Jake Chambers
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
What did you think about "The Man Who Had No Eyes" in City of Saints and Madmen in the the mass market paperback edition NOT being encyphered (because the change of format had shifted things and would have required recoding the piece)? Do you think the book lost something with that decision, or do you think most readers wouldn't have bothered to solve the code in the first place?
Jeff Vandermeer
Well, it's not the purest version of the book as a result. At last count, about 175 people had asked for the key over the years, and then another 100 downloaded it from the Ambergris.org website. So I can't tell how many took the time to decipher it, but most told me it was an interesting and unique experience. I'm truly grateful there are readers out there like that.
More Answered Questions
Cristina
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
One of the most difficult things, in my opinion, while writing a story is to give every character a distinctive voice. Often times all the characters sound almost the same. I thought that in "Shriek: An Afterword" (a wonderful book that I cherish) you create a fantastic setting to differenciate Janice and Ducan. In any given story, how do you make sure each character has a trademark voice?
Ali Mcghee
asked
Jeff Vandermeer:
The collapse of the anthropocene is a theme in your works, but they also hold out potential for a transformed human agency. Grotesque shifts still leave behind a residue of the human. Annihilation is on this track with the biologist's contamination. Do these transformations relate to your sense of human (d)evolution? What is gained or lost by leaving behind individual consciousness for something more rhizomatic?
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