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The Engine's Child$17.00 add to cart

In the Palace of Repose, Holly Phillips' first collection of short stories, saw her nominated for two World Fantasy Awards. As well, the book won the 2006 Sunburst Award, celebrating Canadian literature of the fantastic. Her second novel, The Engine's Child, is a delicious dark blend of science fiction and fantasy, faith and science, technology and magic. Holly was kind enough to take the time to answer some questions for our readers.

CG: How did you get yourself started as a writer? What do you feel was your big break, first professional sale or first book?

HP: I've been reading all my life, of course, and played with writing since grade school, but I didn't get serious about pursuing it as a career option until my mid-twenties when I left university. Why didn't I take a degree in creative writing, you ask? Oddly enough, it never even occurred to me at the time. I guess I came into the game backwards, so to speak. As for my big break, I feel I've been pretty lucky all the way through, but the best was when I sent a story to a magazine being published by Wildside Press and got a post-it note on the cheque with a line from the publisher saying, 'If you ever want to publish a story collection, please send it to us.' So I did, and that collection, In the Palace of Repose, went on to four award nominations and one win for the 2006 Sunburst Award.

CG: What was the best advice you received as a young writer?

HP: Write those 1 million words of crap. I've taken writing courses and workshops, read the books, joined the critique groups, and they were all good. But I'm one of those people who has to learn by doing and I had to teach myself writing from the inside out.

CG: Who would you cite as influences on your work?

HP: Everyone I've ever read, good and bad. I think reading Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. LeGuin when I was young taught me early that you can write SF and still write literature, and I'm grateful I learned that early enough to be able to take it for granted now. But after that the influences start to snowball. I like to cite Tom Waits, though, because he's a song-writer, not a fiction writer, yet his vision and style, his sheer dark weirdness, really do inspire me.

CG: The culture you've built for the rasnan in The Engine's Child has a decidedly non-western feel. What, if any, real world cultures inspired or contributed to your story?

HP: I suppose I had southern India in the back of my mind, or maybe anywhere in southeast Asia. I think what I really wanted was to divorce myself from the pseudo-feudal Europe that's too prevalent in fantasy these days.

CG: Canadian writers are often linked to landscape to some degree. Did your home of Victoria shape the creation of the rasnan of The Engine's Child?

HP: Funnily enough, I didn't move to Victoria until after I had written The Engine's Child. When I was writing it I was living in Trail, which is an ugly industrial town in a beautiful river valley. I suppose the contrast there was significant. Also the many bald patches on the mountains from clear-cut logging.

CG: The plights of the people of the rasnan seem to mirror many of our own world's issues -- overcrowding, diminishing resources, the gulf between the haves and have nots. Were you trying to make any sort of ecological or political statement? How do you feel that science fiction and fantasy may comment and explore real world issues?

HP: I don't know if you could call it a statement, exactly, but it seems very natural to use the kinds of problems our own societies are facing in the here and now in my fiction. Intensifying certain elements to put pressure on my characters, to force them to act, just makes for strong plotting, but there's no denying that it also reflects my own concerns. That may be part of why I used a setting that was different from North America or Europe. It's in the tropical regions of our own planet that the worst effects of climate change are making themselves felt. So far, that is.

CG: The Engine's Child is a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, faith and science, technology and magic. Do you remember the initial kernel of an idea that led to this novel?

HP: I think for me there are too many assumptions made in a lot of fantasy -- for one, that magic is either good or evil, and that it would be easy to make the distinction between them. I love ambiguity, and it seems to me that magic, like religion, like technology, is far more likely to lend itself to the gray areas, and to force my characters into doubtful choices and uneasy compromises.

CG: You were nominated for two World Fantasy Awards for your collection In the Palace of Repose. Do you have a preference for short or long form fiction?

HP: I suppose if I was forced to write only one, I would choose novels, but that might have more to do with the money than anything else. Nobody's going to give me $10,000 for a short story, alas. Otherwise, I love them for different things. Short fiction gives you room to play, to try new things, to shake the bugs out of your ideas. It also satisfies my cravings for variety, which is one of the things that keeps me writing. But there are some ideas and some characters that just need the space of a novel to play out all the potential depths and ramifications. And the characters that I stick to through the whole distance of a novel are the ones I really love in the end.

CG: As someone who writes short fiction, are you concerned with the dwindling state of the SF&F short fiction print market?

HP: That's a hard one to answer. It seems to me that the dwindling of the print mags is being balanced by a rise in strong, edited websites. But do I read much fiction online, myself? No. What I love for reading is anthologies and collections, and these days the book publishing world is maybe a little shaky to keep putting out the anthos that probably don't sell like novels do. But let's face it, sometimes demand does dictate supply. Why do people not read short fiction like they used to? I wish I knew.

CG: Funding for the arts in Canada has been very much on the minds of the literary community. What do you think is the importance of grants? In a country more widely known for its literary fiction than its genre fiction, have you encountered any difficulty with the grant process?

HP: I have a double-think issue with the Canadian grant culture. On the one hand, I think it's vital to the arts to support the strange and experimental, the stuff that might not be commercially viable but that keeps the arts alive and growing. In that area, grants might be the only support some important artists are getting. On the other hand, I also think there's a huge value to giving the artists who might be able to support themselves commercially that one important boost to get that breakout novel written. Weaning artists off the grant teat and setting them up in the dreaded marketplace seems like a pretty good idea if it could be done. As for the second part of your question.... Yes, I've applied for grants, and no, I've never been successful. I resist the paranoia that says, 'They hate me because I write fantasy,' though it can be a struggle at 3 a.m. But what gets me more is what you said about Canada being known more for its literary than its genre fiction. That's true inside Canada, because genre fiction is so poorly reviewed here, but ask anyone in New York publishing and they'll tell you that Canada is like one big talent bank for the SF world. If I ruled the world and had to choose between guaranteeing genre writers a fair shot at the grants or ensuring they all, not just a few big names, get reviewed in national periodicals, it would be a hard choice to make.

CG: What's next for you? Will you be bringing your readers further tales of Moth and Vashmarna?

HP: I don't plan on a sequel to The Engine's Child at this point, though you never know. Right now I'm working on a novel that's ... oh dear ... this is where it gets hard. Deep breath. A dark fantasy/slipstream/noir/suspense/ghost story? Toss it all in a paper bag and shake until well-seasoned... Frankly, I'm about to give up on characterizing my own writing. It might be whatever the cover art makes it look like a couple of years down the road.