IGMS Issue 11 Page 14

  "Mary, stop acting crazy," Andy said. "There's no such thing as a ghost ship."

  "Yes there is. Look around. There's nobody here. Nobody. Just us." She ran back down the stairs toward the cabins.

  Andy cursed and ran after her. He knew he had to calm her down before she got them both in trouble. He managed to catch up with her halfway down the corridor. "Wait. Look, everything is fine. I'll prove it to you."

  He reached for the nearest doorknob, frantically trying to figure out what to do once he opened the door and came face to face with strangers. He realized he could just pretend he had the wrong cabin. That would work. And Mary would see that everything was fine. So would he.

  Andy gripped the knob of cabin A37. He figured that the doors were probably locked. But even that might help Mary realize there were people on the other side.

  The knob turned smoothly in his hand.

  Andy eased the door open and peeked inside. An old guy was lying on the bed, fast asleep.

  "See?" Andy whispered.

  He waited until Mary nodded, then eased the door shut. "Look. It must be early. That's why everyone's still asleep. Come on. Let's see if they've put out any breakfast yet. I'm starving."

  They went back up.

  There was no food.

  No waiters.

  No crew.

  "This is crazy," Andy said. He looked around the deck. Then he looked toward the ocean. There was no land in sight. They were far out at sea. "When we get back, I'm going to tell Brennan that Pace Cruise Lines sucks."

  Mary let out a small whimper.

  "What now?" Andy asked. He was starting to wish he'd asked someone else to come with him.

  "It's not Pace," Mary said.

  "Huh?" Andy wondered why she was whispering.

  Mary didn't answer him. She pointed up at a mast above them. Andy noticed her hand was shaking.

  Fluttering overhead, a flag displayed the name, "Pyre Cruise Lines."

  "Pyre," Andy said. English wasn't his best subject. The word took a minute to register. When it did, he knew that the man he'd seen in the cabin below wasn't asleep. The man was dead.

  Everyone on the ship was dead.

  Pyre. As in funeral pyre.

  Music began to play over loudspeakers. Slow, sad music. Beneath his feet, Andy heard the crackle of flames and felt the rising heat of the fire.

  In the distance, Andy saw another ship. Squinting, he could make out the name PACE CRUISE LINES on the side. Dots of moving color told him that people were frolicking on deck, having the vacation of a lifetime.

  Mary screamed.

  The pyre grew. Andy turned to run, but there were flames everywhere.

  "Look?" the first mate asked the passenger, offering his binoculars.

  "Thanks," the man said. He peered across the water at the rising flames. "Wow. Pretty spectacular. What a way to go."

  The mate nodded. "Yeah. At least they're feeling no pain." He stood at the deck and watched as the burning funeral ship slowly drifted into the distance. "Rest in peace," he whispered as the last glow vanished from sight.

  InterGalactic Interview With Tanith Lee

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  It's very hard to sum up the career of Tanith Lee so far. There's just so much of it. She first came to the attention of most readers with The Birthgrave (1975) which clearly announced the arrival of a major talent. She is perhaps best known for her Flat Earth novels, and tends to focus on exotic, fantastic adventure in exotic settings, but she has written science fiction, straight horror (such as Dark Dance and its sequels), historical novels, detective fiction, screenplays (including a couple episodes of Blake's 7) and quite a bit more. Two special issues of Weird Tales have been devoted to her, which is only appropriate since it seemed to me when I was co-editor of that magazine that her work expressed the Weird Tales aesthetic more perfectly than that of any other living writer. Among her awards are two World Fantasy Awards for best short fiction (1983, 1984) plus eight more nominations; and a British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980 for Death's Master plus five more nominations. She has published over eighty books.

  SCHWEITZER: I notice that a lot of your recent books have been for Young Adults. I mean Piratica, etc. Your first novel, at least the first I am aware of, The Dragon Hoard, was also for younger readers. Is this a return to an early ambition for you? It is, of course, obvious that J.K. Rowling has made this sort of book more profitable, but I cannot imagine you chasing anyone's coattails. So why this change, now?

  LEE: No, I'm not returning to a previous interest at all. I've been writing YA books alongside adult work for most of my (mad) career. In fact, my very first published work was a short adult horror story, written when I was about 18. ("Eustace"). By the time The Dragon Hoard, Princess Hynchatti and Animal Castle were published in the early 1970s, I'd already written Don't Bite the Sun and the first draught (the first of only two novels of mine ever to have two draughts -- the second was The Gods Are Thirsty in the 1980s) of The Storm Lord, I just hadn't found a publisher. While working with DAW books, between 1974-1988, I also published six YA/childrens' novels, and later on seven others (see the Unicorn series, and the Claidi Diaries (or Journals, as they are in the USA). The Piratica books are just part of an on-going commitment to this kind of writing.

  SCHWEITZER: How is writing for younger readers different for you than writing for adults?

  LEE: To me there's no major difference. Some ideas that come to me seem to fit the adult bill, others prefer the YA medium. Two exceptions I can quote -- Volkhavaar was originally thought of by me as being for the YA range -- but before starting it, it seemed to me I could move more freely among some very adult themes if I began with an older viewpoint. The other is a recent proposal turned down by my YA publishers over here, which I have frankly now seen might work much better as a very dark adult novel. (Incidentally they had already rejected the idea of a fourth Piratica. Nor did the American firm of Dutton wish to print the third already published Piratica, though all these books seem to have done well in both Britain and the USA, not to mention in translation -- Russia, Spain, Japan etc. I still get endless worldwide letters asking for another book in the series.

  The only criteria I keep in mind when working on YA is that violence should not be gross, and certain more awful things, though spoken of, stay "off-stage" as it were. And the same with the sexual act. Though there are, of course, sexual reactions evidenced if not adultly described, and things left unsaid that the older, or more experienced reader will pick up on.

  As for so called "Bad Language" I don't use it, save in "invented" form. Examples of Lee-invented really vile language exist in both the Claidies and the Piraticas. Have a look, say at the noun "tronker," maybe, and see what you think it might be . . .! (Claidi) or many of the terms in the Piratica novels . . .

  SCHWEITZER: Isn't all fantastic fiction to some degree aimed at youth? After all, it's about newness and wonder, the discovery of things we (or the characters) did not previously know to exist, and that is very much the condition of youth.

  LEE: This presupposes any writer aims at anyone or thing. Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write. However, to address the premise that Fantasy and all Fantastic literature is "aimed" at youth, well, perhaps then at the youth of the heart and mind, that is if we apply the criterion of "newness and wonder." Not everyone who grows older loses this ability (yes, ability, skill, not failing). C.S. Lewis had a glorious and most aware comment in his Narnia novels, to the effect that nothing was worse than a child who was too childish, and an adult who was too grown-up. We all know these awful kids, but thankfully they may (ha!) grow out of it. I suppose the dire aged may also grow out of the over-adultness.

  Your question equates the wonder and s
urprise, the delight of finding, with all we "didn't know previously existed." OK. In the 1500s grown ups thought the world was flat. But apparently it isn't. (Or is it? Another new thing to find out, maybe . . .) What I mean is, new facts are always coming to light, and I don't just mean in the cosmos, or the outer environ. In ourselves. That is, if we stay, at least on some level, pliable enough to listen, to see, to feel. The "condition of youth" is a state we should, and must, internally, hang on to, and try to preserve (a juxtaposition of notions -- preserving -- pickled youth!) Basically that trite phrase the "inner child" -- trite phrase, yet intelligent thought. The "fantastic" therefore may be a key component in arousing the sleeping spirit in our physical souls. If I ever get to 100, I'd want to be filled with wonder and wild, adolescent, wide-eyed interest in newness. So let's keep the flame burning. Let's stop thinking everyone over 29, or 49, has to be reinforced by concrete.

  SCHWEITZER: When did you start reading and writing fantasy?

  LEE: I couldn't read anything until I was almost eight -- dyslexia. (Unrecognised at the time, in the early 1950s.) The first book I read, Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales, was, of course, Fantasy, like all fiction (and indeed, some non-fiction.) To clarify, my mother was a great aficionado of all SF and fantasy, the early Galaxy and later Weird Tales, and early novels by Asimov and Clarke -- Childhood's End and The City and the Stars being two favorites -- were well known in our various homes. The first Fantasy story I am conscious of having read as such was "The Silken Swift" by the amazing Theodore Sturgeon. I suppose I read that in my early teens, just as I read Mary Renault's The King Must Die when I was eleven-ish. These wonders were like finding a major truth of books, (just as first hearing Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov was like finding music I had always known, but somehow mislaid -- or been robbed of.) When I read Jane Gaskell's The Serpent (at about eighteen) however, I suddenly realized the scope of what one might be "allowed" to write. By which I mean, breaking-all-rules of sticking to the so-called Real World, might be allowed into print. Pathfinding genius that Gaskell was/is, she lit a special light for me along the road. Not long after, I embarked on my first draught (only one of the two -- the other was my French Revolution novel The Gods Are Thirsty -- books I ever did two draughts on) of The Storm Lord. But I must add I'd already written a fantasy novel, set in a parallel ancient Mediterranean, when I was sixteen. It came naturally. As writing should.

  SCHWEITZER: Most writers report, as you do, that writing is just what they do, rather than something they decided would make them a lot of money. That being the case, when you discovered you were a natural writer, and had written an entire novel by the time you were sixteen, how much deliberation did you then apply? Did you read books on writing technique? Did you find that the way you read other people's fiction changed? Did you start reading critically, to see how stories were put together?

  LEE: I have never read anything to see what I should be doing, or how to plot, construct, voice a particular story. I read to enjoy myself, to be transported elsewhere, and yes, to learn -- but for its own sake, not in a self-conscious or precise way. I read what entices, terrifies, amuses, enlightens me -- as a human thing. Meanwhile, I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.

  SCHWEITZER: Did you have the worry, as many people do in such a situation, "This is what I want to do with my life, but what if I don't make it professionally?" and then have a back-up plan, or did you just plunge into writing?

  LEE: In the beginning I had no idea I would ever be "allowed" to make my profession that of a writer. And in this sad mind-set I was encouraged to stay by a great many persons, for a great while. So, if I had a plan then, it was only for a wretched sort of survival, doing other work at which I was largely incompetent, and where my unhappiness was matched only by my confusion. When I was about twenty-one, this condition almost drove me mad -- I do mean that. Through it all, however, I kept on writing, since to me that was the only sanity and bedrock in my life. It was the only Real place to go. (I wrote The Birthgrave during this period). When finally I was rescued from my false "working life" by Don Wollheim and DAW Books, I had no sense of wildness or charging off any rails. I had none of the often reported fear of being unable to cope with my new situation. It was the former situation I had been utterly unable to cope with. Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clichéd dark and stormy night, I found the magical inn, its windows golden lit, and Summer was due to start tomorrow. I can only work at one thing well. Deprive me of that, and my "back-up plan," even now, will be the empty, stormy, darkened heath -- where, incidentally, even unpublished, somehow I'll still be writing.

  SCHWEITZER: Let's talk a little more about the Jane Gaskell influence. What most inspired you in her work? Was it entirely the work, or the fact that she published her first novel at fourteen? That I should think would inspire many teenaged novelists.

  LEE: When I was a child I found children largely uninteresting -- not as people but to read about. As a young adult I was a little less elitist, but not much. (Only David Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations got past this barrier. But then, that's Dickens for you.) The fact therefore that Gaskell had published a couple of (fascinating) novels when very young would have held little allure for me, let alone been any sort of encouragement. (I read Strange Evil and King's Daughter after.) Of course, anyway, they are about adults, so even my intolerant child-persona would have liked them. But Gaskell had written with sensibilities far beyond her years. King's Daughter, precursor of the glorious path-breaking The Serpent, is an astonishing work for one that young (fourteen, fifteen I seem to remember). Who writes an ending like that, when so "immature"?

  What I first read by her was Attic Summer, a then contemporary novel. I loved/love her humor and her cynicism, (apparent in all her work ) her play with color and every one of the senses, her take on -- not only sexual romance -- but sexual and romantic psychology, indeed all forms of psychology, for a "Romantic Novelist" is definitely not what Gaskell is. Also, I valued the fact that she wrote inside at least two very separate forms -- what I now know had been labeled Fantasy, and what is straight "reality," and mixed the two in the most cunning, witty and apt of ways.

  So what inspired me most? As with any writer I love, all of it - all.

  SCHWEITZER: CS Lewis said he started writing fantasy because the books he wanted to read were not on the shelves? Did you have some of the same feeling? When you started to write, after all, fantasy was not nearly as widely-published as it is today.

  LEE: I only read the Narnia books (typically) when I was fifty. (I'd tried as a child, but the child heroes, as explained, didn't interest me much). At fifty, though, I did get a lot from the work. The books are intensely spiritual for me, though not religious in perhaps the sense Lewis might have wished to convey. His use of the Dionysian aspects of Jesus Christ charmed me, (I agree with them) and some of the sequences are wonderfully beautiful and profound. What a curious combination, adventure and laughter -- and cutting-edge visionary reports from the edge of the afterlife . . .

  But to return to your actual question: I did and still do, in some way, write what I want to read. Perhaps that is true of many writers. Meanwhile there are hordes of authors whose work thrills me, so I got and get plenty of nourishment without scribbling it personally. On the other hand, too, when I started to find what was by then classed as Fantasy, I was shown that alter-worlds and otherwheres were completely possible -- by which I mean capable-of-being-recognized (and published.) And while, still, I had very little hope of that myself, I grasped that I need not shy away from something that had been internally
beckoning me for quite some time. In retrospect I am both surprised and dismayed to see in this that I must have taken some (inadvertent) notice of all those who tried to wean me from my proper path. How odd. Thank God I found it anyway.

  SCHWEITZER: You have written some non-fantastic fiction, such as your French Revolution novel. Is the craft of non-fantasy any different for you? Would you ever want to write a purely realistic, contemporary novel, or is the whole appeal of writing for you to get away from that?

  LEE: The writing of my French Revolution novel, The Gods Are Thirsty, was in one way different for me, but not in any creative or artistic sense. Except I preferred to do two draughts. I was obsessed with it (as I always am with what I write), and wrote it in floods (also usual), having to pause only to do research. (This can happen even when dealing in fantasy or SF, or any type of other genre book/story. For example, if I have to describe a copper mine or glass foundry, I do some research on them first.) The main and very pertinent difference for me with The Gods Are Thirsty was not, either, to do with the fact that the people in it had historically lived -- were "real." My own invented characters seldom feel invented, to me. They're equally actual, and so are their stories and otherwheres. So, the one salient difference with The Gods Are Thirsty was that I had available to me from the start almost all the known facts and events. And -- I knew the ending. It was established, revealed, and unalterable. Sometimes pre-knowledge of many facts and scenes does happen when I use an "invented" plot. But it's rare, and always subject to great/slight change -- the work tends to metamorphose. While nineteen times out of twenty I don't know my book's ending, until it evolves or simply displays itself, occasionally shocking me.

  On writing "purely realistic contemporary" novels -- well, I've done so. The problem was, and remains, getting publishers to look at them, let alone publish. They seem to have trouble accepting the books as valid, and might entertain others. Seemingly, someone writing outside their genre-ghetto is not normally encouraged to do so.