Hello!

This week I’ve been wowed by Greensmith by Aliya Whiteley and the strange cosmic journey it takes on. Aliya kindly agreed to answer a few question on the book, science fiction and her other future work

So how would you book-tempt someone into reading Greensmith?

Whenever I try to explain one of my plots to somebody they get a concerned look in their eyes. The cover is magnificent though, so I’d recommend starting there, and then deciding whether you want to read about plants and planets, and trying to save the world armed only with a piece of alien technology you don’t really understand, and some orange string.

In the novel obsession seems to follow a lot of the central characters such as Hort, The Rampion and Penelope who all seem to deal with theirs in different ways. What led to that choice?

I was really thinking about the desire to categorise our experiences, memories and stories with recognisable labels, so those characters are all involved in that process, in one way or another. It ties into the way we like to comprehend life, to imagine we understand it through the filters we apply – to say, ‘Wow, this holiday is just like the time we went to –“ Except Penelope’s holiday through the universe can’t really be like any of those times. It’s a completely different kind of experience. How do we make sense of the new on that scale? The obsession is to make sense of everything, somehow. I suspect lots of us are trying to do that.

Penelope was a refreshing older character in SF – did you want to try a different kind of lead character?

Thanks. I’ve written older characters before – for instance, there was a novella called Brushwork that got published online by Giganotosaurus a while back, and it’ll be reprinted in my short story collection that’s coming from Titan next year. That features a main character who’s older again. And I’ve written younger, too, and really enjoyed the challenges of that, like Shirley in The Arrival of Missives. I just like exploring, really. So it’s not new for me, but I do really love Penelope, and am always keen to write about lots of different experiences and how age affects the way we view them. She’s closer to my own age, so I felt a bit of kinship with her.

2020 has been an interesting year for discussing the end of the world – what’s struck you as the difference between reality and fictional reactions to potential apocalypses?

I think that relates back to the earlier question about obsession. We’re all trying to find events that these experiences are like and maybe some of our references are fictional, which probably isn’t very helpful overall as they tend to ramp up the drama! I find it quite hard to decide, within myself, what reaction I’m having belongs to the real world and what belongs to my favourite post-apocalyptic fiction. The desire to throw everything in the car and run away – putting that one down to fiction…

I was struck by the strangely familiar mysterious traveller in space and time known only as The Horticulturist – what inspired your take on this travelling companion for Penelope?

Because everything in life is about the act of categorising the unrecognisable based on past experiences, the book itself is a deliberate collection of things that initially feel familiar to SF readers and then become something else again. There are loads to spot. I was really pleased to get the opportunity to pour a little bit of my love for the idea of the friendly alien who wants a companion on their travels into Hort, and then to leap off in a totally different direction. So, for me, it’s about using the assumptions we make about characters like Doctor Who, (which I love and which has already brilliantly asked some of the questions I ask in this book within its own universe), as a cultural reference point which many SF fans share to frame an experience, and then move on from there. And it does move pretty far from there.

Your stories often seem to cross boundaries of natural and human worlds; what fascinates you about that crossover?

I don’t know! It’s definitely been a rich area for me. Maybe it’s something to do with loving Day of the Triffids so much. But I do feel as if I’m moving out of that phase now, so I’ll have to wait and see what comes next.

Do you have anything else coming out soon and where can we find out more?

There’s a new mini collection of short stories inspired by monsters that scared me when I was younger – that’s called Fearsome Creatures and it’s published by Black Shuck books. Also there’s a non-fiction book on fungi called The Secret Life of Fungi, and that should be available shortly from Elliott & Thompson. It’s going to be a busy October! Everything got a bit bunched up with delays over the summer, and Greensmith should have been a spring book really, but it’s quite good to think of it out now, in autumn, as a reflection of all the flowers we’re about to lose for another year.

If you could get everyone to read one book (not your own) what would it be?

That’s really difficult. It’s not the same thing as a favourite book at all, is it? I’m not just going to chuck triffids at people. I think, in keeping with Greensmith, it would have to be the right book at the right time, to become a formative experience, and in that vein I’ll go for The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr Seuss, to be read when you’re still young as a really early experience of that traveller from another place who comes along and offers solutions that don’t quite work out as planned. Plus that book has one of my absolute favourite stories – ‘What Was I Scared Of?’ which is a wonderful introduction to horror. Those pale green pants still haunt me, but, you know, it’s fine really. All those things we’re really scared of – just a bunch of empty pants. I hope.