Interview with Adrian Barnes

Adrian Barnes talks to Ross Jamieson about his debut novel, Nod, which has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

RJ: To be shortlisted for an award with your debut novel is impressive, but, as I understand it, to be shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award is very special for you. Why?

AB: Two reasons, I guess. First, Arthur C. Clarke was an early hero of mine. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey as a tiny, tiny, kid and it blew my tiny, tiny mind. Then I went out and read every book he ever wrote. So he’s deep in my DNA. Another kick to being nominated for this award has to do with the fact that the first winner was Canada’s Margaret Atwood for her great novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Very exciting for any Canadian to be in such company. Atwood is one of those ‘people from all of history you’d choose for a dinner party’ people for me.

RJ: You have beaten stiff competition to make it onto the shortlist; the Guardian called Nod ‘outstanding’; and your writing has been likened to that of great writers, such as Margaret Atwood, JG Ballard, John Wyndham and Anthony Burgess. Do you feel as though you have ‘arrived’?

AB: Those are great names to have in the same sentence as mine and I’m a fan of all those writers, but it all still feels a little fictional to me. I’m not quite convinced it’s really happening. Seriously, though, I don’t think I’ll ever arrive anywhere. I’m much more interested in being in transit. I like to keep moving!

RJ: What is Nod about, and what inspired you to write it?

AB: Nod is about an insomnia epidemic that brings the world as we know it to a very sudden end. It struck me at some point that insomnia is a great metaphor for the way in which most of us live our lives—too overloaded with information and static. It’s one of those things that’s so obvious it’s hard to believe no one else wrote the novel first. I coupled that idea with my love of strange old words and began to imagine what would happen if the medieval and the magical began to overlap with the modern.

RJ: Are you an insomniac?

AB: At times. It comes and goes. Usually is comes when I get too busy! So Nod is a kind of medicine I’ve prescribed for myself. If the book has a message it’s ‘slow down and shut up’, which is something I’m working on in my life.

RJ: Critics have been very complimentary about Nod, with some suggesting you have pushed the boundaries of the science fiction genre. Would you agree with that?

AB: No. One of the great things about science fiction is that it has no boundaries. So there’s nothing to push. Just an infinite universe of possibility. We live in a time when things are changing so rapidly that there’s very little present—it’s mostly all future. And so we generate literature that attempts to aid us in choosing between various imminent tomorrows. Utopias push us toward certain destinations while dystopias like Nod try to wave us away from others.

RJ: Looking at the Clarke Award shortlist, it is very noticeable that Bluemoose Books is the only independent publisher to make it on there. Today’s mainstream publishing industry is very fearful of risk, both in financial terms and in taking on unknown authors. Do you think a mainstream publisher would have published Nod?

AB: Probably not. Nod has a ‘big concept’ that corporate publishing might find appealing but it’s also a fairly quirky story. My previous experience trying to get published was of agents and editors being very positive about my writing but ‘marketing’ being reluctant for various reasons. The great thing about my publisher, Kevin Duffy, was that he simply read the book, liked it, and asked to publish it. My jaw almost fell off. To think it could be that simple.

So when Kevin made the offer I just accepted on the strength of that simplicity. I haven’t been disappointed. Nod has consistently been treated with care and respect by the folks at Bluemoose whereas I’ve heard horror stories of writers having had their novels mangled by bigger houses.

RJ: I understand you will be flying to London from Vancouver to attend the Clarke Award ceremony, which takes place on 1st May. Have you already written and memorised your acceptance speech? If not – be honest – have you at least been acting out the scenario in your head?

AB: Now you’re making me nervous! No, the bald, bland truth is that I haven’t even thought about it. It doesn’t even seem real that I’m nominated, let alone that I might win. Jeez. But I’m a blabbermouth by trade, so if it comes down to it I’m sure I’ll manage to cobble a few words together.

RJ: What can Adrian Barnes’s growing readership look forward to reading next?

AB: I have a second novel, Neverhasbeen, which is set to come out with Bluemoose next spring. It’s about the intersection of personal and global crises in a tragicomic setting. I wouldn’t call it science fiction, though it does take place about two weeks in the future—in a world that’s screwed about one and a half turns more tightly than ours. Beyond that, I’m currently working on a project that’s probably more surrealism than science fiction—a comic novel about a guy whose life slowly turns into a Dickens novel.

The winner of the Clarke Award will be announced at the Royal Society, London, on Wednesday 1st May.