You never know when inspiration may strike, or what may strike it.
Take Cory O’Brien’s new cyberpunk noir science fiction mystery novel Two Truths And A Lie (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), which, he explains in the following email interview, was inspired by a costly art project.
To start, what is Two Truths And A Lie about, and when and where is it set?
Two Truths And A Lie takes place in a near-future Los Angeles half-drowned by climate change, in a world where information and memories are traded as currency.
It centers on a nasty old drone war veteran who finds himself involved in a high-profile murder investigation, which brings him back in contact with a man he loved half a lifetime ago.
Where did you get the idea for Two Truths And A Lie?
I got the idea for the story in grad school, when a fellow student brought in a book she’d sewn out of one-dollar bills to make the point that “information is the new currency.” I thought it was funny, but I couldn’t help thinking: What if information was actually currency? A mystery seemed like the perfect way to explore the question, and noir has always been my favorite mystery subgenre, so we were off to the races.
So, is there a significance to the story being set in near-future Los Angeles as opposed to near-future New York City or far-future Shanghai or really-far-future Megaopolis, a city so far in the future that it doesn’t exist yet?
Los Angeles is where I grew up, so it’s an important part of my mental landscape.
It’s also the setting of some of my favorite noir stories, Raymond Chandler’s stuff especially. Because of its unique infrastructure, L.A. somehow manages to be both full of life and incredibly desolate all at once, and that’s a combination that plays well in noir.
In a similar vein, is there a reason the main suspect is Orr’s ex-boyfriend as opposed to his ex-girlfriend or his mom or someone he used to work with?
The simple answer is that Auggie is Auggie; he couldn’t be anyone else and still be Auggie.
The more complicated answer is that I think homosexual love is low-key an important element in noir. Classic noir is from the ’40s and ’50s, so there’s never anything blatantly gay going on, but there are moments in Chandler’s work — such as when Phillip Marlowe finds himself alone in a boat with a man with “violet eyes” who was “probably one of the nicest men I ever met” — where you can see the tough, macho protagonist falling for someone who shares his trauma. Noir heroes can be flippant to the women they lust after, or even hostile, but there is a sort of tenderness between men in these stories that I wanted to explore more explicitly.
It sounds like Two Truths And A Lie is a noir cyberpunk sci-fi mystery novel, though not a whodunnit….
I think cyberpunk noir describes it pretty well. Cyberpunk is concerned with the lives of people in the future who can’t afford spaceships, as Bruce Sterling once said, and noir is about people trying to do right in a place where everything’s wrong. The two genres go together naturally, because they share similar values, but the sci-fi aspect allows me to explore questions of identity and society more freely than a strictly contemporary setting would.
Now, Two Truths And A Lie is your first novel, though you previously published the books Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide To World Mythology and George Washington Is Cash Money: A No-Bullshit Guide To The United Myths Of America. Are there any writers, or specific stories, who had a big influence on Lie but not on anything else you’ve written?
I picked up a huge stack of noir books in preparation for writing it: [Raymond Chandler’s] Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye [also by Chandler], [Dashiell Hammett’s] The Maltese Falcon, Altered Carbon [by Richard K. Morgan], [Kem Nunn’s] Tapping The Source, and probably a few more I’m forgetting. William Gibson and Neal Stephenson were obviously huge inspirations, especially their more recent work such as The Peripheral [Gibson] and Fall; or, Dodge In Hell [Stephenson].
How about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Did any of those things influence Two Truths And A Lie?
One film that was very influential to me when writing the book was The Nice Guys, starring Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling. I watched that, and I thought, “How do I create a story that navigates such a complicated plot so simply, and with so much fun detail thrown in?”
I’ve also taken philosophical inspiration from the tabletop roleplaying game Gumshoe, which guarantees that its investigators will always leave a scene with a clue about where to go next — it’s just a question of how badly they get beat up in the process.
Cyberpunk noir sci-fi novels are sometimes stand-alone stories and sometimes they’re the start of a series. What is Two Truths And A Lie? Is it a stand-alone story or the first in a series?
My intention is to write several stories in the world of Two Truths And A Lie, but to focus on a different main character for each one. So it’s not the “start” of a series, per se, because the books won’t have a prescribed reading order.
So then what can you tell us about this “series per se”?
I have ideas for at least two other books in what I’m currently calling the Drowned Los Angeles Collection. Because of the way I’m structuring it, there could theoretically be any number. I just want to explore the world from every possible angle.
The working title for the next book is Blackout For Sale. As for when it will be out…no word on that, yet. We’ll see.
And, as you alluded to, I assume the “per se” part means these are not the kind of books you read back-to-back…
You won’t gain anything by waiting for more of these books to come out, because they won’t be direct continuations of each other. Reading one will give you insight into the others, and there will be little Easter eggs and points of overlap between them, but it’s not like you’ll be left hanging with an incomplete story if you read Two Truths right now. I want all of my books to feel finished at the end. No cliffhangers.
Earlier I asked if Two Truths And A Lie had been influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Lie could work as a movie, TV show, or game?
I’ve definitely imagined Two Truths And A Lie being adapted into a TV show or miniseries. I think the world of Drowned Los Angeles would look great on screen; lots of weird background crud for the set designers to have fun with. I think Orr’s a fun protagonist, too, but the trick would be finding someone nasty enough to play him.
I could maybe see it being adapted into a game, but Orr is such a strong flavor as a protagonist that it might be better to create a game that takes place in the same world but with a different character, so that the player can better immerse themselves without worrying about what whether they are correctly roleplaying an extremely unhealthy 68-year-old man.
Okay, so then if someone wanted to adapt Two Truths And A Lie into a movie or show, who should they cast as that extremely unhealthy 68-year-old man, and the other main characters?
Orr is tough. To be accurate to the book, he needs to be old, decrepit, and Southeast Asian. Basically the Asian Danny Devito. Racking my brain, Ken Jeong [The Hangover] might be the best match I can think of.
Auggie I have fewer strong opinions about. Maybe [John Wick‘s] John Leguizamo? But with longer hair?
And if someone wanted to make a game in the world of Two Truths And A Lie, what kind of game should it be?
If it were a game, I’d want it to be a video game. A mystery-solving / puzzle game, similar to The Case Of The Golden Idol. That sort of gameplay would fit naturally in the world of the story, since you’d be buying, selling, and trading away memories similarly to how you gain and lose items in a videogame. I think it could be pretty neat.
And would you want to work on that game? After all, you’ve not only written such video games as Monster Prom and Holovista, but were a level designer on the game Redfall.
I could see myself being involved in an advisory capacity, but I honestly think that adaptations work better when they’re made by people other than the original creator.
Finally, if someone enjoys Two Truths And A Lie, what cyberpunk noir sci-fi novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they check out next?
It’s not cyberpunk, but another noir / mystery book I enjoyed was Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey. It’s another fun take on the genre, this one from a fantasy perspective.
