Hellloooo!!

I recently enjoyed the excellent short fiction collection Elephants in Bloom by Cecile Cristofari it has a vast array of stories jumping from SF to Fantasy with a touch of horror and more along the way. Lots of interesting settings, characters and ideas that will make you think well after finishing the book. I was very lucky to have the chance to ask Cecile some questions on the collection and more.

How would you usually tempt people to read Elephants in Bloom?

I put up a little poster at work that reads ‘For those who want science fiction to take them to the stars, and then bring them back to Earth’. Because I do write about the Earth, and what humans are doing with it, and what we can hope to become even when there’s no hope left. My stories hop between genres, past, present and future, comedy and tragedy, but ultimately, this collection is about searching for shreds of hope and holding on tight. If this sounds like what you need right now, come take a look!

Many of the stories in the collection always have a natural focus even when we go to deep space. How important is nature in your work?

Short answer: very! The longer answer is that nature has always been important to me, but then writing about it has been a conscious effort. Western culture tends to value cities far more than nature (just look at the etymology of the word ‘civilised’!). Most Western classics either ignore nature altogether, only use it as a backdrop, or show humans dominating it; so it took me quite a bit of time, and looking at other models (such as Japanese literature) to figure out how to give nature the place it deserved in my stories. I wanted to acknowledge environmental destruction, but not write solely about it, because it’s all too easy to look at nature only when it’s disappearing.

If I could achieve one thing as an author, that would be to get people to lift their eyes from the page when they’re reading my stories, and actively realise that the air smells of trees. Or that the wind feels drier than the day before, or that there’s more light in the sky, or that they’re hearing toads sing somewhere. And to feel how precious it is.

Your collection gives many of the inspirations for your story that can range from a song to a family history. Do these stories just jump into the mind on a prompt; or do you find them simmering away in the back of your mind?

There’s a lot of simmering involved! I get those moments (like everybody else, I suspect) when I see or read something interesting and think, ‘Oh, that would make a good story’. But by now I know it usually won’t, not on its own. I need time to understand exactly why an idea could be relevant, not just cool; and I need time to understand how to write about things that matter to me in a way that can also be meaningful to others. When I get an idea, I prefer to take my time with it, combine it with others I had set aside, explore what other ideas or theme could give it texture and momentum. Very often, the initial ‘idea’ for the story gets discarded in the process.

What for you is the joy of writing a short story?

For me, it’s about having a precise, layered picture in my mind, complete with sounds and smells and tastes and feelings, and then reproducing it as exactly as I can with just a linear sequence of words, playing with voice and meaning and flow. It’s incredibly satisfying when I can make that happen.

What is the fresh science fiction and fantasy scene like? Any authors you would recommend we keep our eyes peeled for?

I love reading short stories right now. The English-language publishing world is growing much more open, in particular to stories from outside the Anglo sphere and translated stories, which was long overdue; not only that, but where I often feel that novels can be heavily codified, the short fiction scene is rife with works that feel amazingly free, daring and unpredictable, whether you’re looking at craft or ideas. I also love that more and more venues focus on environmental SFF, like Reckoning (whose editorial team I contribute to), Solarpunk Magazine or Little Blue Marble.

Recommendation-wise, I’d read anything by Christi Nogle or Oyedotun Damilola Muees, but it’s very easy to stumble upon hidden gems when browsing magazines. Some recent short story crushes include ‘There is Something to be Said about Wifeoma’ by Kasimma (Interzone Digital, https://interzone.digital/there-is-something-to-be-said-about-wifeoma/), a story that weaves stunning language with such intelligent plotting and world-building; ‘Without Lungs or Limbs to Stay’ by Shauna O’Meara (Interzone, https://shop.ttapress.com/collections/ebooks/products/interzone-290-291-double-issue-ebook), an extremely dark, but poignant take on the theme of generational ships and the power dynamics they imply; and ‘The Sound of Children Screaming’ by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sound-of-children-screaming/), a story about a school shooting, which makes a strong political point while centring the perspective of the children with extraordinary compassion.

What was the hardest story to write?

‘Wind, River, Angel Song’ was a very difficult one. My daughter was born in 2021, while there was still a lot of uncertainty about how the covid pandemic would evolve, and a couple of months after her birth, I somehow thought it would be a good idea to write a pandemic story about a mother and a daughter finding out that they are both infected with a slow but inescapable disease… I am pleased with how it turned out, but the feelings that churned while writing it, the very real story hiding in plain sight about having children while not knowing if humans have a future at all, were not easy to handle.

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

I have stories out in Interzone #297 and the January issue of Clarkesworld. I’m working on half a dozen other projects, but I’ll post more on my website when I have something more concrete!

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

Can I cheat? Because my first recommendation would be for people who read French, and also it’s not fiction. Nicolas Legendre’s recently-released book Silence dans les champs is a terrifying, but absolutely necessary indictment of the agro-industrial complex, that addresses environmental and social damage both. I would urge anyone who can read French to read it (and everyone else to read a little about how industrial food production works!).

For fiction, though, one book I strongly recommend is The Last of the Just, by André Schwartz-Bart. It’ beautifully written, but above all, it’s a nuanced look at absolute compassion as radical resistance, a perspective that I find increasingly valuable in these polarised times. Because as much as I dislike to admit it, even the most virtuous ideology can, in the wrong hands, turn into a violent disaster. There cannot be ideals if there is no compassion.