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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.
