1. Where on earth did the idea for this novel come from?
Perhaps not from anywhere on earth! It arrived from wherever
inspiration normally originates. To Ancient European civilizations, inspiration
was a divine gift. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim divine inspiration for this
novel, though.
Truthfully, I don’t rely on inspiration very much. I enjoy
playing, and this book came from a lot of time thinking about stories. I’ve
been reading science fiction, and even writing short stories, for decades—since
before I retired from teaching high school, some twenty years ago. I’ve been
reading what I call “big ideas” books for a long time, too. Those interests
came together as I toyed with ideas for this book. And much of the book came
from the characters, as they developed and I put them into stranger and
stranger situations.
This novel isn’t the first full-length novel I’ve finished,
but it’s one of the first few I’ve completed. In its first draft, I was still
experimenting with form and voice, and I wrote about ideas and situations I
enjoyed—to keep it fun for me.
From a writing perspective, The Iterations of Caroline really
took off for me when David finds himself in a universe in which the Spanish Flu
killed a far higher percentage of the population than in the universe we live
in. Sending David all across the continent in that parallel universe let me
think in more depth about the potential ramifications of that one change. It
also helped me think through other possible changes, and how they might, or
might not, change the history I’m familiar with.
And, of course, the characters were interesting, and I had
fun with them. It was amusing to me to have David become Watson to Caroline’s
Holmes.
2. Your previous book, Silences: A Novel of the 1918
Finnish Civil War, was a historical novel. This one is science fiction or
speculative fiction. What are the similarities and differences in writing these
two different types of novels?
They’re actually a lot more similar than you might think. In
both types of novels—any novel, really—the writer has to evoke a believable,
coherent world for the reader to step into. Half of Silences was set in
1955, a time I remember. Even for that time period, however, I researched this
region so I could make it real for the adult characters. The things that were
important and interesting to ten-year-old Jimmy might not be as interesting to
his grandmother, Viktoria.
In The Iterations of Caroline, my job was to imagine
what would likely happen at different points in human history. I was
less interested in wildly different universes (for example, one in which the
dinosaurs survived that meteor) than in universes that were similar to ours. It
was tempting for the “time travel,” the subject which so enthralled Bernie, to
resemble the forms of “time travel” we’re familiar with—you know, going back to
1920s Germany to kill Hitler, that kind of thing. But that story is a different
kind of “what if” than I wanted to explore. I really wanted David and Caroline
to move among possible worlds.
In the end, in writing any kind of story, you select details
that let your readers create the novel’s world inside their own heads. Books
are forms of conversations between the writer and the reader.
3. You mention that David and Caroline are moving within possible
multiverses—do you really think it’s possible to find a universe in which
humans have gills?
Good question! One to which I don’t have an answer. In fact,
I’m not sure we can know the answer. Personally, I don’t understand the
physics well enough to know whether gilled humans are possible, or even if it’s
within our human ability to accurately perceive the cosmos.
But it’s interesting to think about how someone might
experience gills, if it were possible. It’s like a math problem (the only kind
I really enjoy): Assuming that it’s possible for a universe to exist in which
humans have gills, how might a person from our universe, or one like it, end up
there? And in what ways would that universe differ from ours? Those were the
questions I really enjoyed playing with.
4. What do you hope a reader understands after reading The
Iterations of Caroline?
First, I hope they enjoyed it. I don’t see a reason to read
anything that doesn’t entertain you. And I’m grateful if anyone invests time
and effort in spending a few hours with this book.
Beyond that—I’m reluctant to prescribe “lessons.” But if I
were pressed, I’d really hope that readers pay attention to the ending. Spoiler
alert! I liked the chapters in which David and Caroline talk together about the
kind of world they’d like to live in, and then go out and make it so.
In some ways, we all have that power. We may not be able to
grow gills, but we can all appreciate neighbourhoods with sidewalks.
This book came out during the COVID-19 pandemic—was actually
delayed by the interruptions—and, assuming that vaccines work and we ensure
that everyone on earth has access to them, we’ll be able to emerge from those
restrictions someday. As we do, it might be worthwhile considering what
elements from pre-COVID we want to return to, and what have outlived their
usefulness for us.
Thank you for reading The Iterations of Caroline!
