Interview with Roz Morris - 2022
Interview #9 (fiction, science fiction, sci-fi, dystopian fiction, novel)
Roz Morris is a novelist, memoirist and writing coach. She’s taught masterclasses at international events and for The Guardian in London. She’s a story consultant for a thriller publisher in Dublin and a regular panelist on the Litopia YouTube show Pop-Up Submissions, with literary agent Peter Cox. She’s acclaimed for her own novels, My Memories of a Future Life, Lifeform Three (longlisted for the World Fantasy Award), and Ever Rest. She’s also the secret hand behind ghostwritten books that have sold more than 4 million copies. Keep up with her at https://tinyurl.com/rozmorriswriter
Randal Eldon Greene: Hello, Roz Morris.
When I picked up Lifeform Three, I went into it blind. All I knew is that I wanted to read it because you had written it. I was expecting sci-fi, and I got the sci-fi I was looking for. What I didn't expect was a boy and his horse story. Or I should say, a robot and his horse story. It was such a delightful twist on the genre. What inspired you to take the classic boy (or girl) and his horse tale and give it this science fiction setting?
Roz Morris: What a great question. In answer, several things. When I was a kid I devoured pony books. What I loved was the relationships with these animals, how we figure them out and they figure us out - and if we’re lucky, we develop a bond. Then I discovered Gavin Maxwell and his memoirs about keeping otters in the wilds of Scotland. He’s a beautiful writer; he made you feel how these animals are so full of instinct and emotion, intelligent, dignified, expressive, busting with physical life, so very much themselves. I wanted to write a story that did this for horses.
I actually have a horse (which is a perilously expensive hobby for a freelance writer). Riding through the woods, I thought how I see them through the horse’s senses because I can feel what he’s responding to. A scary shape in a fallen tree, a long hill that looks tempting for a canter. Together we become a new gestalt creature - my brains and his instinct and power. I also wondered how we would use these places in the future, if people would still value a meadow or a forest or a stream, or a beautiful view of the autumn trees. Or if we would still have them, especially as we retreat further and further into our phones and machines.
I foresaw a future where our phones were programming us, telling us what to think and say, all driven by advertising - and it has now come true. Our phones - which are marvellous devices - are spying on us, to find out what we like so they can show us adverts. They suggest what they think we would like, and that’s convenient so we let them, and they are altering our thinking and behaviour in all sorts of ways. In Lifeform Three, the humans are programmed, like robots - and this is now happening to us.
Science fiction often asks what humanity actually is. Especially robot or android stories. Think of Blade Runner, where the replicants are living fuller emotional lives than the people who made them. So I thought I’d take a robot, a completely programmed intelligent being, and transform him so he becomes more human than the humans, because of his connection with a horse.
Randal Eldon Greene: Your descriptions of the robots (the "bods" as they're called in the book) are almost dollish, with big eyes and fun hair. They remind me of toy trolls in some ways and Jim Henson's Muppets in others. You make no bones about these characters being fully robot, but you don't explore their humanity. You show it. This was refreshing. So many android stories revolve around the tensions of a "thing's" humanity. Paftoo just wants to ride his goddamn horse! Were there scenes or even whole drafts of this novel that focused more heavily on what it meant for this non-human to have human-like drives and desires? And do you even think this is an important question?
Roz Morris: I’m glad you liked the bods! Your imagining of them is spot on - that’s what I had in my mind. Their appearance, I realised, would be dictated by the customers’ preferences, hence they were friendly-looking and cosmetically interesting, to suggest they had fun personalities, but in a way that was safe and acceptable in a servant - which is essentially what the bods are.
I always had the intention of narrating from the perspective of Paftoo. That governed how I showed everything - the things that he found easy, the things he found trying, the things he found baffling.
Randal Eldon Greene: Are there any authors or books that influenced your writing of Lifeform Three?
Roz Morris: Aside from Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water and its sequels, there were plenty. Lifeform Three is a classic story about the misfit in an oppressive society, so I paid close attention to George Orwell’s 1984. Orwell draws you into the character’s desperation, his belief that there is a better way to live, but he clearly sees the dangers of stepping out of line. Paftoo is like Winston Smith in this way. He yearns for something better, but he knows the penalty is high if his deviance is discovered. I also studied Walter Tevis’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, for its chilling reminder of what we do to dignified, intelligent creatures that aren’t like us.
Another guiding light was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. This is about a man who is too sensitive for the brutal nature of his world. Like 1984, that gentleness puts him in terrible danger. Fahrenheit 451 is an exquisite work - every scene is influencing the reader in multiple subtle ways, which all make you feel like Bradbury is writing about a person exactly like you. I’ve used it to teach masterclasses about pacing and emotion. Bradbury also has a strong element of nostalgia, of places that we can’t go back to, though we think we would belong there better than we do now.
Randal Eldon Greene: So many stories about the future do focus on repressive societies. Both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 had totalitarian governments running in the background. Lifeform Three, like many contemporary dystopian novels, seems to imply that it's a kind of capitalistic consumerism that will exert control. Of course, the imagined future you've painted for us is actually about our own society – is an exploration about our disconnect with nature, a comment on device addiction, a vision of our self-definition via the brands we buy.
Do you see any future outside of this kind of toxic capitalism? Or maybe I should ask, do you see a way to write a realistic future that is also not a kind of Capitalist Realism?
I want to be properly outside, notice the weather, the roll of a hillside, the changing colour of a hedge, the insistent patter of rain. I get on my horse, and we go out and experience the world.
Roz Morris: I had several interests with Lifeform Three. One is our state of willing surrender to our devices. They are so seductive. They give us the world in the palm of our hand. Consumerism does that too. It gives us things that make us feel good, or things we learn to desire. Is that an -ism or is it just the human condition?
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