Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us about your introduction to Darkover.
Pat MacEwen: My
introduction to science fiction happened in the back of a station wagon on a
cross-country road trip when I was 13. An older cousin took pity on me, and
gave me a box full of paperbacks to help me pass the time. That’s where I met
up with Asimov, Doc Smith, Poul Anderson, Heinlein and more. Once home again, I
began to explore the genre, and was delighted to encounter female authors as
well, and books with strong female characters and story lines.
DJR: What about
the world drew you in?
PE: Darkover
was a rarity then – a complicated world with a long history where women
mattered quite as much as men, and which often explored nonbinary questions of
sex and gender and family and inheritance, and of course laran. Like most writers, I was something of a misfit in high
school, but here was a place where I could see myself fitting in, one way or
another. I’m also strongly attracted to moral questions in story-telling and
tales of Darkover often focus on intricate problems concerning what’s right and
wrong in this setting, compared to Terran mores.
DJR: What do
you see as the future of Darkover? How has its readership changed over the
decades? What book would you recommend for someone new to Darkover?
PE: When I
look at the various maps of Darkover, I have to wonder how so many different
species of sapient and semi-sapient species developed within what is really
very limited space. Then I think about laran,
and the ancient strengths of the chieri,
and wonder if it was always that way. Whether it will stay that way. Between
Terran geoengineering and long-lost arts in controlling laran, what if there are sunken continents or ice-covered regions
that were once inhabited and might be rediscovered? What secrets might be
hidden by water and ice? Where did the Catmen and the Ya-men really come from?
Are the chieri all done with their
genetic engineering projects? Are they quietly reshaping humans? Toward what
ends? What about those four moons? Are they really moons? All of them? Are
there more chieri elsewhere?
As for an introduction to Darkover,
my personal favorites are The Shattered
Chain and Thendara House, but
there’s a lot to be said for Stormqueen
too, and Heritage of Hastur, The Alton
Gift, and Sharra’s Exile.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Crossroads of Darkover? How did you balance
writing in someone else’s world and being true to your own creative
imagination?
PR: I have a
background in forensics and physical anthropology, having worked as a CSI for a
California police department, and for the International Criminal Tribunal
during war crimes investigations in the Balkans. I do independent research on
genocide, and one of the aspects I’ve studied is the occurrence of certain
crimes and atrocities during genocidal campaigns that are not expressly forbidden
by law. They are acts almost never encountered in the course of “normal”
warfare, no matter how savage. They are not committed by ordinary criminals, or
even by serial killers. In many cases, they are so rare that no one keeps
statistics on their occurrence, making research on the topic rather difficult.
We don’t bother to even keep track of these acts because we don’t make laws
against the things people simply don’t do. But on Darkover, thanks to laran and certain environmental cues,
like the Ghost Wind, there are some kinds of assault and of murder that can be
committed, and aren’t on the books. So how do you investigate them? How do you
even prove they’ve been committed, let alone who did it? Even when you’ve made
your case, how can you obtain justice?
As for writing in someone else’s
universe, it’s a pleasure to explore “new” crooks and crannies in a setting
I’ve enjoyed reading about. And because this whole complicated world has
already been built, I can concentrate on the elements most useful to the story
I’m telling. In any kind of speculative fiction, the most important factors are
the limits – to magic, to science, to technology, to power, and to the
characters’ own personal experience. When those limits have already been set by
the world-building, I’m being handed a framework that makes it easy to focus on
the story itself, and the character arcs taking place in it. And it’s a
pleasure to honor the work that was done before I came along, as I add my own
brick to the wall.
DJR: Is there
another Darkover story you would particularly like to write?
PE: I think
the characters in Wind Born are just getting started. The Terran forensic
specialist really can’t go home again, and must make a place for herself on
Darkover, like it or not. The Terran intelligence service isn’t likely to give
up on the pursuit of laran and its
secrets, which they see as possible weapons and sources of enormous power.
There must be records hidden away somewhere of what the two agents described in
the story have already learned and done, and very likely other covert programs are
underway. What will the Comyn do about that, in self-defense and to keep the
Terrans from generating a whole new and possibly interplanetary Age of Chaos?
And what about the Renunciate, who may find that simply avenging her brother is
not enough? Who may find herself drawn to the Terran in the same way as the
Comyn Lord Darriel? Can either one help Gillian learn to control a laran-like “gift” that presents itself
as an allergy, and has already come so close to killing her?
DJR: What have
you written recently? What is your favorite of your published works and why?
PR: I’ve
written and sold three new short stories this year, besides “Wind Born.” One,
called “The Butcher’s Boy and the Piri Folk,” concerns the shortest man in
British history and his encounter with the Little People. That one will be
appearing in an anthology called Lace and
Blade 4. The main character is also the subject of a screenplay in
development and set some 25 years after events portrayed in The Three and The
Four Musketeers, about which I can’t say much more at this point, although I’m
pretty excited about it. Another story, “The Forever Boy,” is based on Cherokee
lore and history. The boy in question is a survivor of the Trail of Tears who
was taken in by the Cherokee version of the Little People when he escaped from
the Blue Coats. Unable to face the memory of what happened to his original
family, he rejects adulthood as well andis allowed to remain a boy for two
hundred years – until history repeats itself and he has to choose a new path.
That one has just come out in an anthology of stories about refugees of many
kinds called Children of Another Sky, edited by Alma Alexander. A third story,
“Mumia”, concerning the Black Death, grave robbers, apothecaries making medical
treatments out of mummies, and the legendary founders of the city of
Marseilles, will appear in a horror anthology called Mary Shelley’s Daughters.
My favorite piece of my own work,
thus far, is probably the comic sf novelet “Home Sweet Bi’Ome” – it appeared in
the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of F&SF,
and was selected for Hartwell and Cramer’s Best
Year’s SF anthology, vol. 17. That one’s about a woman with hyperallergic
syndrome who lives in a house built out of her own DNA, and what happens to her
and her love life when that house unexpectedly catches a very uncomfortable
childhood disease. I’ve also published a novella, “The Lightness of the
Movement,” in the March/April 2014 issue of F&SF
which later made the Tiptree Honors List and was a finalist for the Sturgeon
Award. That one is about a graduate student/ballet dancer and her misadventures
when she encounters an alien species with an unusual kind of courtship display
and no concept of motherhood. I like to play with ideas about alien sex, and
societies based on non-human biology, so this was a lot of fun
DJR: What lies
ahead for you?
PE: I’m
finishing up the second book in a forensic/urban fantasy series that began with
Rough Magic and concerns refugee
communities in a central California town that were stranded here by a
catastrophe in Faerie. The main character is a former fairy queen now working
as a CSI on criminal cases involving the denizens of Faerie and/or magic. The first volume is available here.
A second book in a YA series that
began with Dragon’s Kiss is also
underway. This one concerns a crippled boy who can’t talk to humans but finds
out he can talk to dragons, and must if either they or his own people are going
to survive. The first volume is available here:
I’m also working on a steampunk
novel (off and on, I admit) about Harry Houdini, who ran away from home at the
age of twelve and was gone for a year. No one knows precisely where he went or
what he did during that year, but he’d already put together his very own
trapeze act at the age of nine, so I borrowed him and made him a crewman aboard
a dirigible on its way to Europe, and a fateful encounter with sky pirates. The
first third of that tale is called “A Proper Cuppa,” which appeared in the
anthology Alterna-Teas in 2016,
available here. Forthcoming segments will be set in the Catacombs of
Paris, and in a clockwork version of Mad Ludwig’s Bavarian castle,
Neuschwanstein.
DJR: Anything
else you’d like our readers to know about you, Darkover, or life in general?
PR: If you
want to know what my non-fiction’s like, you can check out my blog, called BoneSpeak - where I have a lot to say about the Manson Family, from a
forensic point of view, and the murders that happened after Charlie got locked up. Or there’s Fae Forensics - where I’m compiling a Modern
Bestiary about those refugees from Faerie who might appear in Rough Magic and
its sequels.
As for Darkover, well, I’ve been imagining an HBO miniseries, in view of
the great success George R.R. Martin has had with Game of Thrones. Wouldn’t that be cool? Let’s imagine that one en masse. Who knows what might happen?
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