Christopher
asked
Jo Walton:
This question contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[I absolutely loved the Thessaly books. But there was one part that surprised me. In Necessity, why is the Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet-Lomont a character rather than his much more interesting wife, Émilie du Châtelet? I would love to have read her interacting with Socrates. [If you're ever bored and you want to write a dialogue between those two for your blog, I would still love to read it.] (hide spoiler)]
Jo Walton
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)[When I started writing the Thessaly books, I knew I didn't know enough about the Enlightenment. So I asked Ada who would be there from there, and she thought about it and said that they had the idea of Progress and wouldn't have wanted that kind of Good -- which I pretty much just have Athene say in so many words in the first book. But nevertheless I started researching the Enlightenment, because it'sn pretty cool, and I didn't know enough about it. My intermittent random research process (which can probably be tracked through Goodreads actually) led me from Peter Gay's work on Enlightenment thought through Voltaire's writing and Diderot's, to a very good joint biography of Emelie and Voltaire. When I was thinking who Athene would have given the pieces to, I really wanted one of them to be Emilie, but there was a huge problem with actually writing that, in that it would have overshadowed the rest of the book. It's not just that I already had Phila representing a bunch of stuff about women and philosophy, it's that any scene I tried to put Emelie in, she tried to take it over. She was too big for the space the story had there. I concluded I could write a whole book about her or not put her in at all. Putting in Florent-Claude was a way of letting me have Sokrates's views on lace, and to mention Emelie, without having the book become too unbalanced.
(There are three self-indulgent shadow unwritten texts in Thessaly. One is the adventures of Pico, Athene, and Atticus, travelling through time collecting artwork. One is Pico and Athene visiting Emelie and Voltaire, and Pico having a fling with Emelie -- I hinted at this when he rhapsodises "it was like being in the City of Amazons" -- with her (though not Voltaire) figuring out way more about them than they think. The third is Kebes exciting adventures in New Venice. I'm not actually writing any of these, but they're all in my head. And now they can be in yours. :-) (hide spoiler)]
(There are three self-indulgent shadow unwritten texts in Thessaly. One is the adventures of Pico, Athene, and Atticus, travelling through time collecting artwork. One is Pico and Athene visiting Emelie and Voltaire, and Pico having a fling with Emelie -- I hinted at this when he rhapsodises "it was like being in the City of Amazons" -- with her (though not Voltaire) figuring out way more about them than they think. The third is Kebes exciting adventures in New Venice. I'm not actually writing any of these, but they're all in my head. And now they can be in yours. :-) (hide spoiler)]
More Answered Questions
AFMasten
asked
Jo Walton:
I was swept into your fold through the Small Change books. And as I read on, I'm wondering how an author (yourself) can move so easily from alternate history to other sorts of speculative fiction. Is Sylvia's story (Or What You Will) answering that question (perhaps not question, but observation)?
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more




