I've been speaking with Dan Simmons for more than a few years now, and I consider it as much an honor now as I did on my first outing. This time around, we're here to talk about 'The Abominable' and 'Flashback.' It feels more like an opportunity to chat with an old friend about books we love.
When I first interviewed Dan, I had just started, and he was very accommodating. At the time I used a very different style of creating my interviews than I do today, with more scripted questions. This time, his tour, alas, did not bring him to Northern California, so I drove down from Santa Cruz to LA, and grabbed a hotel near NPR West so I could talk to him.
Since we both arrived early, we started early — and ran long. Obviously, in a book like 'The Abominable,' there's a lot that we can talk about that isn't just going over the plot but getting the backstory of the story. Dan's a writer who has a great understanding of how he does what he does, so it is always a pleasure to talk to him about it.
But then, what I must admit I was really interested in as well was not just 'The Abominable' but as well 'Flashback,' a book that seemed custom-designed to make a certain large segment of readers' heads explode. I'll have a review in the next couple of days, but in the interim, I really liked this novel because it made me so horrifically uncomfortable. We're surrounded by, drowning, in really, enjoyable apocalypses. Even something like 'The Walking Dead,' a quality work to be sure, looks not too bad. Good an evil are pretty apparent, but human and otherwise.
On the other hand, 'Flashback' makes me cringe in much the same way I might imagine that '1984' made Orwell's contemporaries cringe. It plays on the failure of all so many hold in such esteem, and does so with a verve and a firm imagination. It would be easy to think that it's a political novel and it is. But it's not, to my mind, operating with an agenda of contraceptive prevention. It's simply world building to poke a stick in a fire and make sure his plot and characters can cook nicely. And it was definitely something I wanted to hear Simmons talk about — and talk he did.
When we looked up, it was past time to finish. [Many thanks are due to the engineers at NPR West, Dan's publishers and the man himself for giving me such a generous slice of time.] I had over an hour of audio and it proved to be a no-brainer edit. Put a log in the fire, or turn up the heater in your car and get ready for Dan Simmons capital-A Adventure by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
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Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
