When we talk about iconic cyberpunk stories, we usually mention Blade Runner, The Matrix, and the novels of William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and Neal Stephenson.
But we should also talk about Cameron Reed’s The Fortunate Fall, which took what Gibson et al. did and took the genre in a unique direction.
And maybe now we will, since Tor Books are releasing A Tor Essentials version of The Fortunate Fall (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which augments the 1996 novel with a new intro by sci-fi writer Jo Walton [Tooth And Claw].
In the following email interview, Reed discusses what originally influenced this story, as well as why the main character has an implanted camera as opposed to just some snazzy video glasses.
To start, what is The Fortunate Fall about, and when and where is it set?
The book is about a reporter in future Russia, in a world where Africa is highly technologically advanced and the rest of the world is a backwater by comparison. While working on a story about a genocide that is in her past but our future, she uncovers some things that she’s not supposed to know, both about history and about her own life.
Where did you get the idea for The Fortunate Fall?
This will be an unsatisfying response, but I have to admit that after nearly 30 years, I don’t remember which of the ideas that went into The Fortunate Fall was the first, let alone where any of them came from.
I do remember that early on, I had the image of a woman narrator who was jaded, cynical, cranky, and older than genre protagonists usually are (though, now that I think of it, she’s probably younger than I am now). And she was visibly obsolete: she had sockets in her head that let her interface with the net, but they were the old, big kind, and needed adapters to connect to modern tech. Even now, I don’t think there are enough irascible older women in sci-fi / fantasy.
So, is there a reason why Maya has the VR broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain as opposed to it being a separate device like Google glasses or something?
The technology that Maya has in her head transmits her thoughts and emotions as well as her senses, so that requires a connection to her brain. And because the raw output of a technology like that might be unhelpful or embarrassing — you don’t want the audience getting distracted because a reporter has to pee — it requires an editor, called a screener, who filters and cleans up the broadcast in real time. This means the screener has access to Maya’s private thoughts, which creates a one-sided intimacy that Maya dislikes but is resigned to.
It sounds like The Fortunate Fall is a cyberpunk science fiction story, and may be dystopian as well…
It’s certainly cyberpunk, and dystopian. Some people have called it post-cyberpunk, which may be a polite way of saying I was late to the party. Any of those are fine with me.
The Fortunate Fall was your first novel. What writers were the biggest influences on both what you wrote about in Fall and how you wrote it?
William Gibson is the most obvious influence, especially the short stories in Burning Chrome. Pat Cadigan, also. Michael Swanwick. Samuel Delany is one of my very favorite writers and a huge influence in general, but this book was especially influenced by his 1968 novel Nova, which was an important precursor of cyberpunk. Nova has the idea of humans interfacing with computers via implants, but instead of allowing elite hackers to break into computers, it was a way to transform the relationship of laborers to their work. That’s an idea that I’ve thought about a lot.
How about non-literary influences? Are there any movies, TV shows, or games that had a big influence on The Fortunate Fall?
I had to look at lists of games and TV shows and movies from the ’90s and before in order to answer this question. I think Blade Runner and Brazil might have influenced the look and feel of the book. Maybe The Fortunate Fall leans a little more toward Brazil,while most cyberpunk emphasized Blade Runner. But I saw the director’s cut of Blade Runner on the big screen in the early ’90s, and that made a big impression.
I was certainly playing PC games back then. I remember losing a lot of hours to Civilization and Master Of Orion, but I don’t think they were an influence. There was one game that did have an effect on the book, in an odd way. Core War was a programming game in which two “warrior” programs, written in a simplified assembly language, competed for control of a virtual computer. And one of the strategies was to capture your opponent’s execution and force it to split over and over, so that most of its time was spent doing your bidding, and the strategy it was designed to carry out happened too slowly to matter. And I thought, artificial life could be like this, especially when it’s been left to evolve on its own for a while. We might look at it and think, “here is one animal preying on another,” but the predators wouldn’t literally be using teeth and claws, they’d be exploiting the rules of the system they run on in ways that we can only understand through metaphor. And that inspired the feral alife in the book.
Now, the reason we’re doing this interview — and thank you for doing it — is that The Fortunate Fall is being reissued by Tor as part of their Tor Essentials series. What was your reaction when they told you they wanted to do this?
I was thrilled, of course. The timing of it was funny. I had been working seriously on my next book for a while, and I had finally admitted to myself that I was really going to do this: to be a writer again, and try to publish. But I was keeping my expectations low, because at that point my only novel had been out of print for about 25 years. I thought it might be like starting over from scratch. I did consider emailing Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor, who edited The Fortunate Fall, but I felt awkward about contacting him out of the blue after so many years, so I didn’t. But I decided I would announce it on social media. I wrote the post, made screenshots of an excerpt of the new book, got the alt text ready. I logged in to post it, and there was a message from Patrick asking if I would be interested in having Fall come out as a Tor Essential. Needless to say, I was interested. And I did wind up telling him I was writing again before I told the world, even if only by a few minutes.
The Fortunate Fall was originally published under your deadname, and comes with a new intro by fellow sci-fi writer Jo Walton [whose 2011 fantasy novel Among Others is also part of the Tor Essentials series]. Is there anything else different about this version of The Fortunate Fall?
There are things I’m very happy with, and things I wish I had done differently, but I resisted the temptation to rewrite the novel to my current tastes. That would have made it a very different book, and it would be misleading to publish it under the same title.
I also felt that the 1990s me who wrote this novel was, in many ways, a different person — having a different gender is the least of the reasons — and they wouldn’t want me to overhaul their book any more than I’d allow them to tinker with mine. They wrote the book they wanted to write, and they deserved a certain deference. As it is, there are a few fixes here and there, but I don’t think anyone who read the ’90s editions will have any trouble recognizing this as the same novel.
And then whose decision was it to have Jo Walton do the intro?
Tor chose Jo to do the introduction. She was the obvious choice, and I can’t imagine a better one. I think she’s more responsible than anyone else, except possibly James Nicoll, for the book not being quite completely forgotten during all its years out of print. Her introduction is very embarrassing, but that’s only a problem for me.
Earlier I asked if The Fortunate Fall had been influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Fortunate Fall could work as a movie, show, or game?
The Fortunate Fall is extremely unsuited to being made into a game …which makes me want to figure out a way that that could work. It’s a book about an investigation, so maybe you could do an investigation PC game. But I think it would be hard to make one that works for people who’ve already read the book. It would certainly make more sense as a movie.
And if someone wanted to make that movie, who would you want them to cast as Maya and the other main characters?
I’m afraid I have no ideas about casting. My sense of these characters is so specific that it’s hard for me to imagine a real person playing them.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about The Fortunate Fall?
It has a sapphic romance at its heart, although it’s not a romance.
It’s probably not the best book to pick out of the to-read pile if you are feeling down and want to be cheered up.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Fortunate Fall, what cyberpunk sci-fi novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they read next and why that one? Oh, and to keep things interesting, let’s disqualify Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson.
It’s so hard to pick just one. I’m going to disqualify the authors I already mentioned as influences, to make it easier for myself. I would recommend Melissa Scott’s Trouble And Her Friends. It’s not very much like The Fortunate Fall, really, except in that both of them are departures from what was being done in cyberpunk at the time, and partly for that reason it’s one of my favorites. Also, it’s another cyberpunk novel with a queer woman as a protagonist. There weren’t a lot of those in the ’90s.
On the other hand — and I realize I’m shamelessly cheating here, cut off my mic if you want to — if someone asked me to recommend any work that people who liked The Fortunate Fall would like, what I’d pick is neither cyberpunk nor a book; it’s the first season of the podcast Within The Wires. And I won’t tell you why, because it’s best to go into that knowing as little as possible.
