Interviewing Stephen Cox

Helloooo!!

I recently concluded reviewing the duology that covers Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds both by the excellent Stephen Cox. This is a really good surprising duet of SF tales that also manages to go back in time and re-write the future of the Earth without warning (I applauded when I saw what one little page about a man with a broken leg meant)! Highly recommended if you enjoy warm and intelligent science fiction. I’ve been lucky to ask Stephen some questions for the blog

How do you like to booktempt Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds?

·       Opening in the year of Woodstock and the moon landings, a childless couple rescue Cory, a boy from the stars, sole survivor of a disaster in space. In the first book, to keep him safe they must keep him a secret. In the second, the whole world knows.

·       It’s the joyous, scary, heartfelt story of a new family – and a world changing moment in history. I hope it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you think, and sends you on your way with a song.

·       A story of love and decency, largely told by a passionate nurse forced unexpectedly into motherhood.

·       Woo-hoo big SF ideas! Questions on how we should treat each other and our world… And what it might be like if aliens came.

What drew you to the time and place for this story?

I had a lot of fun with this. From the moment the first scene came to me I knew it was a small town in North-Eastern USA and sometime in the later Sixties. It was a time when people were rethinking old certainties – Molly is one of the women finding a new way in society - but also a time of greed and aggression. The music of Woodstock – in fact the socially engaged folk music Gene and Molly are immersed in. The horror of nuclear standoff and Vietnam. The struggles over race and gender and war and economics which look like madness to Cory and his people. Humanity (literally) reaching for the moon at a time my small alien boy fell to earth…

And ordinary farmers and barkeeps and librarians going about their business with the chance to be noble or squalid or averagely human.

If felt strong as it was - it would have just been different if set in Somerset.

What drew you towards changing the course of human history in your novel?

I like alt history and I like how things are contingent. My partner and I met because she was stood up for her birthday and picked a social group at random from Time Out, on a day I was there, only because I was on rota to do welcoming.

Intellectual movements, technical developments, natural changes all matter but so do individual choices.

Aliens coming is a Big Deal, even just one of them. They can get here, they are real, they engage with our worldview. What do we do about it – particularly in the second book, where their cultural influence and relevance is massively debated?

Aliens had to matter, and them coming would be messier than it is usually shown. Books work both at the broad sweep and the telling detail… There’s a country and western song about them on the radio when my villain is in a bar. People try to use Cory to sell tuna.

What for you was the attraction writing the alien view of humanity?

Cory is childhood empathy and innocence on steroids. He was just a massively wonderful kid to write.

The wide-eyed naïve observer pointing out our human follies is an old trope but still lovely. Cory’s people have a credible culture without war or prejudice or poverty or pollution or eating animals. Violence between them is rare and seen as a treatable illness. His people needed to be different from humans (and diverse too, and we learn, undergoing dramatic unwelcome change.)

A throwaway line in the first draft ‘Cory came into his parents’ dreams’ turned into something important, something which makes the aliens’ half-utopia work, and manage difficult change. I hesitate to offer up a utopia for humans.

Obviously, a story should be a story first and the issues flagged up through the progression of the story. On some fronts we’re in retreat from achievements from in the 60s onwards and that matters.  There is only one inhabitable planet my children’s children could live on and we’ve set it on fire. On the other I needed the boundaries between decent characters and the rest to be simpler than ‘agrees with me = good’.

The books dare to be optimistic – I am not naturally an optimist, but we need to cultivate it a bit to survive.

Although a duology you have a different tone in each book. How deliberate was this choice and was it always how you saw the books developing?

I’m interested you say that. On reflection, the books are two halves of the same story, but I would not say they are one book cut in two.

I saw roughly where the story I wanted would end, and the first book ended up being the first half of it. There is a difficulty with sequels – to get the same level of wow you need to deliver chiming with what people loved but also something better than ‘more of the same’. 

The stakes for the family and the world are higher. The world is in a different place. The characters have been through a lot – Gene and Molly deal with the lifechanging matter of a new baby and having the most famous son in the world. Cory is older and more frustrated with humans being impossible. It’s a disaster if Cory’s people don’t turn up and far from clear what it would mean if they did.

A flippant answer might be, the first draft of the first chapter of the first book was written later 2013 and the second book was started properly in 2019. But my thinking is that any tonal difference is down to it being later in the story and facing different challenges.

You manage to show the characters’ strengths in the first book can also be weaknesses eg Gene’s desire to see the world - what made you decide to show this other side to characters we had got to love?

For most of the first book, Molly and Gene are a pretty good team and by and large they’re pretty admirable. A second book without change in that central relationship felt rather same-y. (This isn’t theoretical, it was one issue with my first draft of Two Worlds.) Most successful sequels need to challenge or invert some certainties to keep it fresh – and there are different and valid, emotional and practical responses to the situation they are in. They have a new baby, they have a crisis in Molly’s family to deal with, Gene can’t do his old job in the library… and they hate being under the spotlight. And that is before the brown stuff hits the rotating thing.

What can we look forward from you in the future and where can we find out more?

I’m currently working on two projects – one of which is a late Victorian fantasy-ish romp set in England and the other is sweet and fun SF but not in the Coryverse. I welcome questions and queries.

I have a twitter @stephenwhq, a FB author page @stephencoxauthor and an occasional Insta @stephencoxauthor. Most important – My website www.stephencox.co.uk and newsletter www.tinyletter.com/Stephen_cox  Free fiction including a Cory story! Advance notice – special content - Zoom discussions. My writer services.

If there was one book, not your own and you could get everyone to read what would it be and why?

If there’s a focused, clear and optimistic book which explained

·       why the damage of climate change and eco-catastrophe is provable and real

·       why solving it is vastly cheaper than not

·       if we do it right we might find ourselves in a better world too

·       how it needs collective action more than individual shopping choices

·       who benefits from us not solving it and why (£££)

 Yes, I would like everyone to read that.