Visions of the Future w/ Pat Cadigan
EPISODE #67
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Recorded in front of a live audience at the Science Museum, London on 26 October 2022.
Summary
Cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan shares her thoughts on the role of science fiction in society, her methods for thinking about the future, and which elements of the cyberpunk genre have become features of our everyday reality.
Guest Biography
Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, NY, and grew up in Fitchburg, MA. Attending the University of Massachusetts on a scholarship, she eventually transferred to the University of Kansas where she received her degree. Since embarking on her career as a fiction writer in 1987, her Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated short stories have appeared in such magazines as Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine as well as numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Patterns, was honoured the Locus Award in 1990, and she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1992 and 1995 for her novels Synners and Fools. Pat Cadigan moved to the UK in 1996 and now lives in London.
Video
Show Notes
Transcript
Luke Robert Mason: You're listening to the FUTURES Podcast with me, Luke Robert Mason.
On this episode, I speak to science fiction author, Pat Cadigan.
"What unites people who are interested in science fiction is the fact that they are curious. They want to know what's possible, what's impossible, what could be possible."
- Pat Cadigan, excerpt from the interview.
Pat shared her thoughts on the role of science fiction in society, her methods for thinking about the future, and which elements of the cyberpunk genre have become features of our everyday reality. This podcast was recorded live from the Science Museum, London, as part of their 'Lates' programme, celebrating the launch of their science fiction exhibition.
My name is Luke Robert Mason, and you're here at the FUTURES Podcast, live from the Science Museum, London - a temporary haven for science fiction enthusiasts. Tonight, we have the privilege of taking a collective voyage to the edge of author Pat Cadigan's imagination. Now, I warn you, it's not a journey for the faint-hearted. It's full of plenty of unexpected twists and turns, contradictions and complications, chaos and occasional coherence.
Pat Cadigan: Only occasional.
Mason: Suggesting that my guest belongs in a museum hardly sounds complimentary. But the breadth and depth of her knowledge of the future, both real and fantasy, is boundless. Long before our modern madness for the metaverse, science-fiction author Pat Cadigan was exploring the immersive virtual reality that existed between her ears. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the presence of royalty, a true monarch of the science fiction genre. Please put your hands together and welcome the queen of cyberpunk, my friend Pat Cadigan.
Cadigan: Who could possibly live up to an introduction like that? I ask you. Actually, I will ask you. Can you all hear me over the dress?
Okay good, because it's my favourite loud dress. The other ones that are louder are, well...
Mason: For those who are just listening to the podcast, I can confirm it is a fabulously loud dress. Pat, I want to open up with the obvious question. We're here at the Science Museum. They're launching a science fiction exhibition. What does it mean to actually do the act of ‘science fictioning’, as a thought experiment?
Cadigan: Wow. That's quite a question because it's like asking me what it's like to be me. We all have a modality - maybe you'd call it - things that we do all the time. It was really how I came to understand that I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be a science fiction writer. I wanted to write science fiction. I tried all kinds of different things and then gradually I found myself cutting off everything that interfered with my writing. I didn't so much choose science fiction, it just seemed very natural to me. Why wouldn't you think about what was going to happen tomorrow? That seemed normal.
I thought, well, while you're thinking of things that are going to happen tomorrow, how about the next day or the next week? How about a thousand years from now? When you get to be like a thousand years into the future, you can pretty much get away with a lot. I decided to play chicken with the future, and get as close to the near future as I possibly could. That was just a matter of observing and keeping it in mind... I don't know. In America, mothers will say things like, "If you make that face enough, you're going to freeze that way." I don't know if they say that here, but you know. Mothers are always predicting the future. They're always telling you what's going to happen. You know, you should believe them - depending on the mother - but, what was the question?
Mason: I love that idea of not playing chicken with the future. To turn a phrase from, I think it's Face/Off, but someone maybe corrects me afterwards, I think it's, "Don't play chicken with the goddamn future." I want to ask you about the process of looking into the future. Pat, you are famous for the 'oh Christ, what's next?' approach to science fiction. When the future is often coming at you so quickly and so often, how do you stay ahead?
Cadigan: Well, first of all, you have to understand that deep down beneath the veneer of civilisation, all bets are off. Anything can happen to you. Not everything, but anything. The thing that's going to happen to you is probably the one thing that you weren't looking in that direction. I guarantee you've been looking in some other direction. You have to try and think of the things you haven't thought of yet. That's not a very good answer, is it? He did say, "intermittent coherence", so.
Mason: Let's look at the specific genre you're known for, which is cyberpunk. Cyberpunk was very much about dystopian futures. It feels, in many ways today, that we're living in that cyberpunk future that you imagined. How much do you believe that cyberpunk has permeated our lived reality?
Cadigan: I don't think it's so much that it's permeated. Cyberpunk has permeated, but the things we identify now as cyberpunk permeated reality. It came on gradually. One of the things I like to tell people is that we cyberpunk authors never promised you flying cars and vacations on the moon, and gold lamé jumpsuits. We promised you technological dystopia. How do you like it so far?
Mason: Well there we go. We are, to some degree, living in this odd technological dystopia. I guess that goes back to something you've claimed before; that there's not much science fiction in some of your work as there used to be, because it's moving so fast. How do you deal with the fact that the future can move that quickly? As soon as you thought of this idea, it can bounce away into the present - or bounce forward into the present, even?
Cadigan: Well, when I was writing my first novel, 'Mindplayers', I actually had to change something because something caught up with me. It was the fact that they figured out how to alert people that they were dreaming in order for them to have a lucid dream without waking them up. In my book, there was no way to do that. I was going to look pretty stupid if anyone who knew anything about lucid dreaming read the book. They'd say, "Huh, she didn't do her homework. We hate that novel." I had to tap dance real fast and fix it. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of plot points that hinged on that. I was lucky, I got away with that. 'Mindplayers' is far in the future and more fanciful. I think it's obvious that it's written by a young science fiction writer because there are flying cars in it.
Mason: The flying cars are a mistake, do you think?
Cadigan: Well I kept them for another novel that I set in the same universe, future, whatever you want to call it. I kept them for sentimental reasons because I didn't want to just go back and say, "Oh, flying cars were a mistake." I figured well, there they are, and I'll deal with them.
Mason: You spend a lot of time thinking about those concepts or those characters, but how often do you think about the audience for science fiction? A lot of the people here today have come because it is the science fiction Lates. What do you think it is that unites an audience like this? Is it escapism? Is it hope? Is it fear? Is it something else entirely?
Cadigan: There have been a lot of things put forth on that. A lot of people think it's escapism. I wondered about that. Then I remembered what Tolkein told C.S. Lewis about escapism. People were writing Lewis' work off as near-escapism. He wrote to Tolkien and said, "How do I not have a nervous breakdown with this?" Tolkien said, "Well think about the people who are against escape - jailers." If you see the world as one big jail, you want to keep people from escaping from it. If you see it as a place where you're already out and you want to have lots of different kinds of adventures, that's what genre fiction is.
I think most of all, what unites people who are interested in science fiction is the fact that they are curious. They want to know what's possible, what's impossible, what could be possible - and what's going to happen if it comes to be. Is it going to be something expected or is it going to have some kind of completely different effect? They'll read a story and they'll see how people are affected by a development in science or something that happens because it's 10 or 15 years later, or whatever. They'll be very curious to see what happens next. That was why I always read science fiction. I was glued to the page. I wanted to see how they were going to get out of this one.
Mason: It does feel, walking through the Science Museum during Lates, that we are surrounded by a marvellous amount of curious people. You are certainly one of the most curious folks that I know. One of the things that you're desperately curious about is that weird relationship between human beings and technology. Where did that curiosity come from and where has it taken you?
Cadigan: Well here I am. I'm here in the Science Museum. I don't exactly know where it came from. If you have any sort of curiosity, you are very likely to be intelligent, because you're going to act on your curiosity, seek more answers or seek to know more about whatever kind of subject it is. As long as you're not squashed by insensitive parents and teachers, or squashed by peer pressure of some kind, you're going to satisfy your curiosity. That's just...why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to do that? I guess it's okay if somebody isn't curious, but I'm glad they're not around me. I'd rather be with curious, nosy, active people who can say, "What if?"
Mason: So there we go. You're both curious and intelligent, Pat. You really know how to play to a crowd. One of the things I really love about you is that in 1995, you abdicated from being a female science fiction author to simply being a science fiction author. Why was that such an important moment? What did it mean for people who received and perceived your work?
Cadigan: Well, I was trying to make a point. Incidentally, I'm still a woman. I decided to go with what I've got, but I think it's really great that if you don't want to go with what you've got, you can do something about it. The thing was, at the time, I was getting some stick online - people were online back in 1995, way back then - someone had said that female writers couldn't write science fiction. Someone says this several times a day, every day, somewhere. The way they had said it - they didn't just say, "Female science fiction writers can't write science fiction." I've got that crazy, but...he said that I was trying to crawl up William Gibson's...well never mind. I just decided that I'd had enough of that. I posted and said, "Excuse me, William Gibson's what?" I did that just because I thought it was good to remind people when they're posting that kind of garbage that actually, they're not just scrawling it on their computer at home. They're doing it for who knows how many people. Maybe the person they're talking about is watching. Then a discussion ensued in which I didn't change his mind but he didn't change mine. I refused to say that I couldn't write science fiction. I think I'd already had one or two Arthur C. Clarke awards by then, so I was pretty hard to convince.
I felt like people were making too much about women versus men. Even back in 1995, the field was not as diverse as it is now. Since then, it has blossomed. It has become much more diverse. More different kinds of people are writing. I believe this year's winner is the first book-length poem. I believe that the author is also the first trans woman to win an Arthur C. Clarke award, and I think that's pretty damn great. Not that I mean to call attention to a trans woman - or as I like to call them, 'women' - but we see more openness and more willingness to have an experience that is unfamiliar to our own. We don't do the same as yesterday, only different. We don't have the same writers as before, only different. We have quite an array of people and it really makes me happy to see that, because I am curious. If there's anything I want to read, it's something new. Something was written by someone who is not just like me.
Mason: It was William Gibson's 'peripheral' that you were asked to disappear up. That's a good William Gibson joke. What sort of science fictional [inaudible: 18:36] are you? That was his last book, wasn't it, 'Peripheral'?
I do have to ask about your personal relationship, Pat, with the future. That changed dramatically in 2014 when you were somewhat forcedly given a finite amount of future due to a cancer prognosis. How has that changed your approach to how you deal with the subject matter?
Cadigan: Well first, I would like to point out that all of us get up every morning and go out with the idea in our heads that - all evidence to the contrary - we're going to live forever. We cannot imagine being dead. I perceive on the same basis, and I've been dead. It's nothing. But when they...okay. They told me that I maybe had two years to live, but they told me that in December 2014. It's maybe because doctors will give you the worst-case scenario because they don't want survivors coming in and saying, "You promised. We're going to sue you." Even if they lose, the doctor still has to pay a lot in legal fees and then their malpractice insurance goes up anyway. It's just a big mess. We think more about that in America. Being here, it's like...
Chris and I decided that...our first thought, actually, was when she said it could be two years, it could be less. My first thought was: she doesn't know me very well. We just met. Chris and I decided that if we really did have just two years, they would be the best, most wonderful two years that we'd had together. If we got to the end of them and I was still here, we'd call that a bonus. It was very difficult that year because I had to tell my son what the prognosis was. Then maybe eight months later, it became very obvious that I had a lot more than two years left. This is why, no matter what they tell you about your health, there is no way that you can will yourself out of disease, but you can will yourself into a better frame of mind which will help you withstand not only the disease but the treatment for it, which can be pretty hairy. Just because someone tells you to lie down and die, doesn't mean that you have to lie down and die. I don't know how many people have told me to drop dead over the years. It hasn't worked; still hasn't worked. I'm just not very suggestible, I guess.
Mason: Let's talk about suggestibility for a second. You hinted there that you imagined the dystopia we're currently living in. Do you think science fiction authors need to be extremely careful with self-fulfilling prophecies? In other words, how responsible are you and other science fiction authors for our perplexing present?
Cadigan: Well, hey. Not guilty, man. Not guilty. You kind of get what you're looking at. In your music, in your literature, in your movies, in your art. Whatever it is, you're going to see it reflected. I would never call anything in science fiction a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we had that much power, the first thing we'd do is we'd get better advances on those books. They would pay us more if we could actually have that kind of power. But we don't. Science fiction is about the present, sort of. Everyone will say, "It's not about the future. It's about the present." When I was writing 'Sinners', I really was thinking about what the future would look like. I wasn't commenting on the present so much as commenting on where we would be if continued into the future with the mindset that we had at present. I think that's basically what it is with writers who want to play chicken with the future.
Mason: Well I do have one final question. If there's anybody in the audience who's thinking of writing a science fiction story or a novel, or maybe even has a science fiction poem in them, what advice would you give?
Cadigan: Oh god. It's like, do it. Absolutely do it. There's always room for another voice. What you have to do is keep it to yourself. Don't talk about it, write it. You have to put in the time and sweat. You have to put in the angst and editing yourself. Finish it. Get a finished thing, whatever it is - a book or a story. When I was coming up, we started with stories and that was how you did it. You got your stories in the magazines and then the book editors took notice. Eventually, you might be invited to write a book or submit a book. These days, it's completely different.
I really can't give anyone much advice on a surefire way to kickstart your career into the stratosphere. What you have to do is finish things. That can be very difficult because that means you have to write the hard parts. That means thinking about things that you may not have considered at all. I have found myself agonising over gloves. Not in the past, but in the future. Gloves and pockets, styles of clothes, skin dye, and animated tattoos. When you get going, you can really think about some things. You may find yourself actually having to work out how your character manages to walk in the rain. What kind of rain is it, where is it and where are they? What are they wearing? It's more important than you'd think. You have to do research on a lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily appear in the story, but the substance is there and it shows.
The best analogy that I can give you is that I was asked to rewrite the making of 'The Mummy’ book - the one with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. I managed to wangle my way into where they were doing the special effects. They were doing these space stations. They built these space stations on screen in the way that you would build a space station. They started with a framework and then they thought about what to put on next. It was like they were building something for real. They were imagining it and that's how it was. I said, "Wow, you commit to this." They said, "Well, we tried it the other way and it doesn't look right." All of those things that you don't see actually combine to make something that you do see into something that you'll accept as real, at least for the period of time that you're working on it or the period of time that a reader is reading it. You just have to learn to pull in those bits of research that you don't think are relevant. No one is going to know that you did it, but they're going to tell that you didn't.
Mason: There we have it. Science fiction - just go and do it, and perhaps even use the Science Museum's exhibition to inspire some of your own works. On that note, I want to thank you for joining us for FUTURES Podcast Live.
If you like what you've heard, then you can download the FUTURES Podcast on all of your favourite podcasting apps. Or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram: @FUTURESPodcast.
More episodes, live events, transcripts and show notes can be found at FUTURES Podcast dot net.
Pat's books, 'Fools' and 'Sinners', are available from all good bookshops. On that note, please put your hands together and join me in thinking Pat Cadigan for joining us today.
Thank you to Pat for showing us how we can play chicken with the future. You can view a full, unedited video version of this conversation at FUTURES Podcast dot net.
Thank you for listening to the FUTURES Podcast.
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Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Assistant Audio Editor: Ramzan Bashir
Transcription: Beth Colquhoun
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