by Anna North
How much did you think about politics when writing the book? What are its political implications?
I was really interested in the choices people would have to make after the ice age hit, and I ended up focusing on the decision between trying to preserve life as it once was and living in an entirely new way. This decision becomes intensely political because it’s not possible to preserve the old life for everyone—there are only enough resources to provide baseball, beef, and apples for a wealthy few. But to give all that up, to say no one’s going to eat a hamburger or even get really warm ever again—this is a real and serious sacrifice. I thought about this conflict—between offering great comfort to a few or mediocre comfort to many—a lot while I was writing, and I think it’s something we also have to deal with and think about today.
Why did you decide to write a novel set in the future?
I wanted to deal with an end-of-the-world scenario because I think these scenarios really test characters. When the world as they know it is essentially destroyed, they have the opportunity to become heroes or villains in a way they might not if they were just leading their ordinary lives. Also, I wanted the opportunity to create an entire universe with its own norms and rules and conflicts, both as a challenge to myself and as a way to isolate some of the problems of our world and explore them in a different setting.
Is America Pacifica science fiction? To what extent do you see science fiction and literary fiction bleeding into each other, and do you think these genre boundaries are breaking down over time?
I love science fiction and would be honored if America Pacifica were considered a part of that genre. It’s also a literary novel. I think many writers and readers have long been frustrated with these categories, and in the last ten or fifteen years a lot of wonderful books have blurred the lines between them. I think, too, that there’s a growing recognition that subject matter once associated with genre fiction—whether it’s the end of the world, or a teenage narrator, or a convenience store full of zombies—doesn’t in any way keep a book from dealing with serious issues or deep emotions. I predict that we’re going to see a continued blurring of boundaries in the coming years, and that this will be good for readers, who will be exposed to a wider range of great books, and for writers, who will be able to experiment freely without worrying about what counts as literary.
This interview was conducted by writer Teddy Wayne and originally appeared in the Huffington Post on June 14, 2011.
ANNA NORTH ON WRITING AMERICA PACIFICA
I wrote America Pacifica because I was excited about the end of the world. Not excited to see it happen, necessarily, but excited to think about it, excited to read about it, and excited to watch it on TV. I love Battlestar Galactica, Children of Men, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest—anything set in the future, especially if that future finds society as we know it in decline or fall. I like to think about the end of things because that is when humans will all be tested, when they will have to use skills they’ve never been taught and hang together with people they never thought they’d know. I wrote America Pacifica because I wanted to talk about these kinds of tests, and also about how, through them, a person can become a hero.
Here are some things that I put into early drafts of the book but later had to take out: packs of wild dogs, a giant underground lake, a highly organized team of semi-evil Girl Scouts, a scary story that drives an entire island crazy, a type of sword that plugs right into the user’s hand, an old man with a wound in his side, and a girl with pterodactyl wings. Many people have told me they wish these parts were still in the book. Sorry, guys—maybe next time.
BOOKS THAT INFLUENCED AMERICA PACIFICA
It would be hard to overstate the importance of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age on my work and life. I read this book when I was sixteen, and its story of a young heroine swashbuckling through a bizarre futurescape has stuck with me ever since. America Pacifica owes Stephenson a great debt.
Ditto David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, whose future world influenced me in a more oblique but no less deep way.
Ditto The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
I read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and other noir writers in this book’s early stages (at the behest of Jonathan Ames), and they were a major influence on its plot.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, especially “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
The Road, Cormac McCarthy.
The Odyssey, Homer.
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot.
The Tempest, William Shakespeare.
Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red and “The Glass Essay,” especially influential for their descriptions of loss.
Orson Scott Card’s Ender books, for their young heroes.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics.
The X-Men comics, especially From the Ashes (the Dark Phoenix story).
Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson.
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley.
BOOKS YOU MIGHT LIKE IF YOU LIKED AMERICA PACIFICA
I’m not sure if I’m actually a good judge of what readers of my book would like, since the way I understand it is probably different from the way you do. So this brief list might be more accurately titled “Books that would have influenced America Pacifica, if I’d read them before I wrote it.” But that’s unwieldy, and almost longer than the list itself.
The City and the City, by China Miéville. This was one of the best books I read in 2010. The story of two cities braided together in space, and the shadowy forces that keep them from intermingling, the book manages to make a fantastical situation seem wholly real and yet still totally disturbing. A great illustration of the power of setting, and an example of a truly unique concept satisfyingly realized.
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. People kept telling me to read this novel, and when I finally did I was totally mesmerized. It’s an addictive page-turner, but it’s also the thoughtful story of a young woman coming of age in postapocalyptic Los Angeles. One of the most interesting things about this book is that its version of L.A. is as racially and ethnically diverse as the real city, something you don’t always see in mainstream fiction.
The Truth About Celia, by Kevin Brockmeier. I love all of Brockmeier’s books, but this one really laid me out. It’s the incredibly sad story of a little girl who disappears, and whose parents have to adjust to life without her. But the book also incorporates many other stories, including my favorite, the bone-chilling tale of the green-skinned children who turn up with no explanation in a pit in medieval England. This is an old folktale whose creepiness I can never get enough of, and Brockmeier renders it wonderfully.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
Is America Pacifica a quest narrative? How do you think it is influenced by classic stories such as The Odyssey? How is it different from these older forms?
Is America Pacifica science fiction? How would you define science fiction?
How does social class function on America Pacifica? How does this reflect the problems of America today?
Do you think the story would be different if Darcy were male? What effect does gender have on the lives of the characters in America Pacifica?
What are the larger political and social implications of the struggle between Tyson and Daniel?
Describe the importance of setting and atmosphere in the book.
Many characters in the story have their bodies modified, either by choice or through injury. Discuss the theme of bodily change in the book and how it relates to the changes happening in American society after the ice age.
What role does the environment play in America Pacifica? How do you think the United States would actually respond to a second ice age?
How should it respond?
Can fiction help us prepare for the future? What is the purpose, if any, of fiction that imagines future scenarios?
What do you think a dystopian future would look like? Is it similar to or different from the one in America Pacifica?
Praise for Anna North’s
AMERICA PACIFICA
Chosen as a Best Book of 2011 by the Chicago Tribune
“Anna North’s fluid prose moves this story along with considerable force and velocity. The language in America Pacifica seeps into you, word by word, drop by drop, until you are saturated in the details of this vivid and frightening world.”
—Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
“Overflowing with big ideas about revolution, ecology, feminism, class, and poverty…. One knows that this novel, like, say, the dystopic fiction of Margaret Atwood or Ursula K. Le Guin, aims not only to transmit those ideas in the form of an invented narrative but also to give them the animating, detailed, and less predictable life of literature…. North has some sparkling flashes of class-based wit.”
—Amy Benfer, Christian Science Monitor
“Anna North has talent. She grants Darcy a sensibility more fluid and subtle than the genre has ever demanded…. North is particularly alert to the interplay between intellect and emotion, to the flickers of sympathy and energy that hint there may be life beyond loneliness and misery.”
—Colin Greenland, The Guardian (UK)
“A richly rendered postapocalyptic novel set on a Pacific island…. In her debut novel, Anna North shows us a disturbing vision of the future that is disturbingly similar to our present.”
—Daily Beast
“It’s a thrilling and often very gripping read, expanding beyond its basic quest narrative to comment on society and the politics of control…. To ease home her grim vision, North weaves in black humor, frank sex scenes, and bittersweet memories. North’s use of a reluctant heroine—Darcy is pretty deadpan about her dystopia, having known no other ‘home’—is a winning formula…. An enjoyable and intriguing read.”
—Lisa-Marie Janes, Time Out London
“Anna North’s dark, gripping, and wildly creative debut, America Pacifica, goes where few Iowa Writers’ Workshop grads have gone before: a futuristic end-of-days setting where the buildings are made of Seafiber, and solvent-huffing hoodlums roam the streets. Still, North’s story… is remarkably universal, with characters as real as those found in any contemporary fiction.”
—Jillian Quint, BookPage
“Anna North has crafted a dangerous, wise, and deeply affecting vision of the future that is also a dark mirror held to our present. At once thrilling and heartbreaking, America Pacifica suggests how we shape ourselves by shaping the world.”
—Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection
“Richly imagined…. North is a stylish writer and good storyteller who keeps the pages turning…. As plucky and resourceful as she is melancholic and vulnerable, Darcy is a likable heroine, and the supporting characters add to the book’s flavor with their quirks. An entertaining, stylishly written doomsday novel.”
—Kirkus
“North provides a good lens into the many ways an aggrieved soul can turn against the world, and how difficult it is to get back our dignity once we’ve lost it.”
—Kathleen Massara, Flavorpill
“A skillfully crafted postapocalyptic world…. In a story about the end of the world as we know it North does a comprehensive job of building a new one—one we don’t yet know when we begin the book, one she gets to build by dropping us there and letting us look and smell and feel around…. There’s a political angst to this book, a comment on the nature of governments, that grows organically out of the experience of the young hero, Darcy, and I don’t mean hero as in merely protagonist. Darcy is a hero in the true sense of the word, and this is a story about her heroics, a plot propelled almost entirely by her courageousness, her persistence—an adventure story with a literary personality…. In North’s hands, carried by the particularity of her eye, we sense an older kind of tale very capably refreshed.”
—Mac Barrett, The Rumpus
“In her dark, page-turning debut… North cleverly combines elements from other popular modern stories—a brave young heroine on an against-all-the-odds quest on a strange island with shocking secrets…. The story—and the wealth of detail in a vividly imagined world—is memorable.”
—Publishers Weekly