New Flame in Town

Interview with Adrian Bedford

In 2003 the novel Orbital Burn appeared from the Canadian small press Edge Books. Making it different was that its writer, Adrian Bedford, was a West Australian. Liz Grzyb and Russell B. Farr took the opportunity recently to catch up with Adrian Bedford, one of Australia’s newest and exciting genre writers.

You've really burst onto the Australian SF scene in the last six months, where did you come from? What's your background, and how did you get into sf?

I don't know about burst. From my perspective it feels like a slow, insidious seeping — like there's a funny new smell in the room, and everyone's wondering what it is.
Hmm, background. I'm from Fremantle originally, if that helps. Until last year's Worldcon trip I'd never even left Western Australia before. It was a bit of a shock, you might say.
I got into sf when I was very young, about age 6 or 7. Seeing the first manned moon landings left a huge impression on me, giving me the idea that space was a place you could go, not just lights in the sky. That helped. My slightly older uncle, who had a thing for desperately bad and cheesy American sci-fi TV shows (I remember Land of the Giants vividly, thanks to him). When the original Star Trek came on the scene my parents wouldn't let me see it. They believed it was too scary for me. My grandparents had no such qualms, though. When I visited them, they let me watch it all I wanted. It wasn't scary so much as baffling, but somehow still cool. Dr Who got the same treatment--though I spent many years utterly terrified, watching Dr Who each weeknight.
I started writing stories (very bad derivative copies of more famous stories I knew of, or just blow-by-blow descriptions of cheesy movies I'd seen) early, but didn't get serious until I was about 14, but didn't get original until many years later. Something that really helped, and was a wonderful gift, was a friend of my dad's gave me a box of second-hand sf novels, including all of Heinlein's works, all of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books, loads of Asimov and Clarke, and all kinds of other stuff. It was amazing. I ate the Heinlein stuff alive, and read it over and over, going "phwoar!" much of the time. The Burroughs stuff, by contrast, seemed fatuous nonsense.
When I was 15 I heard there was going to be a sf convention here in Perth, something called Waycon 79, also called Swancon 4. Well, zoinks! I'd read about sf conventions, and imagined this would be along those lines. Very famous author types rubbing shoulders with enthusiastic fans, all having a spiffing romp and a lovely time. It was a spiffing romp, but I spent much of the time feeling terrified but very keen. <rolls eyes at own teenage gaucheness>
Things evolved and developed. I kept writing and writing and writing. When I was 18 I was banging out about five really crappy short stories every day. My parents were always shouting at me to give the bloody typing a rest, would you?
I did university and public service jobs, and more university and got married somewhere in there to She Without Whom Nothing Would Be Posssible, the fair and lovely Michelle, who has encouraged and supported my work from day 1, even when it was really crappy. She is entirely without peer.
Seven years ago I wrote a book called Orbital Burn, which I sold to a Canadian startup sf and fantasy publishing firm. Last year, after many an ordeal, it came out. Earlier this month I got my first royalty cheque. Earlier still this year I signed the contract and got paid for my third book, Hydrogen Steel (which is now in rewrite/edit mode). Things are pretty decent.

While it's still early days for the novel, Orbital Burn, how well has it been received to date?

It appears to be going over quite well, getting some gobsmacking reviews (notably from the New York Review of Science Fiction's December 2003 edition). Many people have written to me (and I don't mean friends and rellies who've read it) telling me how much they loved it. It's the finest blessing there is for a writer, I think.

How did you end up with a Canadian Publisher?

A fluky chain of circumstance: a writer friend in Texas found an ad on Usenet about this new Canadian publishing firm, interested in sf/fantasy. This friend sent the ad to me, asking what I thought. I had a couple of books sitting around at the time, so I wrote to them, pitching both books. They asked to see both of them. They bought one of them. Later that year, they also bought another one, Eclipse (coming out early next year — I've just received a dazzling rendering of the Geoff Taylor cover art, and can scarcely believe my eyes, it's so good).

Did you have any concerns in working with a small press?

Not at all. Their attention to detail in editing at all levels has been astonishingly good. They're going out of their way to make my books as good as they can possibly be. It's very heartening to see your work being taken so seriously.

How do you find the distance between you in Perth and your publishers in Canada? Would it be easier to work with a local publisher, or is the business world becoming small enough that trans-hemisphere distances are just down the road?

We do everything by email, so the distance to them is no different from, say, the distance to you in Narrogin. The only time snail mail comes into it is when there's contracts and cheques and stuff. There can be problems, though. Michelle and I are going to the Worldcon again this year to help sell Orbital Burn, and talk up Eclipse. Before we get there, the publisher has asked if we'd mind stopping in several Canadian cities for readings/signings/appearances/etc for a few days each. We're happy to do it, but it's an extraordinary thing to contemplate if you're just a guy from the suburbs of Perth. Our trip to Toronto last year for Torcon 3 was exhausting to the nth power (the convention itself was great; we loved Canada), and we can see that the trip this year could be even more so. Still, this is what I signed up for, so I can't complain now that I've had my dearest wish granted, can I?

Talking now about Orbital Burn, the character of Lou is a very convincing one. How did you get into the female mindset so well?

I've had a great many wonderful female friends over the years. More female friends than male friends, in fact. I just always got on better with women. Funny, eh?

The noir detective story is established very early in the novel. Are you a big fan of noir?

Yes, particularly Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain and their ilk, and old black and white movies about bad things happening to good (or at least relatively good) people, often involving evil blondes. It's great stuff. My three favourite genres are sf, crime, and espionage thrillers. I find myself working elements of all three into my work to varying degrees. This third book, Hydrogen Steel, involves more crime as well as spy stuff. It's a hoot.

The down-to-earth principal characters in Orbital Burn contrast starkly with the existential philosophical bent of the latter part of the novel. Which is more like you?

Both, oddly. I'm a working class boy from the wrong side of various tracks (get your cliches here; form an orderly queue), but then I went to university, ostensibly to do creative writing and theatre, but I discovered philosophy as well. I was a poor philosophy student, but I loved it nonetheless. Unlike some people who do philosophy and wonder how on Earth is all this relevant to the real world, I immediately saw the relevance of it. Questions of justice and rights and power are all extremely important to me, and they inevitably show up in my work.

The blurb for Orbital Burn mentions that Eclipse and Hydrogen Steel are your upcoming titles. Are these in the same vein or world as the first novel, or completely different?

It's the same universe, at different time periods. The books stand as separate stories involving new sets of characters--but in the background of what's going on are the consequences of things that happened in earlier books (using as a model the Merchanter books of CJ Cherryh). Orbital Burn was a sort-of mystery, Eclipse is more of a psychological military thriller, and Hydrogen Steel is a series of nested whodunnits. Regardless of what the books purport to be about, I always believe I'm writing about the real world, even if sometimes metaphorically. Example: I'm doing rewrites for Hydrogen Steel. The plot involves, among other things, biological human androids which you can just chuck in the bin when you're done with them. Today I was noodling with the idea of what if the android business worked like any other business involving intellectual property, and you had to deal with knockoff or bootleg versions of popular android models (ones that look and behave like celebrities, say). It's fun to think about and play with, and it's probably one of the things I like best about the sf genre, that you can play with real-world issues, but in a fun, even satirical manner.

What else can we expect to see from you in the future?

More grey hair, sadly. At a guess, I'll be writing books and stories regardless of their being published. I was before I made my first sale, and I daresay I always will. It would be nice to be one of those authors, like PG Wodehouse, who dies in bed, with a notebook on his lap, and a story half-written.

Adrian, thank you for your time.

Adrian Bedford writes about himself: Born. Schooled. Hospitalised. Fixed. Schooled some more. Schooled lots. Mind expanded. Dropped out. Played games. Met future wife. Horrible jobs. Married. Blessed. Wrote and wrote and wrote. Sold. Wrote more. Published. Astonished. Stunned. Blessed again. Humbled.

If you'd like to see more, my official website has a somewhat livelier version. Or weblog: Modem Noise.

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