Rich Lawson, author of Annex and Cypher, writes invasion narratives in response to today's media environment, drug-induced hallucinations, and as a cathartic exercise since his family has personally borne the experience of invasion.
A singularly powerful aspect of Annex is that the aliens, though murderous, endow humans with powerful bio/psychic internal power qua weaponry. The weaponization of encountering the other is provocative. Rich's characters draw from power in their gut, the very place that we often use to describe our dislike of people and things: for example, "I had a gut feeling" or "I knew in my gut." With this gut power, Rich's characters can temporarily alter reality, creating holes in solid structures. The metaphoric work describes the disruptions in societies as a result of racism. Hate for the other sees through culture, art, and tradition, it masks reality with a fantasy of hate, a fantasy that insists that a people group are worth nothing, are nothing.
Lawson has published dozens of short stories, beginning in 2011. He was born in Niger and now lives in Ottawa, Canada.
A singularly powerful aspect of Annex is that the aliens, though murderous, endow humans with powerful bio/psychic internal power qua weaponry. The weaponization of encountering the other is provocative. Rich's characters draw from power in their gut, the very place that we often use to describe our dislike of people and things: for example, "I had a gut feeling" or "I knew in my gut." With this gut power, Rich's characters can temporarily alter reality, creating holes in solid structures. The metaphoric work describes the disruptions in societies as a result of racism. Hate for the other sees through culture, art, and tradition, it masks reality with a fantasy of hate, a fantasy that insists that a people group are worth nothing, are nothing.
Lawson has published dozens of short stories, beginning in 2011. He was born in Niger and now lives in Ottawa, Canada.
RT: Your writing and the worlds your characters inhabit all feel very planned out. Is that an accurate reflection of your process? I also wonder what comes first for you in the creation process--the action or the themes.
RL: My successful projects usually have some kind of vague ending in mind before I start them, but I'm far from meticulous when it comes to planning. I envy writers who are able to plot out arcs and acts and scenes in advance before actually setting down the line-by-line prose -- so far my brain's never been able to lay out a full cohesive story that way. I have to just write the first scene and see where things go.
Sometimes, I have a theme targeted ahead of time, but the initial spark for the creative process is generally action, normally a clear visual image. I get the images from all over the place: things I see in real life, things I see in movies or on television, pieces of concept art or stuff in museums, and often remnants of dreams. The stories I write often begin or end with the image.
You mentioned you've been reading Annex -- the inspiration for that book is lifted directly from a semi-hallucination I got while really high in a stoner friend's basement. I had this vision of naked people wandering around a ruined city beneath an acid-yellow sky, with crumbling buildings casting purple shadows. There were these large biomechanical whale-type things drifting around overhead, and every so often one would swoop down and pluck a person up off the ground, or else disgorge a new one, like giving birth.
From that image I got the idea of the pods, the dream-networked wasters, and the othermothers.
RT: Good lord, I'm glad that you hadn't touched Michael Crichton's sphere before going to your friend's basement. Coronavirus and the rapid-fire deaths of supreme court justices are already enough of a trial without adding evil floating whales to the mix.
Deadly aliens make for such a great story. Mars Attacks, The Puppet Masters, The War of the Worlds. These stories dovetail closely with deadly human devices, serving as a projection of our fears about human technology or foreign invasion much more than any fears of extraterrestrial disruptions. And the stories that deal more immediately with those anxieties--Day of the Triffids, the Terminator--make for some of the most visceral, attention-getting stories. Maybe that response--attentiveness--is evolutionary. Like the genetic material you inherited is in part a result of taking foreign threats and invasions very seriously.
Were you already a fan of alien invasion stories before writing Annex, and, if so, which ones in particular? Also, you mentioned the image is important to you. Do you always draw upon images from your own imagination or do you draw upon other sources?
RL: There could very well be some evolutionary component to our fascination with invasion narratives, but there's also the simple fact that most human beings on the planet, even those living in currently stable, peaceful countries, are only a few generations removed from some kind of large-scale human violence. My grandmother experienced both invasion and liberation during World War Two, and those experiences shaped her behavior -- which in turn shaped my mother, and now me. So it makes sense that invasion narratives resonate with a lot of people.
I was a huge fan of Animorphs as a kid, and Annex is in many ways a tribute to that series (plus elements from a few other books, like Shade's Children, The Thief Lord, and Coraline.) I loved the moral complexities of Katherine Applegate's series and tried to bring that over into my book: even though I keep the focus on the human characters, it's made clear that the aliens are not a monolith, and that their invasion is motivated by external pressures.
Like I said before, I get imagery from everywhere: films, television, games, artwork. Then the story often wells up around it.
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