Q&A with Tobias Buckell
Q: Toby, you were born in the Caribbean but now live in Ohio-how did that happen?
A: This is often the first question people have after they meet me. As a kid I met a lot of people who came from the heartland region to the islands and couldn't bear to leave. For some reason my life ended up being the opposite. My step dad is actually from Akron, OH, and moved my family to Ohio when I was a senior in high school after a particularly vicious hurricane in '95 destroyed the boat we lived aboard.
I'm the third generation of a family of sailors who lived aboard their boats with family who've been all around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. I was born in Grenada, and have lived aboard boats there and in the British and then US Virgin Islands. Most of my extended family still works in the marine industry somehow, only my immediate family are the odd ones out. I have an uncle who builds boats in New York, and an aunt and uncle who maintain yachts for the rich and famous.
I don't deny it's quite a change in environment, and I do miss the islands terribly. When winter rolls around I find myself looking up pictures of my favorite beaches. But if anything it has given me an appreciation of where I grew up.
Q: Has your Caribbean background impacted your work?
A: A great deal. It was always a bit frustrating when I grew up reading books that used the Caribbean solely as a tourist destination. It was often clear that these writers hadn't researched the islands other than through tourist brochures and a vacation there. Yet there is a great deal of history and fusion and even impact that these islands have had on the world.
I love the genre I write in, SF. And I love adventure fiction, comics, and all the other things stuffy people want you to 'grow' out of because they've completely ripped their own sense of fun and wonder with the world out. However, after years of reading I realized that I felt misrepresented in the fiction I read. There simply needed to be a more diverse view of the future, one that included the places of, and the peoples of, the islands.
I'm bi-racial myself; my biological father is Grenadian, my mother British. Though I pass for white in the US, my identity is very multicultural, and I wanted to bring this all into my fiction when I began to write. So it seemed natural to turn to a Caribbean setting.
Q: In Crystal Rain, many of your characters speak a Caribbean dialect. What was your experience writing in that dialect and do you speak a dialect yourself?
A: Caribbean dialect is one of the things people notice about islanders right after thinking about music and beaches. Various dialects are spoken all throughout the islands. In Barbados it's actually a very light accent, heavily influenced by some English accents. Grenada had a heavier dialect, with also a French/English patois that was spoken, particularly in Caricou, an island off the north of Grenada. But in Jamaica you have the classic dialect that many people expect of islanders, although it is only one variation of the many.
Because I grew up with an English mother I did something called 'code switching.' At home I spoke with a bit of a British Accent, all middle upper class and proper. Amongst friends I spoke a mild dialect in Grenada and the Virgin Islands, less than everyone around me, but quite noticeable to people who didn't speak it. I could switch between both depending on who I spoke to.
Writing the dialect out as the characters spoke was very hard and left me in a lot of quiet panics in front of the keyboard. I settled on trying to weave it in as subtly as possible, focusing more on grammar structure and unique words than trying to phonetically spell out the dialect. I'm still experimenting with how to represent Caribbean dialect properly so that both my Caribbean readers and non-Caribbean readers are satisfied. I did pester Caribbean writer Nalo Hopkinson a whole bunch about this at the time, often in despair.
Q: You also have a popular website and weblog. How important do you feel a website or a weblog is to an author?
A: I always feel that not having a website is like being a business that doesn't have a phone number. I mean, yeah you can get away with it, but it isn't going to win you a lot of customers. I feel that if a reader is interested enough in you to google your name, you should at least reward them with a central place for all the information they might need.
The weblog is something I started back in 1998, so I've been doing that for a long while. It started as a way of publicly journaling my attempts to get published, and as time went by became something else. I started posting interesting links about technology, things I saw around me, and about writing in general. And people started reading it.
As my short stories started seeing publication I started getting email and occasional comments from readers. It's now to the point where I get a thousand people a day passing through, according to my hosting company. It's taken on a life of its own, but it's a great deal of fun. I love sharing interesting things with the world, and this is just another method of doing so.
What is even cooler about it is that every time I travel to talk on panels or give readings people come up to me who have this connection with me from having read the weblog. They know my work, they know about my obsession with Grado headphones, they're on my newsletter. It's amazing to have all these friends I have yet to meet.
Reviews
Crystal Rain
Tobias S. Buckell
John DeBrun has a wife, a thirteen-year-old son, and a big hole in his memory. He cannot remember life before Nanagada fisherman rescued him from the sea twenty-seven years ago. He is not even sure why he has a hook in place of his left hand, though he occasionally gets flashes of memory. But that all changes when the blood-thirsty Azteca, directed by their gods, the Teotl, invade Nanagada hunting for human sacrifices and slaves. Nanagada is defended by the mongoose-men, but it is obvious they cannot hold out against the Azteca onslaught. Frustrated that his wife and son may be in Azteca clutches, John signs onto an expedition to recover the Ma Wi Jung, which the Loa (fleshy, secretive god beings) say is the only hope for saving Nanagada. Much of the book describes this treacherous journey. DeBrun comes close to losing his leg and his life, courtesy of "friends." But in the end he recovers the weapon, his memories, and his son. He is an old-father-a highly trained pilot from a distant planet, hundreds of years old. But until his son becomes a man, DeBrun decides his fighting skills will have to wait. Buckell has done an excellent job with his first Sci-Fi novel. This story is complex, fresh, and interesting-and wide open to a sequel. 2006, Tor Books, Ages 14 to 18, $24.95. Reviewer: Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt
ISBN: 0-765-31227-1
Added 06/30/06
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