Crystal Huff

I’m publishing text-based interviews with authors from my science fiction and fantasy anthology Recognize Fascism, which was published in October 2020 by World Weaver Press. I thought it might be nice to highlight their work again, and remind folks that this book is still a resource (and sometimes prescient!), and it was honestly lovely to touch base with the authors again.

TODAY: Blake Jessop, whose story in Recognize Fascism is “Go Dancing to Your Gods.” You can see and hear Blake reading a snippet from this story on YouTube, even!

Crystal: First off, let’s talk about your story in RECOGNIZE FASCISM! What drew you to the topic of your story? 

Blake: Any book with an explicitly anti-facist message is going to have a lot of ground to cover, so I wanted “Go Dancing to Your Gods” to address something specific. I grew up in the 90s, and vividly remember the push to install CCTV cameras in downtown London. It struck me as sinister then, and recent developments in facial recognition technology creeped me out enough to want to write a story focused entirely on the balance between personal privacy and public safety.

Crystal: What was your favorite part of writing this story?

Blake: I love character-driven fiction, and always enjoy watching strange interactions play out between the people (living, dead, or otherwise) that I’ve created. I usually approach stories with a good idea of what the plot is, who the characters are, and what themes I’m trying to weave in – I am a planner, not a pantser. Pretty much the only place I just let whatever is going to happen happen is in dialog and character interactions, and I love being surprised by what happens. Khloé and the H-K getting weepy and trying to deal with their grief together was the unexpected highlight in this story.

Crystal: Why did you steer the story in the direction that it went, and did anything about that direction surprise you along the way?

Blake: I plan stories pretty meticulously, and frequently write beginnings and endings first, so there weren’t many surprises. Most of the strange discoveries along the way were details; I draw up detailed skeletons, but often don’t plan the muscle and sinew.

I did have a really hard time figuring out how Khloé was going to explain the importance of privacy to a god-like AI swarm in a single line of dialog, so when that finally came to me it did feel like an enormous relief. 

Crystal: What did you learn during the process of writing and/or editing this story?

On the technical side, I always love learning more about artificial consciousness, advancements in drone technology, and the neuroscience that would make some of the story’s plot points feasible, or at least close enough to feasible that none of them felt like magic. In hindsight I might have used “connectome” rather than “engram” for the Khloé construct… but I’m just as happy to get the reader thinking about the difference between the two.

From a writing standpoint, I learned that I have a bad (or at least consistent) habit of jumping around in timelines. It’s a thing I really like doing, and several editors have been extremely tolerant of, but sometimes it’s better just to get from A to B. The first draft of “Go Dancing to Your Gods” was a lot more asynchronous, and I think the story turned out better using a slightly more streamlined approach. There is still some jumping around in time, but it happens naturally during the narrative, rather than as part of the story’s structure.

Crystal: What work did you do in order to authentically present the voice of your narrator?

Blake: Logical question. Khloé is a lot of things I am not; a genius hacker, a woman with good cardio, and someone who sounds like she wakes up in the morning feeling refreshed and with no dependence on caffeine.

When I was first dreaming up the story, I was also watching the 2018 winter olympics, and I couldn’t get over how cool the American snowboarder Chloe Kim was. She was tweeting about wishing she’d eaten more breakfast burritos in between record-setting halfpipe runs. She implied that she won a gold medal because she was hangry. She was charming, impish, and personified a lot of the quirky social media habits that some people view as the worst characteristics of the zoomer generation… all while dominating her sport with indomitable commitment and pure will. She made me want to write a protagonist who was cheerful, perky… and an absolute world-beater in her chosen field. After that all I had to do was a lot of machine ethics research, because Khloé did take that stuff very seriously.

Crystal: Okay, let’s talk specifically about the editing process we underwent together. When you started the editing process with me, what were your hopes and fears? 

Blake: Honestly, the editing process for this story felt extremely smooth, and the most  challenging part for me was also one of the smallest; the content warning. This was the first time I’d ever been asked to add one, and it left me with mixed feelings; I wanted to be sensitive to readers’ needs, but did the warning spoil a major plot point? It seemed like a big deal to me, and I ended up needing advice from both you and some other writer friends. The consensus? Stop overthinking it; it won’t be an issue. I did, it wasn’t, and I learned a few things about how to navigate the dark emotional spaces that a book like Recognize Facism confronts.

Crystal: In my work as an editor, I try to be sensitive to potential impostor syndrome feelings. How well did this work or not work for you? Did you notice something I did as particularly helping to address impostor syndrome, or no?

Blake: I did not notice this at all, although your kindness and thoughtfulness in presenting edits and constructive criticism now has some context. Like most writers, I step into some of the deep shadows cast by the light of creativity, and find inertia and depression the darkest.

By some miracle, however, I have never felt any impostor syndrome. I’ve always had unjustifiable confidence in the potential of my writing, even before I’d published much of it. This  one among my many delusions has turned out to be useful, so… lucky me?

Crystal: If you could advocate that a reader (or editor!) go to one Wikipedia page for more context on your story, what page would that be?

Blake: I’d suggest everyone go read about the 1924 novel “We.” Zemyatin deserves mention alongside Orwell and Huxley, and the book is compelling about the personal implications of a surveillance state. It’s not perfect, but its themes are only going to get more relevant as technology advances… and it’s still a pretty cracking read, even 100 years later.

Crystal: Cool, thank you! So, what didn’t make the cut for your story? What did you/we leave out, and why? Were there fiddly little details that you loved but were dropped from the final draft?

Blake: At one point, construct Khloé sings a song while she’s dancing around on top of the H-K while they’re on their way to meet the AI swarm. I had the lyrics all written out, and felt like they were really clever.

…And listening to Khloé sing them desperately dragged down the pace of a transitional scene. It also felt redundant with some of the other jokes in that section, so I had to cut the actual words from Khloé’s warbling. It felt bad, but you do have to kill your darlings.

Crystal: I SO hear that. Killing your darlings is hard, but sometimes required.

Crystal: What do you wish people would ask you about this story or about the larger RECOGNIZE FASCISM project?

Blake: I would welcome literally any question about this story because, like Khloé, I have a hard time finding people to talk to about machine ethics who aren’t getting all emotional about it.

“How can we get artists paid for all the work they had stolen by the kleptocratic corporatists who run Stable Diffusion?” is also fine, now that we’re on the topic of all-seeing data gathering on the web.

Crystal: What’re you working on lately? Share! 🙂 

Blake: I recently finished final editing on a story that will appear in Worldstone’s Summer of Sci-fi and Fantasy, Vol. 2. It’s called “Febrifuge,” and is about as different from “Go Dancing to Your Gods” as inhumanly possible, featuring invading demon hordes, a noble paladin, a mysterious alchemist, and a potion with impossible ingredients. Romance! Dangerous chemistry! Fantasy heroes with way too many syllables in their names! It’s got it all, and the kickstarter is live right now!

Crystal: Woo! Thank you, that sounds fantastic! Thank you, as well, for your time and contribution to this book. I’m super proud of all of us for getting it out there. 🙂

Blake Jessop is a Canadian author of sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories with a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Adelaide. You can read more of his political speculative fiction in the second issue of DreamForge Magazine, or follow him on Twitter @everydayjisei.