seem more static than fiction where a lot of shit blows up. But some of my fiction is very densely plotted — "The Cage" in City of Saints, for example. The last 2/3rds of Veniss Underground is balls-to-the-wall adventure narrative. Is Shriek that kind of book? Not really, except for the war sequences. Shriek is firmly about the lives of the characters and any fantasy element accretes to that. So it's slower paced. Some readers will like that and some readers won't. I've been very happy that I've already received mail from readers who say Shriek made them like my work whereas City didn't, and vice versa — other people liked City better. Well, that's good and healthy as far as I'm concerned. For one thing, it means I'm not repeating myself. Nothing's more of a slow death for a writer than repetition of approach.

And as an aside — I got tagged with that New Weird label because my work shares some superficial similarities of setting with China's work and Harrison's work. But it's a bit like being on a train going from point A to point B and a third of the way there stopping in some little town and being called a resident of that town. The train has nothing to do with that town except as a place to stop for a short time, and it's going somewhere completely different. I never was New Weird, am not New Weird now. So people who are surprised by Shriek being less about the fantasy and more about the characters shouldn't be.

But for those who aren't happy with Shriek as a novel of character, have no fear: The next Ambergris novel, Zamilon File, is an espionage story, densely plotted, surreal but action-oriented. You're plunged right into it and it doesn't stop. That's not a bow to the marketplace — it's because I'd be bored if I wrote the same thing twice in a row.

What excites me is seeing the reaction of Ambergris fans in the long haul; after I've finished the cycle, when they can re-read and see how everything fits together.

If you were transported to Ambergris, do you think that you would survive?

Would I survive in Beirut? Would I survive in Baghdad? That's the real question.

What's coming up next for Jeff VanderMeer?

I'm working on a movie based on Shriek with a soundtrack by Australian band The Church — about eight minutes, internet based. I'm also working on an internet movie version of my Rough Guide to Ambergris presentation. That's in addition to writing a few short stories, including "The Circus on the Bridge" a sequel to "Three Days in a Border Town". In addition to that I'm shooting a documentary, but I can't really go into details about that yet.

Can you see yourself exploring the city of Ambergris for years to come, and building on its already rich life?

There will be a few more Ambergris stories and two Ambergris novels; Zamilon File, a kind of spy thriller, and Fragments of a Drowned City, a kind of detective story. Zamilon is told mostly in diary form, with additional materials appended. Fragments of a Drowned City is the big finale — a huge novel, probably more than eight hundred pages, with a cast of hundreds. Should be interesting. After that, I'll have completed the Ambergris Mushroom Circle.

Finally, do you have any advice for those considering a trip to the city of Ambergris?

Pack lots of weapons, as many as you can get through airport security. Preferably things that will work in all kinds of weather and that have multiple uses. Bring gold and silver that you can sell at a jewellery store. When you get there, check in to a Hoegbotton Safe House until you get the lay of the land. Don't go during Festival time. Wear protective head gear at all times. Know a good priest.

Jeff VanderMeer is a 37-year-old two-time World Fantasy Award winner whose books of fiction and edited anthologies have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award and the International Horror Guild Award. Books by VanderMeer have made the year's best lists of Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Locus Magazine, Publisher's News, and many more. He is best known for writing City of Saints & Madmen and Veniss Underground, and co-editing the Leviathan anthologies and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases.

His publishing house Ministry of Whimsy has been a World Fantasy Award finalist and a British Fantasy Award finalist, with the Ministry book The Troika by Stepan Chapman winning the Philip K. Dick Award in 1998. VanderMeer's non-fiction has appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, and The NYR of SF.

(Photograph by Mia Hansen) Jeff can be found online at www.jeffvandermeer.com.