Everyday science fiction
http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives-2005/thisalaskanlifevol14ed44.shtml
-By Brandon Seifert
How can you write cutting-edge science fiction when you live in a cabin with no plumbing in the middle of Alaska?
Because it surrounds you - that's David Marusek's answer.
And he's not alone. In his rustic home on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Marusek, a reserved 54-year-old with curly gray hair and a quiet voice, pulls novels off a shelf, science fiction by Alaskan authors: Plasma Dreams from Eric Nichols, in North Pole; Agviq: The Whale, by Homer's Michael Armstrong; and a couple of books by Elyse Guttenberg, the sister of Fairbanks State Representative David Guttenberg. On November 1, Marusek joined them with the release of his first sci-fi novel, Counting Heads, from major sci-fi publisher Tor Books.
Alaska, primordial in so many ways, also abounds with things futuristic. Marusek points to Mars Base Zero, the privately-funded biosphere experiment in Fairbanks, by Sheep Creek Road, a greenhouse meant to work some of the kinks out of a base on Mars. Researchers there say Mars and Interior Alaska have similar climates - cold and dry, with relatively little sunlight. Mars has dust storms; in Alaska, ice fog plays that role.
And then there's the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, which conducts experiments by beaming radio waves into the upper atmosphere that could one day lead to weaponizing weather; and the UAF researchers who wonder whether the aurora could provide energy; and, also at UAF, the Center for Nanosensor Technology, and a virtual reality room that is controlled by gestures. And the Kodiak Launch facility. And Star Wars. Not to mention that Alaska is likely the first stop on the bird flu tour of the Americas.
All of it inspires Marusek. He coined the term “everyday science fiction” to describe his work, but it could just as easily apply to Alaska. “We have more science-fictional things going on in this state per capita than, I think, any other place,” he says.
Marusek arrived in Alaska in 1973, sporting shoulder-length brown hair, a goatee and sideburns. He'd skipped his graduation from the University of California at Santa Barbara to hitchhike to Seattle, which hadn't proved as final a destination as he'd expected. He discovered a degree in cultural anthropology hadn't given him basic skills, like how to do a job interview. After three weeks, he stuck out his thumb again and kept going north.
He came to Alaska under the influence of books like Future Shock and The Population Bomb, in the days of Vietnam and gestating environmental awareness, thinking modern society would be ending shortly. He ended up in Juneau, then got a job as a watchman at a shuttered cannery on Chichagof Island.
On Chichagof, he had money, food and a place to stay. “They even gave me a gun and a dog,” he recalled. He also had time to himself when he could have explored his desire. “I think I've always known I wanted to be a writer,” he says. But his efforts stalled, and stalled again when he moved to Cordova at the end of the 1970s. If his life were a novel, the inciting event, the plot point that everything hinges on, wouldn't come until 1986. That was the year his marriage ended and a business that he co-owned went under.
The shake-up was a mixed blessing. “I was kind of devastated,” he explains, “and I thought, 'Hell, what a perfect opportunity to start writing.'”
His first sale came in 1992, when he attended the Clarion West “boot camp for short stories,” an intensive six-week course. “I wrote and sold my first story to Asimov's Magazine on the spot, and it got me started.” But while he seemed to pop into the science fiction field out of nowhere, Marusek points out he'd been writing daily for six years at that point. “It's not like an overnight success.”
Marusek has sold nine science fiction stories since 1993. Three made it into their year's volume of The Year's Best Science Fiction series and one was collected in the anthology's 20-year retrospective. Scientific American magazine quoted a chunk of a story he wrote in its issue on nanotechnology, and college courses at three schools in the Lower 48 have used his work as required reading, as did a theology class in Scotland. His second published science fiction story, “We Were Out Of Our Minds With Joy,” so impressed the science fiction community that a reviewer at a major genre periodical, Locus Magazine, declared that “David Marusek” had to be the pen name of a more major author. (“He's never lived it down,” says Marusek.)
Marusek set six of his stories as well as his new novel, Counting Heads, in the same future, what he thinks of as the probable future. It's a time less than a century hence when Earth's 15 billion people have been made obsolete by cloned labor and artificial intelligences. They are approximately immortal and definitely bored.
In Counting Heads (which is an expanded and revised version of “We Were Out Of Our Minds With Joy”), people can pull people apart molecule by molecule and then put them back together, but the government still can't handle the paperwork it generates. Against this backdrop comes a conspiracy by earth's wealthy to buy the planet and turn it into a private country club.
Marusek's technologies are extrapolations from scientific magazines and journals, but he's less interested in the details of the science than its effects. His stories are first and foremost about people - or reasonable facsimiles of people. “The Wedding Album” stars a recording of a woman's mind made on her wedding day, which lives inside a super-tech version of a photo album. She's trapped in the happiest day of her life, and can do nothing but watch the downward plunge it later took as future versions of her visit the simulation. Marusek establishes the plot, and then shreds it and replaces it with something of global ramifications, and then demolishes the new direction too. Fellow science fiction author Cory Doctorow described the sensation “The Wedding Album” gives as “gobsmacked.”
“The Wedding Album” also has an Easter egg for Alaskans in it: A man named Murkowski lying in a pool of his own blood a century from now. “At first Ben was shocked,” it reads, “but then he thought that it served him right. He'd never liked the man, or his politics.” Marusek points out that it's only a family name, and it could be anyone - but, he adds, “You see a lot of my enemies sprinkled throughout my fiction… I I feel like I have the license of Michelangelo to paint people in hell that I don't like.”
Marusek writes six days a week. By 8:30 or 9 a.m., he's on the couch with his laptop or writing in one of his color-coded spiral notebooks. He tries to write at least 1,000 words a day, two pages of printed text. He spends most of his time rewriting, he says.
He writes until noon or 1 p.m., sometimes later. It depends on his other job as a freelance graphics designer, which he does from the same couch on the same laptop. He's also teaching a web-based course on PhotoShop for UAF; same couch, same laptop. Sometimes he doesn't leave his cabin for days, but when he does escape, it's for weeks or months, so he feels like his time balances in the end.
Sci-fi is an industry he's had no trouble plugging into from a cabin a thousand miles from the nearest publisher. He attributes this to the early-adopter mentality of the science fiction industry, which he says is usually five years ahead of the general public when it comes to technological innovation. He manages much of his career via email, and uses the annual World Science Fiction Convention for face-time with fans, colleagues and publishers.
From a shelf in his living room, he pulls a three-ring binder with “Counting Heads II” written on its spine and flips through the pages. He's got four more books in the series living in his head, he says, stories that detail the process of colonizing other solar systems on starships that fly for generations. His next book is tentatively titled The Day of the Oships, and he excitedly shows off its many-page plot synopsis. He's never worked from one before, he says, preferring to let his stories grow as they go. With the synopsis, he says, “it's like there's someone telling me what to do!”
His cabin, near UAF, has a water-heating and -pumping system now, and a portable toilet, although he still must haul water. He likes the freedom his low cost of living gives him, he says, but he misses the amenities he's traded. “I sure like plumbing. Especially in the winter, after you've had a couple beers…”M”
Marusek has looked to move out of state for years, he says, but he worries that most other places would force him to put paying his bills before his writing.
This civilization has survived longer than he thought it would when he came to Alaska thirty-odd years ago, but he still feels it's precariously perched, he says, and if it collapses, he'd rather not be in Fairbanks. “There's no way we could survive up here… I I really do feel like I need to get back down to the coast and get a boat, so at least I could fish for my dinner.”
He grabs his copy of Counting Heads off the “shelf of fame,” where the books and magazines with his work in them reside, and waves it in the air. “If I'm really lucky, this damn book will make it possible.”
“For now I can't really see anything beyond the writing,” he says. “I have a number of good books in me that I dearly need to get out, and when I have, then maybe I'll reconsider… I I hope you realize that I do intend to live 300 years, at least. So for me to talk about what I'll be doing when I'm 200 is a little early.”
David Marusek will be appearing at bookstores in Fairbanks and Anchorage to support his new novel Counting Heads.
Fairbanks
Book Launch: Saturday, Nov. 5, 7 p.m. at Bear Gallery in the Centennial Center for the Arts at Pioneer Park (corner of Airport Way and Peger Rd., 456-6485, x221)
Signing: Saturday, Dec. 17, 1 to 3 p.m. at Waldenbooks in the Bentley Mall (32 College Rd., 456-8088).
Anchorage
Reading: Thursday, Nov. 10, 7:30 p.m. at Title Wave Books (1260 W. Northern Lights Blvd., 276-9283)
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