Sparks: Ben Peek

Ben Peek writes distinctive fiction with his very strong voice. Here, he talks about the spark for Below, the novella he wrote for the Twelfth Planet Press flip book Above and Below.  Stephanie Campisi wrote the novella Above. Ben's attention to the detail of his people and place are what sold the book for me.

"Writing Below was always a little different to writing anything else,

because there was always Steph and Above to consider, to make sure

that we were creating a novel, that the high end concept of a society

in the sky, and a society on the ground, would work.

But, outside that, and for myself personally, I have always loved the

idea of a society fractured between those living in the sky and those

on the ground. There's lots of examples out there of it, but I think I

first saw the idea in an Aliens Vs Predator comic, written by Chris

Claremont, an author who pretty much defined the X-Men to be what they

are now, before the company fired him. Deadliest of the Species was a

series he wrote around that time, in which Earth is covered in aliens,

and people live in ships that sail through the sky. I remember liking

it well enough as a kid, and despite myself, I have always had a bit

of a weakness for those company properties–but what stuck with me

throughout was the idea of the physical division, of how you could

divide people by race, economy, and culture, and apply that to a

story.

In a very real way, Below (and Above) took its form from that latter

thought. Real world conflicts, like Israel and Palestine, as just an

example of one of sadly many, helped shape the way it developed

further, building a cultural conflict that has gone on for so long

that there is no clear reason for it anymore, and no clear solution.

You just have people living in it. People trying to be equal, trying

to be winners, or trying not to be losers. People trying to make sure

their family is okay. People trying to protect their culture. While I

was writing Below, I remember seeing a talk by Tariq Ali, in which he

talked about the futility of trying to create a lasting peace between

Israel and Palestine. If I remember rightly, he talked about how

separate states would not work, and that new thoughts had to be

considered, including the removal of both states and the creation of

one in shared power. He was talking about it in relation to American

politics, wherein he argued that Obama's administration was a

continuation of the Bush administration, which really just continued

Clinton, who just continued Bush Snr, and so on and so forth. That

idea, of course, is easy to see in Australia, too. Each new government

we have just continues the work of the previous one, with slight

changes. Our terrible deal with Malaysia for illegal arrivals is one

such example. And in Below, I wanted to work that in, to have these

people who were caught in a political war that no longer had a

start in sight, and definitely offered no end.

Which might make the story sound a lot more political than it is, to

be honest. I don't consider myself a political writer, though it has

been said about me; but I do consider myself a social one, in that one

of my interests in all my work is to engage with the reader, to form a

conversation between him or her and myself in relation to the world we

live in. Good fiction is not about switching your mind off, but rather

engaging and exciting it. One of the ways to do that, at least as far

as I'm concerned, is not just to give an engaging story, and work of

fiction, but to thread it with a conversation between myself and the

audience. It is very much about the back and forth that you develop,

the engagement with a person on a number of levels.

And, you know, I got to destroy a city and create a barbaric filtering

system that people surgically insert into their bodies to survive a

polluted world.

It can't be all cups of tea and polite discussions, after all."