Interview with author Kathleen Ann Goonan

1. Introduction

This text was originally published in my fanzine, WYZIWYG 8.0, in April 1998. I have slightly edited the text to fit into this section of "curiosity", on my site, Jonas Webresurs ©.

The review of Kathleen Ann Goonan's Mississippi Blues was published in number 9.0, June 1998. I made it just after having written some reviews of both Queen City Jazz and The Bones of Time in Swedish fanzines. The reviews are re-published here as well.

Right: Picture of Kathleen Ann Goonan taken from her homepage: www.goonan.com in May 2005. Photographer unknown.

2. About nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is central in Kathleen Goonan's books. I will therefore start by giving some background information about it.

The book Nanodreams (edited by Elton Elliot, Baen, 1995) gives a sample of the different approaches to nanotechnology. Those of you who haven't heard the word before should know that the concept "nanotechnology" developed in the 1970s, when Eric Drexler published the book Engines of Creation (1974).

Drexler prophesised that we in the future, say within 50 years, will be able to control nature, down to its nanocomponents, i.e. down to 10^-9 of a meter. We will create machines that are small as bacteria, where each atom is carefully selected. Such machines will be programmed to create other machines, or to assemble metals and other materials, with great precision. Drexler's book is full of the most staggering examples.

In Nanodreams this vision is described from different angles, and in the chapter "From Nanodreams to Realities" Drexler writes:

"Sf stories can play various roles. Some may present pictures realistic enough to pick up and make part of your image of the future. Others will offer an opportunity to examine ideas that are plausible but wrong, and to exercise a scarce form of judgment in thinking through the logic of the world to come.

Some stories will be wrong for the best of reasons: by showing a horrible mistake, they will stimulate the alertness that keeps the horror imaginary - they will act as self-denying prophecies. A few stories, perhaps, will be right for the best of reasons: by showing a future worth building, they will inspire the efforts that will make it happen." (page 15)

3. Queen City Jazz

When Kathleen Goonan's first book, Queen City Jazz, was released in 1994, it became a New York Times Notable Book, and Locus called it "A most important debut novel." Why? Probably because it shows a very credible future, in which a nanotechnological development has gone haywire, and totally out of control.

Kathleen Goonan takes our worst nightmares, and makes them realistic, plausible, and very frightening!

The story takes place some hundred years or so in the future. We follow Verity, a young teenaged girl, who lives among a group of chaste Shakers. They fear the plague and live in an isolated countryside, on the slope of Mississippi River. Through Verity, we get to know the group and the poor life they live. Much of what we know today is forgotten, so their conceptions of their surroundings are quite shallow.

Verity doesn't know much about the world, but she isn't like the others, because she has an implant behind her ear. The group try to accept her, but she is nevertheless met with suspicion. And she is becoming a woman, which is something that disturbs the calm and order in the group.

Soon we understand the groups fear: a nanoplague is dangerously transforming the DNA-molecules, and other structures, in all living beings. No one in the group really know what happens, but Verity and her companions see the effects from the outside almost every day, when rafts with sick, chanting, and obviously delirious, people drift by on the river.

"In Verity' world, nanotech plagues decimated the population after an initial renaissance of utopian nanotech cities" Kathleen Goonan writes sarcastically. Verity is drawn towards one such city, more or less subconsciously: she sometimes hears a small bell in her head and occasionally reaches a transcendental state when dancing. The group takes this for a Sign, and indeed it is.

But not from some God, but from a forgotten city. When the plague reaches the little Shaker community, and Verity's two best friends are killed in an accident, she leaves and starts on along journey. She brings her two friends, wrapped in nanoblankets, which eventually will save - and transform - them into something else. Verity travels to Cincinnati, where she hopes to find someone that can revive her friends.

The journey and the first descriptions of the City, are very well written. Kathleen Goonan builds a very suggestive and mystical story, in which many nanotechnological degenerated species are presented. The horror factor is as good as the science fictional theme here.

Image scanned from the jacket cover of Goonan's Queen City Jazz, hardcover version.

Cincinnati is nanotransformed beyond comprehension. Verity finds herself in a dream world, where nothing is what it is supposed to be. The buildings have reached a weird state of symbiosis with a colony of giant bees. Huge flowers on the roofs entice humans to live in the buildings, as they secrete a drug that gives the inhabitants extatic experiences. The humans then secrete pheromones that the buildings absorb into the flowers, for the bees to extract. The bees transport the "pheromonectar" to the Queen, who uses it to create new humans that can live in the houses...

Now, this state of symbiosis is somehow unhealthy, because it has become a neverending loop. And someone or something has called for Verity to stop it. She doesn't know how nor whom, but she is inevitably pulled towards the Queens nest. Verity must be the new queen, so that the City can be cured.

The second part of the narrative, when Verity travels in Cincinnati, is weaker than the first. Kathleen Goonan gives too many details; it is sometimes very hard to understand if Verity is delirious herself, if she is dreaming, or if the world is really deranged. We also get too little information of things we want to know more about.

There is, for instance, a story about the man who created the nanotransformation of Cincinnati, another about the national project and another about the history of what happened when the plague hit the United States. I know now that this is further explained in Mississippi Blues (see further down), but didn't know it at the time I read the first novel. The second part of Queen City Jazz is a bit tenacious. It's really a pity, because it started out really good.

4. The Bones of Time

This novel reached the market two years after Queen City Jazz, but it is set much earlier in time (but not necessarily in the same universe). Much of the book takes place in Hawaii, a place Kathleen Goonan feels strongly for. Hawaii was annexed to the United States during the end of the nineteenth century, and became a state in 1959 - the same year the Goonans moved there.

So, in the book we get much information about this annexation, which happened against the Hawaiians will. She presents historical facts, from a hundred years back and a couple of decades ahead of our time. I am not sure I appreciate this in a book of fiction, though. It is, of course, a very good thing to engage oneself in all kinds of injustices, but there is a possibility, that the ones who should listen never really read the book, while the readers find these passage slow, no matter how much they agree to the moral problems.

Nevertheless, it is around some Hawaiian myths, that much of the plot centers, especially the one about Kamehameda, the last independent king, and the bones that remains from him. His bones have, according to the legend, magical powers.

Before I can say more about that, I need to present the other parts of the story. First of all, we have Century and Lynn.

Cen had, when he was a child, a dose of bionan injected, which later makes him into a mathemaical genious. But the altered biology in his brain also makes him sensitive to spirits; he is contacted by a dead Hawaiian princess, and falls in love.

He realises he can find her, if only he can solve some really strange quantummechanical problems. This is his task in the book. The story about Cen pretty much follows Kathleen Goonans short story "Kamehameha's Bones" (Asimov's, September 1993).

But in that version, Cen never completes the task, or, never gets insane, as he probably does in the novel version.

Lynn lives a couple of decades later than Cen. She is the daughter of one of the most powerful men on Earth, the President of Interspace. She is also an expert on genetic engineering. When she finds out that Interspace, through illegal nanotechnology, develop humans especially designed for space travel, she resigns her job and leaves for Thailand, as she fears for her life. With her is Akamu, a youngster cloned from Kamehameha's bones, and with a genetically altered brain. Together they travel through Asia.

In the end they realise that they have been but small parts of a much greater whole. There is a global revolution happening, in which Lynn's father has a great part, and where Hawaiian separatists finally get their revenge. Together they leave earth hoping to find a new start somewhere else.

The Bones of Time has unfortunately the same "problem" as Queen City Jazz, with too many details and side-tracks. Another obvious problem, perhaps more in this book than in the debut, is that the main characters haven't got a clue to what is happening. When the end comes, it feels quite illogical.

Personally, I had preferred less details and more intellectual penetrations of fewer topics. This doesn't mean that I don't like the book(s), because I do. I think The Bones of Time is very well written, but, as I said, it would have gained much from a thinning out.

5. Interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan

Jonas Ahlberg: Can you tell us about yourself? (Image below taken from jacket cover of The Bones of Time.)

Kathleen Ann Goonan: I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1952. My father, a fire protection engineer, began working for the government in 1960, when we moved to Hawaii.

After about two years there, we moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where my parents still live.

As is true, I suppose, of most writers, I had a book in my hand from the time I learned to read.

I have a degree in literature, and A.M.I Montessori certification, which I got so that I could earn a living while writing during the summers.

However, I began a year-round school in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was very successful; we soon had a hundred students, many employees, and two locations. So things didn't calm down enough for me to really concentrate on writing until I was 33.

First I wrote an unpublished novel and then many short stories. My husband had a job offer in Hawaii, and he encouraged me to try writing full time, after having put it off for so long. We moved to Hawaii, and there I began writing full time, although during that year I sold only a travel article and a children's story.

I have missed teaching tremendously, but writing is a new challenge, and it is the career I planned to have, although I thought I would get around to it sooner than I did. Without my husband's encouragement, I might be teaching still. (note: She presently lives with her husband in Lakeland, Florida.)

JA: Both your books examine the consequences of nanotechnology. You seem to be very competent and I assume you did a lot of research, especially before writing Queen City Jazz?

KG: Thank you! I subscribe to many science magazines and enjoy them tremendously, after ignoring science most of my school career. Of course, I love reading, so a literature degree was a natural extension of that, but when I was growing up the school system did not encourage girls to pursue science or technical subjects. In fact, I took a year of mechanical drawing and a year of architectural drawing in high school, and my friend and I were the first girls ever to do so in that school.

The teacher did not want us in his class, and never missed an opportunity to tell the students that "Girls don't belong in mechanical drawing." We ignored him, did good work, and got good grades (luckily these are very precise subjects, so he couldn't pretend that we weren't good students), but I think that this unpleasant attitude has changed in the past few years. Certainly, it is illegal now!

Anyway, it seems to me that now there is a plethora of wonderful books about science, many of them written by scientists or mathematicians, on a lay-person's level. This is a fairly recent development. I am very excited about many different aspects of science now, and so I read quite broadly. Queen City Jazz merged three strong interests of mine: nanotechnology, pheromone communication systems, and the city of Cincinnati. I also read a lot about cities, Shakers, bees, jazz, and ragtime music.

Original watercolor by Kathleen Ann Goonan

JA: What I find trustworthy is your critical description: An invention, such as nanotechnology, that seem promising under certain conditions, can prove to be disastrous under other. There is nothing intrinsic in the technology itself that can prevent nanomachines to "plunge ahead on their own", as Mr Drexler puts it in one of his books. A technology is good or bad solely depending on how we use (or misuse) it, you seem to be saying?

KG: Although we are in charge of our destiny, that's not saying much. There is plenty of room for human mistakes and miscalculations.

JA: Drexler, and many others, then, have too much confidence in the theoretical assumptions about nanotechnology? But in your books completely new conditions, that the engineers couldn't imagine, have developed and the nanomachines have adopted beyond their theoretical limitations, causing new and utterly horrifying usages. Queen City Jazz shows us this view of the world. But what made this transformation possible? Was it the government's blind faith in the nanodevelopers assurances and expectations, which proved to be rather empty, lacking the necessary humbleness?

KG: As I read the scientific and social related literature of those involved in exploring and promoting nanotech, there seems to be a somewhat naive view that self-replication will be engineered so as to also be self-limiting. "Anything else would be irresponsible." Certainly - but there are many irresponsible people out there. I suppose that most scientists and engineers are among the most responsible people on the planet, and those most aware of possible ramifications of their research or their creations.

The "Mad Scientist" trope is useful in fiction, but in reality, painstaking technical education and training would likely drum any vestige of madness out of most people. But there are always those terrorists who would appropriate such things for their own ends, and they are certainly mad.

There is also the fact that many scientists work for large corporations which appropriate inventions and scientific advancements for their own profit, and in those instances irresponsible use of knowledge, developments, or inventions, whether from knowing exploitation (as in an admittedly almost out of range example, cigarette companies denying that smoking causes cancer), or ignorant irresponsibility is always possible.

JA: Does candour alone guarantee our safety? If money and prestige are the motivating forces (and especially if it is combined with a lack of openness), we seem unwilling to trust the authorities. A recent example is the destruction of chemical weapons in the U.S. The government says it's completely safe, but the public thinks otherwise, even though some agree with the calculations! This is, therefore, a political standpoint. Do you agree?

KG: Any organization of two or more, from a small business with one employee on up to international levels, invokes the survival-oriented "us-and-them" reflex in the human brain. Pure altruism is non-existent, or so rare that when it occurs it is widely celebrated, vis-a-vis Mother Teresa. This is simply a basic human fact.

Governments can actually do good in this regard - we have many warnings and labels which warn users of obvious and not-so-obvious dangers. Sometimes, the warnings are mandated by the government; other times, they are put there in self-defense by the producers of the products. But it is also easy to come up with many examples of deadly government secrecy, as in the early nuclear tests which gave thousands of innocent and unsuspecting people cancer.

The web of human interaction is extremely complex, and there is a lot of leeway for negative things - like wars, or the selling of deadly weapons on the black market (only responsible entities, like governments, should have them, right?) - to occur, despite good intentions and vast multitudes of nice people.

From what I understand of insiders and also from his books, Drexler is quite concerned about the possible dangers of nanotechnology, and the Foresight Institute actively strives to educate the public about the possibilities, positive and negative, of nanotechnology. As a fiction writer, I naturally wanted to examine negative possibilities.

JA: In Queen City Jazz nature acclimatizes, but in its own unpredictable ways. Those who survive have accepted this transformation. But accepting isn't easy as it devastates their humanity! The Shakers haven't come to terms with nan, they try to escape, and comes to grief. Verity accepts, but changes gradually to something inhuman.

As a reader I find the transformation disturbing. I want to keep my personality intact, my values and norms (or at least the possibility of having them) and my human perceptions. If these are lost I no longer feel at ease. Queen City Jazz forces this conflict on me and I like that a lot! It proves that I am egocentric and that I cannot hope for mercy in nature. I guess, and this is only a faint guess, that this feeling by some is regarded as very bad, and these people are those who try to conquer everything from their own kitchen garden, to the nearest planets and stars.

("Humanity" isn't a crystal-clear concept; it has an open texture. This may be the reason why religious, mostly Christian, philosophies are so concerned with defining human nature, as above "ordinary" nature.) Some find, instead, in this emptiness, hope, as Verity eventually does. But in the end, as she is no longer completely human, it perhaps isn't hope she feels. Instinctly I feel that she can't be as human as I am...

KG: It is interesting that you bring up the point of the idea of "humanity" having an open texture. I was just interviewed for a Japanese publication, and one of the comments the interviewer made was that Americans seem to be more concerned with "boundaries", as related to our own psyche and body, than Japanese. He too thought this was derived from a Christian mind-set.

Verity tries to bring hope to the people in Cincinnati, but you are right - she is not quite human at the end of the book. But she is not non-human enough to not have emotions.

JA: In Bones of Time the political point is even more stressed, as I see it. Interspace uses humans as guinea pigs, without feeling responsibility or guilt for the consequences. And who is to stop them? Nobody, it seems at first. But the problem with uncontrolled nanomachines is no longer urgent and it seems to me that you have abandoned it completely. Why?

KG: Actually, Bones of Time takes place much earlier in the nanotech development continuum than Queen City Jazz. I even debated taking nanotechnology out, because it seemed that I might be able to get the same effect without dragging in all sorts of nanotech issues.

Bones of Time was basically meant to be an exploration of the nature of time, and I'm sure that I read every book available in the past five or six years on that subject, from every conceivable angle. It was necessary to have an "evil organization", or at least one in which people who were unconcerned about others could flourish.

But keep in mind that the nanotech experimentation and other negative goals were pursued in secret by greedy factions within the organization. And though there is a human clone, basically, a human clone is just another human, and this person, Akamu, chooses to become "transhuman" - a far cry from the general experience in Queen City Jazz.

JA: In Bones of Time man is in control over humanity and every change has only limited consequences. But the limitation is neither made by the government nor inherent in the nanotechnology itself, but carried out instead by hawaiian separatists. They are the worlds conscience. I must say I was very disappointed by this and it comes quite illogically. Why are you so sentimental and romantic about the separatists in particular and science in general in Bones of Time?

KG: I'm not sure that limited nanotech, as in Bones of Time, will actually be possible. But for the purposes of this book, it seemed more realistic and more in synch with what I was trying to do. The wild and exhilirating extravaganza of Queen City Jazz does take place a bit farther down the line, so there has been time for things to become seriously misshappen.

Identity is much more a concern in the second book in the Queen City Jazz cycle, Mississippi Blues, which I have just finished. In Bones of Time, identity is more or less intact and much less malleable than in Queen City Jazz - that's just the world we're in, a world almost identical to our own.

I don't see the Hawaiians in Bones of Time as separatists, actually, but inclusionists. They have included like-minded scientists from all over the world in their venture, via their international web. I suppose that I am sentimental and romantic about all displaced indigenous peoples whose land has been stolen from foreigners.

When the Americans came and saw that they could make a lot of money growing sugar, the took over the country by force, toppling a very functional government and making the Hawaiians second-class citizens in their own land. In one sense, Bones of Time was a fictional attempt to set things right. Hawaiians didn't become separatists in their own land by choice - they were forced into that position by being shunned by society and denied education and jobs. Of course, not all Hawaiians are radicals.

But this movement is presently quite active in Hawaii. Some Hawaiians have stopped being merely romantic and sentimental and have become quite practical, using the courts to regain portions of land which are now quite valuable.

In Bones of Time they have gone one step further, by claiming that the knowledge gained by Interspace under the guise of human advancement, but actually used for secret private enrichment, is the property of all people, not just Interspace or themselves. The book has quite a different slant than Queen City Jazz in that technology is not out of control - that wasn't the point of the book to begin with. And remember, the climax of Bones of Time is anti-nationalistic - the starship is taken over by an international organization which draws its members pan-nationally for their skills and knowledge, not for their national affiliation.

JA: In both books I also think you try to squeeze in too many details and too many ideas. Read in large doses both novels can feel contrived, or perhaps tedious or circumstantial, despite good writing. Among the Swedish readers the opinion sometimes is that your ideas are brilliant, but the accomplishment sometimes leaves a great deal to be desired. It's really a pity, because so far I've liked your short stories a lot.

KG: I suppose it's true that I try to include a lot of ideas in my books. But there is so much happening in science! And besides that, I am constantly attempting to improve my writing on every possible level, so I hope that is evident as I progress as a writer.

I haven't written many short stories at all lately, but three that I wrote between the two books are available. One is "Sunflowers," another is "Solitaire" which will be online at the Omni site starting in September, and "The Day the Dam Broke" was part of the Omni Online novella series and I believe that it is still available. I'd say that these stories represent my most recent ideas and writing.

Bones of Time was conceived several years earlier than Queen City Jazz, and though I finished it after Queen City Jazz, a lot of the actual writing was done earlier. Still, I am happy with the book. I think that I did what I set out to do.

JA: The principal characters in your novels are younger women, fairly unexperienced and about to discover themselves. Do you think it is easier to write about them, than it is to have charcters in your own age? Or why did you choose them?

KG: When I began writing what became Bones of Time, I was roughly Lynn's age, thirtyfive. So she seemed like a contemporary of mine, with concerns similar to those women that I new. Making a conscious decision about whether or not to have children, how to make socially responsible choices in the use of one's education and experience - these are issues that many women of that age have, at least in the United States, where childbearing may have been put off until one's education is complete.

Lynn is certainly wealthier than most women, but she finds herself faced with the same kinds of decisions in a society pretty similar to ours today. She is wordly, highly educated, and very much aware of what is going on in all kinds of areas.

Verity, on the other hand, is in her teens in Queen City Jazz. She lives in a radically structured insular society in a world with little connective tissue, where people are hiding from information gone wild. She is much more a paradigm of a coming-of-age myth, in which youths leave their families and become aware of themselves as individuals.

I wanted the reader to learn about nanotechnology through the eyes of Verity, who knows very little at the beginning of the book other than it is something to be avoided. I wanted a young person taking the first steps towards growing up, just as the world must grow up in order to use nanotechnology wisely. Kaiulani, however, more or less chose me.

She is a real, historical character who lived and died more or less as I told it in Bones of Time. Even the opening scene, where her dying mother prophesies that Kaiulani will never marry, will never be Queen, and will die young, is in the history books - though that doesn't necessarily mean that it really happened!

The only things which are not real in her depiction are her meetings with a man from the future (Cen) and, possibly, her pregnancy. However, I met several people who were in a position to know the facts (I specifically went back to do research while writing the book) who pretty much confirm the idea that she was pregnant and died soon after childbirth. In fact, I met a Hawaiian who claimed to know the wife of her son, who is dead. In a sense, most good literature is about people "discovering themselves," at any age.

JA: What I find noteworthy is that there are no older people in the center of the narratives. Two men, Sphere and Hawkins (perhaps also Durancy and Lynn's father?), play minor rules, but it seems that their conceptions of the world are unfamiliar for Verity and Lynn, that they become extraneous. In fact, only the women communicate how they feel and what they need. The boys, Blaze and Cen, mostly misunderstand or are uninterested. Do you think this as a fact, that girls and women think differently than boys and men?

KG: Because Verity and Lynn are the point-of-view characters, the reader is necessarily more aware of their filtering of experience than any of the others. Although I think it's bad form to disagree with how people perceive your book - after all, the work is done, and it is out in the world now - I have had many people, in reviews and as individuals, tell me that they really identified with the character of Cen. Cen suffered a horrific and emotionally crippling episode in his early years, and so is not in touch with parts of himself until he is able to recall what happened.

Blaze, of course, is pretty much out of it during most of Queen City Jazz. However, in Mississippi Blues, he is a viewpoint character, and I hope that readers will be empathic with his reactions to awakening in a world radically different from the one he left, and follow with interest his efforts to understand what has happened to himself and the world.

Do I think that girls and women think differently from boys and men? Of course, this question has felled forests to enable the publication of mountains of opinions and information. When I first began teaching, I was determined to avoid stereotyping my students. In Montessori, one has no "doll corner" as is typical in nursery schools, so the spatial materials such as blocks did not become an exclusive male domain while the girls pretended to cook and take care of babies - all materials were used equally by girls and boys.

I allowed no toys at school, so we did not have little cars and dolls (though it seems to me that boys were pretty attached to their dolls, in the form of action toys from TV, and liked to smuggle them in in their lunch boxes). In addition, I had many girls who excelled in math, and many boys who excelled in reading.

Montessori believed, and there has been much evidence to prove this lately, that the formation of brain structure is directly related to what children are doing, physically, and experiencing, emotionally, during crucial periods. It is obviosly impossible to separate children from the prejudices of the societies in which they live - it is one of their developmental jobs to absorb those prejudices quickly and seamlessly, though of course it is the job of the teenager to question them.

So I'm not sure if we will ever have the means to figure this out. However, it is a fact that there are obvious and subtle physical differences between women and men. Though I don't think that these are great enough to make each a different species, in that we all have the capacity to learn languages, math, and to generate an emotional repertoire, hormones have many influences which we simply do not understand in their full implications as of yet.

I once took a short story to a writer's group. The main characters consisted of a grandmother (a medical doctor), her grandson, and an offstage mother who had gone to Mars. One of the men in the group objected to the story on the grounds that there were no men in the picture, and I found this quite amusing. How many books, stories, and movies have I experienced in which women were peripheral figures with no depth?

Queen City Jazz was not about Blaze, Sphere, Russ, or John. It was about Verity. I've written many short works from the point of view of men and boys ("Kamehameha's Bones," the novella from which Bones of Time grew; "The String," "Sunflowers," "Klein Time," "Revelation Station," "Solitaire"). I hope that these depictions are as realistic-seeming as my stories in which women are the main characters. Emotional realism in characters - men, women, young, old, of whatever race or situation - is a quality whichI seek constantly to improve.

JA: I still find it very sad that the characters aren't able to understand each other in trying conditions!

KG: Of course it is sad that the characters aren't able to understand each other - this is the root of all literature! Don't you think that it is sentimental and romantic of you to want them to? Actually, this is something others have mentioned as well, but if everyone understood one another there would be very little drama. And, as a practical matter, people just don't. Even Verity didn't understand herself at the beginning of Queen City Jazz, and when she learned more about herself, she was angry and horrified. In Mississippi Blues, Blaze and Verity try and come to grips with these changes, but, being human (or, in Verity's case, human-plus), it is just as difficult for them as it is for all of us.

JA: What influences, both male and female, do you have?

KG: : My father is an engineer, hence practical and technologically adept, a resource I depend on heavily. He knows everything there is to know about jazz, and has a dazzlingly wide vocabulary. My mother was in the Civil Air Patrol during World War II and flew a small plane locally, in Michigan. She is a very good artist, is extremely creative, and nurtured my artistid leanings. Both parents always made sure I had all the books I wanted.

JA: What is your next book about?

KG: I am presently finishing Mississippi Blues, in which the freed Cincinnatians go down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on rafts and in a riverboat. In this book, information about the past surfaces, about what happened in the United States during the nanotech revolution and during the Information Wars. Blaze and Verity must come to terms with the vast changes they have been through. In the next book, Crescent City Rhapsody, we will learn what happened internationally, and find out the new directions humanity will take.

JA: Thank you very much for you time and good luck in the future!

6. Review of Mississippi Blues

Mississippi Blues (TOR, 1997) is the sequel to Queen City Jazz, and takes place only a short while after Cincinnati has been freed.

Much of Queen City Jazz is about Verity's breaking-up from the Shaker community, how she finally travels to the enlivened Cincinnati, and how she becomes a Bee-Queen. I must admit that I didn't understand much of the final chapters, but in Mississippi Blues, Kathleen Goonan gives much more information: we get to know a lot more about Bees and why they exist.

Here's the story: In a not-so-far future, humans create self-repairing infrastructure. This is possible because of nanotechnological developments; small molecular machines built into every system, building, etc. They also develop swifter and more secure means of communication with pheromones. Pheromones are chemical substances secreted by insects and other organisms, to produce responses in other beings, especially sexual attraction.

Many humans in Kathleen Goonan's future have modified their bodies to be able to send and receive pheromonal messenges, and they use the buildings for this:

"Their modified bodies framed queries translated into metapheromones by receptors in their hands. Those metapheromones were a precise language, and the questions were translated by the membrane of the interstice; that information met the DNA of the e.coli within. The DNA formed an unimaginably vast storage system (...) an infinity beyond clumsy oldfashioned virtual reality."

The buildings have so called interstices, that run from the ground to the top, where they end in a flowerlike entity, in which different pheromones - now called metapheromones - are collected. These substances are then distributed by giant Bees to other enlivened Cities.

(I get the impression that the Bees resemble bumble-bees, and some of them look more like wasps.) The Bees have "implanted human limbic tissue" we are told, which give them an "emotional imperative to deal  in human information."

Image scanned from the jacket cover of Goonan's Mississippi Blues, hardcover version.

Of course, something go very wrong. Terrorists suddenly have the perfect means to destroy information, by manipulating with the metapheromones - or by creating small nanomachines that rebuild people's minds. (Kathleen Goonan reveals the American fear of terrorists! And perhaps "clumsy oldfashioned virtual reality" wasn't so clumsy and oldfashioned after all...)

We hear about The Information Wars, a time when nanosabotage and defense systems are secretely developed and released, which leads to a total, national - probably global (we will se in the next book) - collapse. Nanoplagues rage the country, changing not only peoples minds, but sometimes also heir neural patterns and other structures in their brains:

"Plagues of thought - viruslike, airborne informational nan - released during the Information Wars were so compelling that those unwillingto be drawn into the strangeness could only isolate themselves and hope for favourable winds."

This is the hard sf-theme in both books and I find it very intruiging. The ethical problems with such powerful technologies are showed in the books, as when people suddenly get struck by a nanovirus, and changes personality in an instance without realizing it. This is a bad experience for all of those who want to continue to be what they are.

But since they can't be sure if they are the same or if they just changed, they either have to accept the facts, or go insane. Both alternatives are exemplified in the narratives. And people in general seem to have accepted the circumstances. They even accept when others change personalities haphazardly as well.

But must these new conditions be bad? In Mississippi Blues the plague which gives everybody infected an irresistible urge to travel to New Orleans (it is called "the Norleans plague") also gives them something to believe in and be happy about: that salvation will be found once they reach Norleans. Isn't that something good? In Mississippi Blues this argument is actually given, by the persons who have not only accepted the plague, but welcome it as well. For them it is better to believe in something that has a bad cause - and obviously is false - than not to believe at all.

But Kathleen Goonan lets these false beliefs come out true. The Norleans plague was constructed by a person, who really wanted everyone to  travel to Norleans, the new New Orleans. So, in the end, everybody gets saved and no one is fooled, except perhaps a reader, as myself, who really enjoyed the thought that the plague really made people absolutely delirious... In fact, the Norleans plague that have haunted the group for months, is quite easy to cure, once they reach their destination -  and this is mentioned in a subordinate clause. A very peculiar way to satisfy the reader's imagination and expectations!

Kathleen Goonan is for me a very competent innovator, with great imagination and an eye for new and interesting subjects. But she sometimes lacks the skill to render the sense of wonder she feels in words. Either she gives too much informtion that takes away the magic, or she changes the presumptions she has once given. So, both Queen City Jazz and Mississippi Blues are very interesting thematically, but I think they could have been better narrated...

...or, perhaps, better read by myself. Then I wouldn't have believed that everyone was going to be utterly unhuman, and wouldn't have been disappointed.

I haven't said much about the plot, but I can't. Verity and her companions travel downriver throughout the book, and a lot of things happen. Some of these things explain the state the States are in. Others present the consequences of nan. But the main task is to reach Norleans before... well, you'll have to read this by yourself. If I told too much the surprises wouldn't be surprising, would they? As I said, I very much liked the middle of the book. Here's one example of how deluded Verity's swarm is: when they reach a place called Cairo, they start to chant in chorus:

"Caimaneero, down to Cairo
Caimaneero, Cairo
Straddleabbleaddle baba ladababa linktum linktum body mitchie cambo"

Who can belive that these people ever will be cured? And who want them to?!

I have one more things to say: I think Kathleen Goonan is wrong when she states that certain patterns in the brain correspond to specific beliefs or thought-pictures. In Mississippi Blues she describes how a drug or virus can inflict a certain kind of belief. She then not only says that the drug creates a specific neural pattern and that this pattern correspond to the wanted belief. But she also says that this state is the same for all people, as they get the same belief. You have the Norleans plague as an example, but there are others.

There are those who really believe that brainstructure and thoughts are corresponding, and that we one day will be able to see what a person thinks just by looking at how the neurons are connected in his or her brain. Many American scientists are among those who try to prove this thesis (and they have perhaps inspired Kathleen Goonan).

I don't share this belief, as I think - and definitely hope - that the brain is much too complex and individual than that. And if you think about it from another point of view: how can someone believe that salvation is in Norleans, if this person doesn't know the meaning of the word "salvation" nor has a clue to what or where "Norleans" is. Is it the drug or virus that, somehow, create this knowledge? Well, if we answer yes to this we inevitably run into an enormous amount of mayor philosophical problems!

7. Bibliography and links

I got this this list from Kathlen Goonan when I made the interview. For an updated list please visit Kathleen Goonan's homepage (link below).

Novels
Queen City Jazz (TOR, October 1994)
The Bones of Time (TOR, February 1996)
Mississippi Blues (TOR, September 1997)
Crescent City Rhapsody (Avon, 2000)

Novellas
Kamehameha's Bones (Asimov's, September 1993)

The Day the Dam Broke (Omni Online, 1995)

Short stories
The Snail Man (Strange Plasma nr 4, 1990)
Wanting to talk to you (Asimov's, January 1991)
For a Future You (Amazing, vol. LXVI, nr 11)
Private Gravity (poem in Asimov's, 1992)
Daydots, Inc. (Interzone, March 1992)
The Parrot Man (Asimov's, March 1993)
When the Grace Note of the Cities Changed (Tomorrow nr 3, 1993)
Shark Eye (Asimov's, December 1993)
Whiteness (Strange Plasma nr 6)
Revelation Station (Strange Plasma nr 7, 1994)
Susannah's Snowbears (Blue Motel, Narrow Houses III, 1994)
Lullaby of Birdland (Destination Unknown, White Wolf Press, January 1997)
Sunflowers (Interzone, April 1995)
The Butterfly Effect (Tombs, White Wolf Press, June 1995)
The String (F&SF, Summer 1995)
The Bride of Elvis (Science Fiction Age nr 4, April 1996)
Solitaire (Omni Internet Fiction-debute, Sept. 1996)
Klein Time (Century nr 4, 1996)
Advance Notice (Asimov's nr 3, 1996)

Featured articles and links
Kathleen Goonan's Homepage: www.goonan.com
Locus Magazine: www.locusmag.com/2001/Issue06/Goonan.html
Omni: www.locusmag.com/2000/Issues/01/Profile.html

A World Altered by Nanotechnology. An interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan: www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/18179/ref%3Ded%5Fart%5F135796%5Ftxt%5F1/026-0811673-4594809

Interview with Kathleen Ann Goonan by Kate Sisson: frankenstein.lcc.gatech.edu/GoonanInterview.html

Additional links
Asimov's Science Fiction: www.asimovs.com
Bantam Spectra: www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/spectra.html
FantastiFiction: www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Kathleen_Ann_Goonan.htm
HarperCollins.com: www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/ product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0380803518
The Edge: www.members.tripod.com/~Maureen_McQ
TOR: www.tor.com/tor.html