Adrian Tchaikovsky devotees know the author is no stranger to giving complex voice to non-human characters. In his latest, he turns to the unseen urban world beneath our feet to bring us a clever cat-and-mouse pursuit between Skotch, a raccoon investigator, and Doctor Meece, a fugitive mouse. In this interview, we discuss why these types of characters are so appealing to him, what his impressive writing process entails, and his appreciation for audiobook performers.
Sam Danis: Green City Wars is a noir story set in a future where animals are the unseen architects of our human world. What inspired this tale and this new genre for you?
Adrian Tchaikovsky: I’ve been writing about uplifted animals for a long while now. It’s a topic that fascinates me, especially because there are so many ways into it. Do humans uplift animals out of philanthropy (as with Brin’s stories where he coins the term) or to fight (Dogs of War), or is it incidental and unintended (Children of Time)?
For Green City Wars, I moved into what should be a more mundane area, and also maybe more pragmatic: animals as a service sector. In the green cities, all the infrastructure is maintained and run by these “little helpers” that, ideally, humans never even see, so that humans can live lives of comfort. Which means humans don’t know the complex, vicious, and sometimes tragic world their animal servants have built for them. It’s a very different animal-human dynamic to my other work, and it also let me look at species I hadn’t really written about—the small urban animals that live alongside us in our cities already.
You have such an affinity for writing non-human characters—from robots to sentient spiders to crime-solving raccoons. What draws you to these types of perspectives?
Honestly, it’s one of the joys of writing science fiction. From an early age I was always fascinated by the aliens, robots, and monsters of SF, from Star Wars to Doctor Who. In my own storytelling, I’ve always wanted to explore the other from inside their mind, rather than just encountering them through human intermediaries. It’s definitely something that’s unique to speculative fiction, and I love it both because it gives a new perspective on the human condition and because it’s fun in and of itself.
You’re a prolific author, often releasing multiple titles a year. What does your writing process look like? Does it vary when you’re writing a series entry versus a standalone title?
I’m very flexible in my writing. By choice I spend the morning on new work and the rest of the day dealing with edits and admin, but I can write on trains, in hotels, in airports, wherever I can get an hour or so with a place to sit. The process itself is very world-driven. I always start by designing the setting of the book and let the characters and plot elements arise organically out of it. This has a nice side-effect that all the details of the book ideally fit together on the first draft because they’re coming from the same place.
You recently narrated one of your own books, Service Model. Tell me about that decision and the experience. Did it offer you any new lens or appreciation for what your book narrators (Mel Hudson, Sophie Aldred, John Pirhalla) do?
I’d narrated a few novellas of mine beforehand, slowly expanding my range of voices and my reading stamina, but Service Model was the first full-length narration. I came to the idea because I’ve always enjoyed reading from my work at conventions, and a while back I was also a keen amateur actor, so I have a certain amount of performance chops that don’t necessarily come with writing. It turned out to be enormously enjoyable and people seem to like the result.
However, I’ve always been blessed with excellent narrators for my books, and the majority of my work is way out of my league in terms of accents and voices. It’s always a joy to hear skilled professionals bring my work to life. And having narrated, I’m now much more aware of sentences that look fine on the page but would be awkward to read. You develop a lot of sympathy after having read your own prose aloud!
