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The book opens with Carney’s dream of the
machine and the golden boxes. Why do you think this dream becomes such an
important part of his life later on?
Carney isn’t psychoanalyzed at any point, and he
doesn’t dig into the reasons for the dream, so it’s never discussed in the book,
but I had it in mind that he might have felt some guilt about his mother’s
death when he was six, which was when he had the dream. He was old enough by
then to pick up the things people were saying— about her dying from consumption
shortly after he was born— and he might have blamed himself, in the way
children often do when their parents pass away or break up, when it’s not their
fault at all. Stepping into the machine perhaps represented his acceptance of
himself, his ‘forgiveness’ of himself, although there was actually nothing to
forgive, but he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t step inside.
He might have forgotten the whole thing or just
remembered it as a quirky childhood dream, if it hadn’t been for his dalliance
with hallucinogens when he was eighteen. The rush can cause paranoia, and that
was the way it started to manifest with Carney. I guess it was because he felt
guilty about taking the rush in the first place; he wished he’d had the courage
to refuse it, like Earl, because then he could have helped Dakota, who pretty
much lost the plot that night after taking it. His paranoia grew from there,
and he started to blame himself for all the wrongs in the world, somehow
thinking that twisting a golden box in the dream had caused a fake world to be
created, where nothing was right.
Carney says he always felt like a pacifist,
yet he is arrested for assault. How does this conflict shape the story and his
character?
It’s another big reason for him to feel guilty,
especially since it’s his best buddy he’s accused of harming. Initially, Weinberg
tells him the truth, but he can’t handle it and passes out, mentally blocking
that truth from his memories. So, his arc is about accepting those harsh facts.
His delusions, embodied by the mysterious Wallbanger, play a large part in
helping him navigate his feelings. It’s about his acceptance of himself,
despite all his flaws, despite all the bad choices he might have made.
The Arch Angels gang seems close at first but begins to change after Marshall Bexley joins. How does his presence affect the group?
I loved creating Marshall’s brooding, unruly character.
When he came along, he kind of threw a spanner in the works, because he didn’t
care if he said the wrong thing or upset people. He was from the poorer side of
town, and he was into drug running and dodging the law. He got Taylor mixed up
in his shady deals, and he introduced the gang to the rush, which had quite
devastating consequences for some of them.
There’s a scene where the gang almost come to
blows, and that sort of thing rarely happens in the pacifist society they live
in. The repercussions of taking the rush shape the rest of the story, with the
gang slowly falling apart. And Carney finds it difficult to cope without them.
They had been such a steady presence in his life since kindergarten.
The history lessons about the Dillingers,
LIDSOC, and colonization give readers a lot of background. Why was it important
to include so much history in the story?
I wanted the reader to understand why humans had
left the Earth and come to Banunus, and also why society on the new planet had
ended up splitting into two factions: a nostalgic one, and a high-tech one. The
real difference is in the way the people dealt with their fear of another catastrophic
war. The Magnatellans embraced leptotronic science, even though it could
destroy worlds. They tried to use it in ways that would prevent that ever happening
again. But the Cassafortans just banned it, to the extent that they banned any
post 1950s technology or idea.
Principal Thackery warns the teacher about
giving “too many details” of modern science. What does this moment tell us
about the society on Banunus?
I think that’s the point when the reader first realizes
that Cassaforta is corrupt: that it’s keeping secrets from its people. I liked
the juxtaposition of the continent being draped in nostalgia and having this wonderful
sense of 1950s Americana, but at the same time, feeling a bit shady with all
the political undercurrents and censorship going on. There’s the chance to
leave and see the big cities of Magnatella if you want, but once you’ve been
exposed to the truth, you can never come back.
Many of the Arch Angels dream about leaving
Hailey’s Town—Booker wants to study space science, Dakota dreams of Magnatella,
and Carney wants to be a writer. How do these dreams tie into the themes of the
book?
Huckleberry Dreaming is a coming-of-age
story as well as dystopian sci-fi, and so I used the two continents as a
metaphor for growing up. Cassaforta represents the past, nostalgia, and
childhood, and Magnatella symbolizes the future, dreams and aspirations, and adulthood.
The fact that you can’t leave Magnatella also ties into this; growing up is a
one-way ticket.
Some of the characters know where they belong.
For example, Earl is quite childlike; he’s the eternal optimist, sees the humor
in everything, and lives for the moment. He wants to stay in Cassaforta, ride
dirt bikes, and be a mechanic. Then there’s Booker, who’s very mature, always
looking to the future where she can achieve her dreams of travelling to other
planets. But Carney doesn’t really know where he wants to be. He’s nostalgic
about Hailey’s Town and romanticizes it, at the same time as berating how run
down it is. I guess, at that point in the story, where they’re all talking
about what they want to do with their lives, he isn’t really mature enough to
decide. He had to go through the whole arrest and hospitalization scenario to work
everything out in his mind and finally understand what was at the core of his
being.
Carney feels guilty about not stepping into
the machine as a child. Do you think this guilt is at the center of his
troubles as a young adult?
I mentioned earlier that we could think of
stepping inside the machine as Carney’s acceptance of himself, his purging the
guilt. But he didn’t do it, so that feeling hung around. I guess, if he had
been able to go through with it in the dream, he might have turned out to be a
little more balanced later on in life. He might have handled the rush in a
different way, maybe even had the courage to refuse it. Even if he’d taken it,
he probably wouldn’t have ended up in such a paranoid state, because the
childhood dream would have been resolved in his mind, and he wouldn’t have felt
so guilty. The dream wouldn’t have consumed him.
But there’s an ambiguity about the machine, which
was deliberate on my part. You’ll have noticed that Pink Floyd’s music features
heavily in Doran’s arc, and there’s a song of theirs called ‘Welcome to the
Machine’, where Roger Waters uses ‘the machine’ to mean the system: having a
job that you have to go to every day to earn money to pay bills etc., and part
of growing up seems to be accepting the deal.
In Carney’s case, because most teens aspire to
attend college in Magnatella, his not entering the machine could have signified
a refusal to subscribe to all that: a reluctance to conform, be uprooted, and leave
home, maybe even an unwillingness to grow up. Even at six, he would have known
that you can’t come back from Magnatella, and the idea of its leptotronic technology
being banned in Cassaforta might have seemed quite frightening to him.
On the other hand, his guilt could have stemmed
from wanting to go but knowing that he would have to leave his family behind to
do it: that he would never see them again. The mind is complex and
multi-faceted, and I think both theories could be applied to Carney
simultaneously. As a young adult, he’s very uncertain, which reflects the
dilemma of living in a world like that: wanting to go, but being afraid,
especially given that there’s a lot of hearsay about Magnatella and what it’s
really like. I guess it’s an exaggeration of what most people go through,
growing up.
The relationship between Carney and Lucy, his
grandmother, is shown with warmth and humor. What role does she play in
grounding him?
Lucy had been acting in loco parentis since the
death of Carney’s father, when he was four, and she had always been there for
him up until her stroke. He speaks of a ‘special bond’ between them and
reminisces with Leyland, his brother, about happier times when they used to
play board games with her, always with sharp wit and banter going on. When she
suffered the stroke, it was a devastating loss for Carney because she was
present physically, but not mentally; she could scarcely communicate.
There’s a scene where he takes his frustrations
out on her, and that was quite hard to write, because Carney is a gentle soul, and
it’s a little out of character for him. It reflects the pain and emotional
upheaval he was going through. But most of the time, during his struggles, he would
remember that his primary goal was to care for her, even though he was doing that
in more of a clinical way rather than providing her with any emotional support.
Again, we can be a bit forgiving of Carney, because he was pretty much on the
verge of a nervous breakdown at that point.
Music is mentioned often—like The Everly
Brothers, The Platters, and Buddy Holly. How does music help set the tone of
the story?
As well as using music to help frame the fake
time period, I also wanted the whole novel to feel cinematic, and mentioning
what song was playing on the juke box or the radio helped to achieve that, I
think. When you’re reading about the songs, it sets the mood, allowing you to
imagine the scene in more detail, almost as if you were watching it play out on
a big screen in a movie theater.
The Magnatellan scenes leaned heavily on Pink
Floyd and other prog rock music, because that was what Humbucker was into. I
wanted to give him a strong counterculture vibe, echoing his distaste for the
corruption that was rife on the continent.
The book moves between the past (the creek,
high school days) and the present (the arrest, the interviews). How does this
structure shape the way we understand Carney’s story?
One of Carney’s most prominent thoughts when he’s in the hospital is that all he has left are his memories. So, allowing him to wallow in them, and narrate them to the reader at the same time builds empathy for him; we’re hearing about the memories simultaneously as he’s experiencing them. Also, the build up to his arrest is revealed to us slowly, carefully, and in a more calculated way, which adds to the mystery and suspense. And we don’t get the full picture of what really happened until quite close to the end, which was crucial because there are a few twists to the plot that wouldn’t have worked so well if the story had been told in a linear fashion.
