Paula Xiberras
The name Abercrombie is Scottish/ Gaelic and its origins are ‘bended’ or ‘crooked’ which eminently suits Joe Abercrombie’s writing. Joe writes slightly ‘crooked’ Science Fantasy fiction.
Joe Abercrombie recently made his first visit to Tassie, indeed his first to Australia, to promote his new book ‘Red Country’ and I was lucky enough to sit down with him over a hot chocolate and chat.
Joe is very generous in telling this science fantasy non- expert a little about the genre and his revolutionary place in it.
Joe grew up as a great Tolkien fan and Joe explains Tolkien was the watershed that gave life to the genre called science fantasy. The Tolkien version was very heroic and on occasion pompous in its morality. Add to Tolkien the recent advent of ‘Game of Thrones’ and its gritty realism, sans the magic, and you have some of Joe’s greatest inspiration, for some spice add Dickens and Ellory and together these influences plus the elusive ‘other things absent’ from the Joe’s reading material go together to develop Joe’s distinctive style.
There is a formula to a science fantasy novel which includes a mentor, a young person, a quest to go on, a beautiful heroine and that dragon and sword.
Joe thinks the premise of science fantasy is a bit ridiculous with heroes in flowing capes and swords fighting dragons and so uses the original conception of science fantasy as inspiration but adapts it to include what he thinks is lacking.
Joe’s background in psychology encouraged him to explore characters that had both dark and light sides to their personality rather than the clear good and evil of Tolkien and in some ways Joe’s characters become a twisted version of the science fantasy heroes before them. Further to this Joe wanted to explore the whole notion of the hero and how his heroics might be clouded by his own particular needs and the idea that sometimes heroism isn’t totally altruistic. Joe doesn’t want his novels to be predictable and he wants to show ‘damage’ and lead the reader in’ the unsafe zone’ of not knowing if a hero will survive.
Perhaps much of this new approach to science fantasy can be attributed to Joe’s background in psychology and his study of human risk the study of calculating human errors. Joe says in science fantasy there are many epic battles where the hero is always triumphant but Joe knows in real history things don’t always go to plan and this is what you are exposed to in Joe’s novels.
Joe also includes multiculturalism in his science fantasy; in this new novel you will discover a ‘Northman’ clearly identifiable to Vikings and also some Italian characters.
This present novel ‘Red Country also includes a’ tipped hat’ (pardon the pun) to westerns, particularly something like ‘Unforgiven’, which is a commentary on the genre itself. The exploration of a savage landscape with a proliferation of wagon trains fits nicely into the concept of science fantasy with its exploration of the unknown and its wagon trains of their futuristic equivalent.
Although his genre is science fantasy Joe is not a literary snob and enjoys all types of books including romance (on our day of meeting he has a romance novel in his possession courtesy of an author share and swap at his Sydney convention) as long as they are well written.
Joe’s new novel ‘Red Country’ is out now.
