This interview with the ‘Track of Words’ website was from a few months ago. But it’s a good one, touching on a lot of my influences and motivations for writing. I encourage you to go here for the full interview, if you’re interested. I’ve included one of my answers below, as a taster. It was the hardest question, touching on a theme I’ve struggled with for nearly a decade:
(Click the PDF icon, upper right, if you prefer reading a black-on-white script)
ToW: There’s an overarching theme of memory across these stories, and how it can be adjusted, manipulated and controlled to affect history and identity. Where does that come from, your interest in tackling that particular theme?
TRN: I didn’t set out to write about memory. It just happened, as a particular fascination of mine. After a time I began to reflect on just why I
kept coming back to it, and I think it is this: memory is identity, the sum total of our being. As I write in one of the stories: “everything is memory, save for the thin edge of the present”
Memory is a recurring theme of cyberpunk and its predecessors, noir film and hardboiled fiction. Memory is crucial because without it, are we even human? Memory is a means to ask the question: what is human? Which is, of course, one of the perennial questions of science fiction.
Recall Blade Runner, where Replicants are desperate to develop memories, hoarding photographs as a symbol of their humanity. Or that Rachel was given a lifetime of memories, and does not even realise she is a Replicant.
Recall the anime, Ghost in the Shell, where the Major does not own her own memories (they are the property of the government), and that she can’t trust whether her memories are real or implanted.
And we can go back earlier, to some of old noir films, where a character has amnesia. Hit on the head, shellshock, etc. Who are they really? (Usually they are a nice guy or love interest who turns out to be a cruel murderer in this former (unremembered) life).
In Neon Leviathan, the way technology is used by mega-corporations or governments to control memory, is a way of discussing the dehumanising effects of technological progress. Especially when technology (in itself neither good nor bad) has its purpose twisted to suit the interests of the powerful. Memory is perhaps the most potent metaphor for control, going all the way back to Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Big Brother uses the full weight of its power to control individual and collective memory.
I’ve taken too long on this answer already (because it’s a good question, and also fucking hard to answer well), but I’ll end with this. Memory isn’t just interesting as a metaphor, but also as a fragile, precious thing that can be altered. Powerful regimes can rewrite history, and the science of memory shows that an individual’s memory can absolutely be twisted and shaped.
