Deborah Walker
asked
Scott Hawkins:
Hi Scott. I wonder where you got the idea for the world in the book? I thought the world you created was really interesting and unique.
Scott Hawkins
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[Hi Deborah
Well, it was a lot of little ideas rather than one big one. And it tended to change a lot while I was working on it.
OH-SO-VERY MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Part of it stemmed from me being terrible with directions. I grew up in a mid-size town in South Carolina, and my first couple of years after high school I delivered pizzas. That took me all over town. Most places I at least sort of recognized, but every now and then I'd get called into some subdivision that I was just completely unaware of. It freaked me out, slightly. I'd lived in this town my entire life and now, at the age of twenty, here's a couple dozen houses that had completely escaped my notice. The actual reason for this is that I'm an idiot, but it occurred to me that it would be kind of cool if everybody was unaware of Neighborhood X--some sort of spell, or something?
So far so good, but how are there spells? Where is the magic coming from?
I remembered reading an article about previously uncontacted amazon tribes that were getting displaced by logging. The tribesmen had effectively grown up in the stone age--they might have been peripherally aware that there was an outside world from seeing helicopters fly over or something, but they still wore grass skirts and hunted with spears. Then one day the bulldozer shows up. Welcome to the 20th century!
At least some of the poor guys ended up in Sao Paolo or some other modern city. Can you imagine that? You've never in your life seen electric light, now everybody is playing video games and talking on cell phones? Naturally they were curious, but there was also a language barrier--these guys just didn't have any kind of notion of "electromagnetic spectrum" or "radio waves." People tried to spell it out for them, but all the explanations had to be given in terms of "the great sky spirit carries the message" or whatever. The tribesmen just didn't have the words for thinking about the world in scientific terms.
So it occurred to me to turn this notion on its head. Maybe the language the tribesmen used implicitly enforced ways of thinking about the world, of interacting with the world, that industrialized man either lost or never had. Probably that is in fact true--I bet if somebody from Sao Paolo went out hunting with one of these guys, they'd get very lost, very fast. But I was thinking more in terms of like shamanistic stuff--raising the dead and whatnot. Fine--there's your magic language. Let's call it "Pelapi."
So how do we have magic language in the modern world? Maybe some kids stumble over a stone tablet or something? Nah, took hokey. Hmmm.
Around this time I was reading about Isaac Newton. After Newton got done inventing calculus and a bunch of other stuff, he spent a number of years trying to master alchemy. This blew my mind--one of the greatest mathematicians in history spent decades of his life trying to turn lead into gold only to find that chemistry isn’t really ready for him yet. It's kind of tragic, like Michael Jordan switching to baseball.
Anyway, what if instead of alchemy Newton looked into, I dunno, the Fountain of Youth? What if he'd found it? So here we have an Isaac Newton type, a once-in-history genius, who happens to stumble on a particular plant (or whatever) that gave eternal youth. He's got eternity to think about stuff, do experiments. What's next? He moves on from the life sciences into...what? War, maybe? Then something else. Every five thousand years or so he gets bored and moves on to a new specialty. He keeps notes. There's Father.
I tied that back in with the "stone age language" idea, so instead of the 1600s, this guy grew up in the stone age. What's he going to be like? Old, powerful, arrogant...the world has changed a lot since then--I bet he feels pretty isolated.
Then I thought about this guy who lived down the street from me. He was my parents age, and he had this huge library of 1950s-1960s science fiction paperbacks that he used to let me borrow. That was basically all I read for a couple of years. When I got to college and started talking to fellow SF/F readers, I was like 20 years behind the times. "Who's this William Gibson chap?" But when I talked to SF/F readers my parent's age, we had a lot more in common. It occurred to me that in a lot of ways I had grown up in the 1950s, despite being born twenty years after that.
That’s kind of a neat idea—maybe the year you’re born in doesn’t matter so much as the culture you’re raised in. (I’ll assert without proof that I came up with this before I saw that M. Night Shyamalan movie.) I was originally thinking in terms of all these kids running through the woods with spears and hunting buffalo, but that part kind of fizzled.
The bit about raising them in the Pelapi language stuck, though. Maybe in order to really learn Pelapi, you have to be raised speaking it? I've heard that's true of Navajo, so maybe it's not so far-fetched.
So, Wizard Guy wants someone to talk to. He more or less kidnaps these kids, and raises them in the old ways. They’re living among the strip malls and suburbs but isolated from them. And as a side effect of learning the language, the kids have picked up at least some of his tricks—but they have no clue about things like cell phones and money.
Now we need is a motive. Why is Mr. Stone Age Wizard all of a sudden interested in apprentices? And of course we need a bad guy...
That's kinda-sorta how it came together, but not necessarily in that order. I'm also skipping over about 200,000 words of false starts. (That's not an exaggeration.)
(hide spoiler)]
Well, it was a lot of little ideas rather than one big one. And it tended to change a lot while I was working on it.
OH-SO-VERY MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Part of it stemmed from me being terrible with directions. I grew up in a mid-size town in South Carolina, and my first couple of years after high school I delivered pizzas. That took me all over town. Most places I at least sort of recognized, but every now and then I'd get called into some subdivision that I was just completely unaware of. It freaked me out, slightly. I'd lived in this town my entire life and now, at the age of twenty, here's a couple dozen houses that had completely escaped my notice. The actual reason for this is that I'm an idiot, but it occurred to me that it would be kind of cool if everybody was unaware of Neighborhood X--some sort of spell, or something?
So far so good, but how are there spells? Where is the magic coming from?
I remembered reading an article about previously uncontacted amazon tribes that were getting displaced by logging. The tribesmen had effectively grown up in the stone age--they might have been peripherally aware that there was an outside world from seeing helicopters fly over or something, but they still wore grass skirts and hunted with spears. Then one day the bulldozer shows up. Welcome to the 20th century!
At least some of the poor guys ended up in Sao Paolo or some other modern city. Can you imagine that? You've never in your life seen electric light, now everybody is playing video games and talking on cell phones? Naturally they were curious, but there was also a language barrier--these guys just didn't have any kind of notion of "electromagnetic spectrum" or "radio waves." People tried to spell it out for them, but all the explanations had to be given in terms of "the great sky spirit carries the message" or whatever. The tribesmen just didn't have the words for thinking about the world in scientific terms.
So it occurred to me to turn this notion on its head. Maybe the language the tribesmen used implicitly enforced ways of thinking about the world, of interacting with the world, that industrialized man either lost or never had. Probably that is in fact true--I bet if somebody from Sao Paolo went out hunting with one of these guys, they'd get very lost, very fast. But I was thinking more in terms of like shamanistic stuff--raising the dead and whatnot. Fine--there's your magic language. Let's call it "Pelapi."
So how do we have magic language in the modern world? Maybe some kids stumble over a stone tablet or something? Nah, took hokey. Hmmm.
Around this time I was reading about Isaac Newton. After Newton got done inventing calculus and a bunch of other stuff, he spent a number of years trying to master alchemy. This blew my mind--one of the greatest mathematicians in history spent decades of his life trying to turn lead into gold only to find that chemistry isn’t really ready for him yet. It's kind of tragic, like Michael Jordan switching to baseball.
Anyway, what if instead of alchemy Newton looked into, I dunno, the Fountain of Youth? What if he'd found it? So here we have an Isaac Newton type, a once-in-history genius, who happens to stumble on a particular plant (or whatever) that gave eternal youth. He's got eternity to think about stuff, do experiments. What's next? He moves on from the life sciences into...what? War, maybe? Then something else. Every five thousand years or so he gets bored and moves on to a new specialty. He keeps notes. There's Father.
I tied that back in with the "stone age language" idea, so instead of the 1600s, this guy grew up in the stone age. What's he going to be like? Old, powerful, arrogant...the world has changed a lot since then--I bet he feels pretty isolated.
Then I thought about this guy who lived down the street from me. He was my parents age, and he had this huge library of 1950s-1960s science fiction paperbacks that he used to let me borrow. That was basically all I read for a couple of years. When I got to college and started talking to fellow SF/F readers, I was like 20 years behind the times. "Who's this William Gibson chap?" But when I talked to SF/F readers my parent's age, we had a lot more in common. It occurred to me that in a lot of ways I had grown up in the 1950s, despite being born twenty years after that.
That’s kind of a neat idea—maybe the year you’re born in doesn’t matter so much as the culture you’re raised in. (I’ll assert without proof that I came up with this before I saw that M. Night Shyamalan movie.) I was originally thinking in terms of all these kids running through the woods with spears and hunting buffalo, but that part kind of fizzled.
The bit about raising them in the Pelapi language stuck, though. Maybe in order to really learn Pelapi, you have to be raised speaking it? I've heard that's true of Navajo, so maybe it's not so far-fetched.
So, Wizard Guy wants someone to talk to. He more or less kidnaps these kids, and raises them in the old ways. They’re living among the strip malls and suburbs but isolated from them. And as a side effect of learning the language, the kids have picked up at least some of his tricks—but they have no clue about things like cell phones and money.
Now we need is a motive. Why is Mr. Stone Age Wizard all of a sudden interested in apprentices? And of course we need a bad guy...
That's kinda-sorta how it came together, but not necessarily in that order. I'm also skipping over about 200,000 words of false starts. (That's not an exaggeration.)
(hide spoiler)]
More Answered Questions
Jamie
asked
Scott Hawkins:
Any chance of a short story or novella that takes place in the after life, and from Margaret's point of view? Or maybe featuring one of the other librarians? Maybe the twins? The book was such a fantastic read, I'll admit I'm really just hoping for more of anything in the universe. It boggles my mind that this was a first book!
Marcy Butler
asked
Scott Hawkins:
Loved the book and ADORED the sections with the lions - especially the scene where Carolyn explains the methods of killing to the rapper. I greatly appreciate your reverence for the animal kingdom throughout the entire novel. My question: I have a physical appearance in my mind for each character when I read novels. If you were responsible for casting the leads in the movie version, which actors would get the job?
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May 31, 2016 05:33PM · flag