Interview: Carolyn Ives Gilman

I recently received a review copy of Carolyn Ives Gilman's novel, Dark Orbit and plan to read later this month but Carolyn was nice enough to stop by and provide us with an interview. So without further ado:

Speculative Book Review: Care to introduce yourself to the Speculative Book Review readers?

Carolyn Ives Gilman: I am Carolyn Ives Gilman, and my fourth speculative fiction novel, Dark Orbit, comes out in July 2015.  It is set in the Twenty Planets universe—the same as my first novel, Halfway Human, though only one minor character appears in both books.  It’s also the universe for three of my novellas (The Honeycrafters, Arkfall, and The Ice Owl).  All three were nominated for Nebula Awards; the last one also made it to the Hugo ballot.  So this universe has been popular with readers, and I thought I ought to spend more time in it.

When I’m not on one of the Twenty Planets, I spend my time developing exhibits at the National Museum of the American Indian (a branch of the Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, DC.  My career as a museum curator and historian has mostly been spent studying exploration, the colonial frontier, and Native American nations—topics that have fed into my fiction.

SBR: Why should Dark Orbit be the next book everyone reads?

Gilman: In Dark Orbit, an irrepressible ethnologist named Sara Callicot gets recruited to join a scientific expedition being sent to investigate a newly discovered planet.  She has a secret assignment—to spy on fellow explorer Thora Lassiter, a disgraced member of the interstellar elite.  Thora’s past has been covered up so thoroughly, even she does not know it, since false implanted memories have made her doubt her own sanity.  When they arrive on the ship orbiting the planet Iris, a grisly murder seems to prove that someone has brought the plots of their home planet to this new frontier.

But assassination is only one of their concerns, because the planet Iris turns out to be extraordinarily dangerous.  Here, the leaves cut like razors and the forests are mazes of mirrors.  Space itself is unstable, apt to fold like five-dimensional origami.  When Thora disappears, it is up to Sara to solve a mystery that may be scientific or may be political, and to rescue Thora before the spatial instabilities annihilate them all.

SBR: Dark Orbit deals with first contact.  What research, if any, did you do to prepare for the novel?

Gilman: There is an extraordinary amount of research behind Dark Orbit.  The natives of Iris are blind, living in caverns deep underground.  Constructing their civilization required a lot of reading about blindness and the neuroscience of sensory perception.  The spatial anomalies on Iris are based on reading into new theories of dimensionality by out-of-the-box thinkers like Roger Penrose.  The other reading I did was on the intersection between quantum reality and consciousness, by authors like David Bohm. At any moment during the writing of Dark Orbit, I was likely to have reference books of Elizabethan English, quantum physics, neuroscience, and mystical philosophy open at the same time. 

SBR: Which character from Dark Orbit do you most identify with?

Gilman: There are two viewpoint characters in Dark Orbit: the cheeky, irreverent Sara Callicot, who always has a pun or a sarcastic quip handy; and the troubled, introspective Thora Lassiter.  Of course, both of them reflect aspects of my personality—all characters are the author, in the end. 

SBR: Which character was the most difficult/easiest to write and why?

Gilman: Sara’s sections were much easier to write, while Thora’s are more interesting for me to read, since she seems very unlike me. It’s hard to believe I wrote some of them, but I must have.  I don’t know who else could have written them.

SBR: What is the most satisfying aspect to writing?

Gilman: This has changed over the years.  I used to write for the feeling of immersion in another reality, the way you can escape so thoroughly from this world and live someone else’s life, think someone else’s thoughts.  Now I like to write for the way I can explore insights into this world, and reflect it back in a mirror.  I should mention that I enjoy the whole process of writing—the intense concentration, the feeling of flow, seeing words appear on the screen.  I couldn’t do it otherwise.  The rewards of having written something aren’t enough if you don’t enjoy the writing.  That said, almost nothing puts me in a better mood than making a sale.

SBR: What authors/works have most influenced you and what type of influence (e.g. good/awful) were they?

Gilman: The first speculative fiction authors to really reach out and grab me by the brain were J.R.R. Tolkien and Isaac Asimov.  Later, I was deeply influenced by Ursula K. LeGuin.  Today, I get much of my influence from nonfiction, including such sources as the newspaper.  In truth, just about everything I have ever read has influenced me.  Even the worst books have something worth copying—or avoiding.  I’m not going to name names. 

SBR: What are you currently reading and what is in your to-read pile?

Gilman: This is a little embarrassing, but I’m in the middle of a project to catch up on science fiction I’ve fallen way behind on.  Lately I’ve become addicted to C.J. Cherryh—although I had to stop reading the Foreigner series because it was so much like my job at the Indian Museum that it was messing with my head and making me tense.  (I hasten to add that assassinations are rare at the Smithsonian—we go for character assassination, not the physical kind.)  So I turned to Iain Banks and Jack McDevitt—extraordinarily enjoyable writers, both of them.  But my very last book was a comfort read, Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest Vorkosigan novel.

SBR: Aside from your own novel, Dark Orbit, what series/standalone should people be reading?

Gilman: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword books.  Peter Watts’ Blindsight.  China Mieville’s The City and the City.  Anything by David Mitchell.

SBR: Any last words or thoughts?

Gilman: Dark Orbit is in some ways classic science fiction—dense with ideas, speculation, and sense of wonder.  If you are an SF fan, you ought to enjoy it. 

About the Author:

CAROLYN IVES GILMAN is a Nebula and Hugo Award–nominated writer of science fiction and fantasy. Her novels include Halfway Human and the two-volume novel Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles. Her short fiction appears in many Best of the Year collections and has been translated into seven languages. She lives in Washington, D.C., and works for the National Museum of the American Indian.

About the Book:

Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate, Thora. Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. She finds that the planet, thought to be uninhabited, is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions. Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of impending danger. But her most difficult task may be persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science. 

Carolyn Ives Gilman’s DARK ORBIT is a gripping tale of first contact that challenges our concept of who we are and how we see and understand the universe. A compelling novel about human nature written by a devoted academic and historian, DARK ORBIT stretches the concept of what is possible, and will impress and challenge readers this summer.