Please Welcome to Cutis Anserina a man who knows his folklore...Phillip Hemplow
What was the catalyst for writing The Innsmouth
Syndrome? What was the process like
working to extend the legacy of Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth?
The idea began brewing a long time ago, when I was studying
microbiology. I found myself wondering what an epidemiologist would make of the
Innsmouth look, and how they might explain it. The actual writing didn’t happen
until I found myself between jobs, and needed something to fill the time. This
was before I’d ever heard of self publishing, or indie publishing - and I knew
the length made it pretty much useless to a traditional publisher - so after
one half-hearted attempt to place it in a genre magazine I pretty much forgot
about it. It wasn’t until I coincidentally came across some people talking
about Kindle Direct online that it occurred to me to upload it.
I knew from the outset that I wanted to try to write
something that would add some new ideas to the Innsmouth story. If anyone was
ever likely to read Syndrome, it was going to be people who’d already read the
complete works of HPL, and probably a lot of spun-off stories by other writers,
too. It’s a story that’s been explored so thoroughly that injecting some new
characters and some new threats was essential if I was going to hold the
interest of, well, people like me. I also wanted to see if it was possible to
shift the focus of the story off HPL’s preoccupation with miscegenation, and
turn it somewhere else. Being British, I chose to try and invoke distaste based
on snobbery and class prejudice, rather than racialism. The Innsmouth
population in Syndrome is made up of poor, sub-working class people, because,
while racism is widely condemned these days by anyone vaguely well-adjusted,
for some reason it still seems to be acceptable to sneer at poverty. Turn on
the TV today and you won’t have to surf too many channels before you find a
fly-on-the-wall `documentary’ that invites you to mock the poor, or the
ill-educated, or the unsophisticated. A few years ago, we had the phenomenon of
Bumfights. So, I thought that it might be possible to hinge the horror of
Innsmouth upon peoples’ fear of poverty. Especially during a global recession.
When writing Sarcophagus was there any concern in exploiting
the Chernobyl tragedy for entertainment value?
It was a constant concern. I did a lot of research for
Sarcophagus, and did a lot of very sobering reading about the disaster, and
about the astonishing bravery and selflessness of the troops, scientists and
workers in the aftermath. Sometimes plot ideas would occur (such as making the
babushka who shows up in the middle of the story a ghost, or hinting that the
lost souls of Chernobyl had been devoured by the entity at the heart of the
story) that would have worked – that would probably have worked quite well –
but would have been pretty tasteless. I felt it was important to be accurate
too, insofar as possible. With Syndrome, I happily redesigned elements of the
geography, the canon and anything else that got in my way. For Sarcophagus, I
reflected the actuality as closely as I could. An American researcher was good
enough to share some interior maps of the reactor shell (though I did have to get a little extemporaneous
there, in some places), and I downloaded thousands of photographs of the site,
taken over the last few decades, to try to make sure I got the details as
accurate as I could. And the last words in the author’s note at the end of the
book are dedicated to the sacrifices made by so many absurdly courageous people
in the wake of the 1986 disaster; so that, hopefully, the reader can’t fail to
take that message away with them.
How did you create Dr. Victoria Cox the protagonist of
Sarcophagus?
I think that she evolved out of the role I needed her to
fill. She had to be a well-qualified nuclear scientist, of a certain age and
relationship status, so initially that was what defined her. Oddly, I think I
modeled her more on some of the nurses I’ve known and worked with, than
scientists. Possibly because I’ve seen nurses under stress more often than I
have scientists!
Russian folklore plays a pivotal role in Sarcophagus. Was this something you had a background in or
had to research?
I’m a huge folklore enthusiast, and have been since
childhood. As a kid, I loved classical mythology – mainly for the monsters and
swordfighting - and ghost stories. I could recite hundreds of ghost stories! These days I flatter myself that my
interest is a little more sophisticated than that. People tend to think that
folklore is a thing of the past, but you can read it in the tabloids every day.
The themes have changed with the times, and the age of instant communication
has driven it in strange new directions, but both historical and contemporary
folklore are still a map of our fears, our prejudices and our psychology.
Whether its flayed Viking skins nailed to church doors, bat creatures over
Chernobyl, or asylum seekers eating swans, it’s still with us, and it’s still
fascinating.
I knew some of the folklore I incorporated into Sarcophagus
before I embarked on the project, but I learned a lot more about it in the
process of writing. Czernobog and the Kaptar were already familiar, but some of
the other elements and the historical background were new to me. As a writer
(can I call myself that with only two books to my name?) of Lovecraftian
fiction, folklore isn’t just intriguing, it’s incredibly useful. If you write a
vampire story, or a werewolf story, or a Father Christmas story, you can ground
it in a mass of received wisdom and shared understanding that helps the readers
accept the more outré elements. Vampires may not be literally real, but they
are literarily real. One reason the Lovecraft Mythos is so great to work with
is that it fulfills a similar role – you can root your story in a vast body of
preceding work. Folklore, though, stretches back even further, and can help you
in the same way. Plus, as I say, it’s really damned cool.
H.P Lovecraft is a clear influence on your work. How did you come to read him, and why does
his work resonate so much with you?
I think I first knew of him as an influence on other writers
that I’d read, who all seemed to admire him. Then, as a teenager, I started to
hear references to his stories in song lyrics and video games – probably still
a route that brings a lot of readers to his work – and started to build up
preconceptions about his Mythos. When I actually sat down to read it, I found
that it was even better than I’d anticipated. I can still remember exactly
where I was when I read At The Mountains Of Madness for the first time; and the
sudden feeling of disorientation that came over me at the climax of The Shadow
Out Of Time. I think what really stands out about Lovecraft’s Mythos fiction is
the constant implication, beyond the slime and the monsters and the insanity,
that mankind is doomed and without hope, and utterly dwarfed by the maleficent
void that surrounds it. His primary weapons for provoking a reaction in the
reader of those stories were space and time (and racism, at times, admittedly).
When it works - and it frequently does if you’re reading him for the first time
- the effect is amazing. He’s often compared to Poe, for some reason, but in a
lot of ways they were polar opposites. Poe’s fiction looked inside people,
while Lovecraft’s looks out, beyond them, as if they’re almost a distraction. If
he’d lived longer, I can’t begin to imagine what he’d have been inspired to by
the Holocaust, nuclear weaponry, or the space race.
What was the first truly scary novel you remember
reading? What was your immediate reaction;
to bury it in the closet and forget it, or hunt out similar stories?
Dracula! It scared the pants off me, and I loved it. My
immediate reaction was to read it again, before it was due back at the library! (Personal Favorite as well)
Who are some current genre authors you are following?
I’m a big fan of Tim Curran. He’s one of the relatively few
Mythos authors who - I think - really gets what Lovecraft was trying to do
when he wrote. He tackles the same big themes, big ideas, and big landscapes,
and writes some really decent set pieces. I tend not to read much fiction when I’m
actively writing though, because I’ve caught it bleeding over into my own
stuff. I am looking forward to reading
Tim Reed’s Bakerloo Line Train on a journey
I have to make next week, since I’ll be away from the keyboard for a few days.
Do you have any other projects summing down the proverbial
pipeline you would like to share with us?
My current project is a bit of a departure, in that it’s not
exactly a horror story. It’s a serial killer thriller, though it does have some
rather surreal, Grand Guignol elements. It’s also going to be a full length
novel. It’s an idea I’ve wanted to get to grips with for ages, so now I’m doing
it. After that, there are (currently) a couple of more Lovecraftian stories I’d
like to write - but I have a whole list of themes and plots I want to address.
If I could give up the day job, I’d stand more of a chance of keeping up. As it
is, the list only ever gets longer!
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