Faith in the Future

An interview with Tim Lebbon by Matt Williams

Tim Lebbon isn’t one to rest on his laurels. In a relatively short period of time he has had a novel, a collection of two novellas and over 60 short stories published in both the small and professional press. His first novel, Mesmer, a horror novel about a powerful magician with the power to return the dead to life, was published by the late lamented Tanjen in 1997 and promptly shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novel; his latest collection Faith in the Flesh - which includes the novellas The First Law and From Bad Flesh - is published by Razorblade Press and has met with a stream of impressive reviews.

Lebbon has already completed his next novel, a big apocalyptic book called The Nature of Balance, not to mention another novel in collaboration with writer Gavin Williams, Hush (due out from Razorblade Press next year). His short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Scaremongers 2: Redbrick Eden, Razorblades, Houses at the Borderland and Oktobyr 2. In addition to all this he is currently collaborating on a children’s horror novel with Steve Lockley called The Weather Man and has already started work on his new novel, Dusk. With praise from such professionals as Phil Rickman, Simon Clark, Bentley Little and Peter Crowther and a new novella, White, due soon from Masters of Terror Press the future looks very rosy indeed. I recently spoke to Lebbon in an attempt to glean the secrets behind his rapid rise to success.

MW: Your new novella, White, tackles themes you’ve previously explored, pitting man against nature and the elements, first seen in the novella, The First Law. Why does the survival theme interest you so much? And are you influenced by any particular literary or cinematic works?

TL: I don't necessarily go out to write stories where humankind is on one side, nature the other. It's more a case - in The First Law especially - of the characters reaping what humankind has sown. It's never meant to be an ‘it's us or them’ attitude, where nature is the aggressor and the characters the heroic defenders. There's no true good or bad in White or The First Law - nor even in From Bad Flesh, other than the usual human foibles of some of the incidental characters - but the conflict is always there, this modern stand-off between nature and ourselves. We're virtually the first generation that has thought: ‘Hang on a minute, what the hell are we doing here? What are we doing to the place where we live, the world we inhabit, the people and things we share it with?’ Pity that in most cases, thinking is as far as we get. So the survival theme that permeates some of my more recent work - the two novellas in Faith in the Flesh, White and my new novel, The Nature of Balance - is born of our treatment of the world around us, and what I think our unwise investments may yield in the future. The indomitability of the human spirit, I believe, transcends what we do as a species. As individuals we're programmed to survive, even if that survival - or our striving for survival - will not necessarily be good news for the planet.

The real linking factor between these stories is the idea of nature taking a stand. A lot of my recent writing has been linked by an ambiguous ‘event’, the ruin, which has set humankind, and sometimes the world around it, into decline. This fall from grace edges us ever nearer to the termination of ourselves as a viable species, and it's during this time that the extreme events of White and The Nature of Balance take place. For me, the end of humanity is a fascinating prospect. I've been called a morbid bastard, but I don’t think there's anything morbid theorising about something that will inevitably happen one day. How will it happen? What will cause it? Will we fight or fall with ease? Is there any way around it? I'm heavily influenced by some of the wonderful apocalyptic and dystopian fiction around, from people such as Wyndham, Shiel, Lovecraft (the undertones are always there), Whitley Streiber’s books with James Kunetka, Machen, King’s The Stand and many others. Simon Clark as well - most of his books have an apocalyptic feel, he’s a real talent. As for cinematic influences, films that spring to mind are The Birds, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Day of the Triffids and so on. The recent ITV series, The Last Train was pretty good as well.

MW: Sticking with nature for a moment, were the snow beasts in White influenced by the creepy hedge animals in King’s The Shining? I only ask because the two stories share a similar scenario: claustrophobic atmosphere, inhospitable environment, cut off from the rest of civilisation, incipient madness and so on…

TL: I didn’t have the hedge animals in mind when I wrote White … to be honest, the Whites were pretty much created as I went along from an amalgamation of ideas: a combination of all nature's creations in one; ghostly memories belonging to those involved in the story; the characters’ pasts coming back to haunt them, and so on.

The Whites turned out pretty spooky, I like to think, and not fully explaining them just adds to their mystery and allure. I like ideas that aren’t fully explained. It means the reader can have some involvement with what’s going on in a story. The people in the house don’t really know what the Whites are - why should the reader?

MW: Disaster books and films seem to be all the rage at the moment. Horror writers in particular seem to relish the prospect of make-believe mass destruction. Simon Clark with books like King Blood and Blood Crazy; Stephen Laws’ latest, Chasm; films such as Deep Impct, Armageddon and Independence Day. Why does the theme appeal so strongly to you? Tell me about your next novel, The Nature of Balance.

TL: There’s something so alluring and intriguing about the notion of humankind’s extinction. We can’t imagine a world without us, and yet sometime in the future this may well be the case. Evolution dictates this - progress through change. The fact that humankind has tried to remove itself from evolution is in one respect a stunning achievement, but then it may be making us weaker as a species. Advances in medicine and living conditions mean that it’s now not just the strongest that survive. Some scientists even postulate that evolution in humanity is at an end. Now that’s arrogance!

I think there’s also something curiously attractive about an abandoned world, where we can do whatever we want without being concerned with the implications. That’s why a lot of dystopian fiction deals with the annihilation of most of humanity, with only a few people left here and there. Remember The Stand? The guy masturbating in the centre of a sports stadium? Poor sod had been fantasising about that most of his life, and it was only the end of humanity as we know it that gave him the chance to try it out!

As a whole we’re unbearably arrogant about our place in the scheme of things. I’m not lessening the impact we’re having on our world, but I think nature is much more powerful and tenacious than we think. We may well make it difficult - or even impossible - for ourselves to survive here, but nature will ensure that something else will. My favourite example of nature’s tenacity and adaptability concerns some of the equipment left behind during the moon walks. In later expeditions this was brought back to see how it had withstood years in a vacuum, and common cold virus left on it by the people who’d constructed it on Earth actually came back to life - years in a vacuum, pretty close to absolute zero, and this virus was still alive. What are we by comparison?

The Nature of Balance is again set in a world where the ruin has taken a hold, although it’s not the exact same world as in White and Faith in the Flesh. The book’s under consideration at the moment, and I don’t want to give too much away, but I think it’s the best thing I’ve written and I’m very excited about it.

MW: You seem very interested in religion in your stories. The characters in White, for instance, constantly question the motives behind their perilous predicament, often attributing divine machinations to their unfortunate circumstances. As Rosalie says, ‘”Oh yes, it’s his Holiness,’ she nodded, “sitting on his pedestal of lost souls, playing around one say and deciding , hmm, maybe I’ll have fun today, been a year since a decent earthquake, a few months since the last big volcano eruption. What can I do?”’ Also (without giving anything away) the whole concept behind Mesmer revolves around the antagonist’s god-like powers…

TL: Religion has the potential to upset a lot of people (perhaps one of its major faults!), but I never talk about it to be intentionally controversial. It fascinates me, scares me, confuses me and horrifies me. I figure I’m one of billions. Organised religion is the worst form of brainwashing, and I often feel it holds humanity back both spiritually and intellectually. Spirituality and religion seem to me to be mutually exclusive: religion is taught from a young age, drummed in through repetition; spirituality is discovered and experienced. Which is the purer?

Yet I’ll happily call myself an agnostic - I just don’t know, and there’s no way I’ll dismiss something just because I can’t see proof. I find blind faith difficult to come to terms with but stubborn disbelief is just as bad. No proof either way leaves me sitting on the fence.

The characters in my stories often talk about God and religion simply because it’s one of my preoccupations. In Faith in the Flesh the stories are about survival and faith, so religion has a very heavy presence in both stories. I guess my own beliefs are often reflected in the make-up of my main characters, maybe because I’d find it pretty difficult to write from the viewpoint of a true, unquestioning believer without descending into parody and cliché.

As for Mesmer … the character of the Mesmer is somewhat sad, a pathetic old fool who was once evil, but who now has little left to live for. He possesses powers different to those of most humans - more powerful in many ways - but I never saw him as god-like. In fact, I tried to show him as a monster with a distinctly human side.

MW: Many of your stories - including White - seem more concerned with effect than cause. What I mean is that, as in The First Law, the reasons why something has happened are not nearly as important as the effect said catastrophe has on the characters. The disease that affects the population in White - like the seemingly sentient island in The First Law and the uncertain fates that befall Penny and Damon in Mesmer - is almost unimportant. In some ways this makes your fiction more esoteric and less literal because scientific details are superseded by emotions and language. This is a technique which Ray Bradbury, for example, uses to great effect.

TL: The heart of the story, for me, is usually in the effects of an event rather than the event itself. In From Bad Flesh I could have written pages about the disease, what it does, where it came from, where it’s going … but why bother? The bedrock of the story was small scale - one man’s search for a cure - so all the reader needed to know is that he had the disease. I try to reveal more of the big picture through dialogue and inference, and it’s nice when this works out OK. I think in From Bad Flesh it does. As I said, it’s a very personal, small scale story, but there’s a ‘big’ feel to the novella.

Cause is often just background, and if you’re working to novella lengths (which I love to do - I think this length suits the horror form perfectly), there’s limited time to explore this background fully. Why waste time going into the ins and outs of why something has happened when the real interest lies in the effect it’s had? I think this is more so with horror than any other genre - horror is an emotion, so you have to talk about who’s feeling it.

MW: We’ve touched upon the language in your stories, which is inclined towards metaphor, simile and dense imagery. At the same time, it’s a style that produces undeniably gross and rank imagery, something that lends your style a visceral quality. What appeals about this particular style of writing? Who influenced your style in particular?

TL: I love imagery. I love the richness of language. A clever turn of phrase runs a shiver down my neck. Some people will tell you to use as few adverbs and adjectives as you can, concentrate on the story, don’t overwrite. I believe in ‘show, don’t tell’, but I also believe that experiencing the beauty of language will aid a reader in enjoying and understanding a story. I try to make my writing very sensory - so often a passage will tell you how a scene looks but not how it smells, how it feels or tastes. Sometimes these factors are just as important.

I love the feel of language and what it can convey. A well-written scene should be rich in either sensory or emotional input, or even better, both. If you stimulate the reader's senses and their emotions, you've taken them somewhere special. Then you can guide them through your world, help them find their own way or just let go their hand and fuck them up altogether!

As for influences … the wonderful Lovecraft; the unreasonably talented Dan Simmons; the obvious King; Arthur Machen (gorgeous writing style, his novel The Hill of Dreams is shocking even today); a smattering of early Barker and side orders of Hope Hodgson, Wyndham … and probably even Willard Price who I read avidly as a child. I also love writers such as Iain Banks, Christopher Priest and Peter Crowther, whose skill and style raise them beyond simple pigeon-holing.

MW: Most of your stories (especially the climaxes) are, not to put too fine a point on it, bleak as hell! White is no exception. Of course, this is dark fantasy, horror, call it what you want; but why are there so few positive endings to your stories?

TL: Actually, I think most of my stories (especially my longer work) do have positive endings. They may not turn out all cosy, all let's-go-home-and-put-our-feet-up-in-front-of-the-fire comfortable. But usually something good comes out of what has happened in the story, even if it's not always the main characters that benefit. Saying that, White is one of the bleaker tales I've written, but even here things just aren’t all bad. There's no real evil in White, just something different. People are in terrible danger - people die - but it's not some all-powerful, totally unbelievable monster that's doing all the stuff to them. It's something else.

In The First Law, the main character's ultimate fate is, in a way, a triumph of his faith in himself. He sends a message which may help others, and for a short time he actually defies the unbendable force that's bearing down on him and shoving him aside. And From Bad Flesh - hell, how much more positive do you want? Okay, so the guy doesn’t exactly get the girl (not forever, anyway), but you can’t write fiction where everything turns out perfect all the time. It’s not real life. The character Gabe achieves what he's set out to achieve, discovering some shocking truths on the way. In the screwed-up world he lives in - the world of the ruin - that's as much as he can hope for.

MW: Tell me a bit about forthcoming projects, joint ventures and where you’d like to see your fiction going. Do any particular genres appeal? Do you intend branching into the mainstream at some point?

TL: At the moment I'm playing a waiting game on several projects. My novel The Nature of Balance is under consideration with a major American house, I'm very excited about that. I've also got a couple of novellas awaiting decisions, a few other book proposals, and the usual handful of short stories. I firmly believe in having loads of stuff out there at any one time. That way if I get one bite in ten, I'm still in luck! Hush, a novel I'm in the process of finishing in collaboration with Gavin Williams, has been accepted by RazorBlade Press (the publishers of Faith in the Flesh) for next year. White is due out soon from MOT Press, and The First Law will be out any time now as an audio book from Elmtree Publishing in Canada. Discovering the Internet has also opened up a whole new market for me in the USA and I now have stories due in the anthologies Judas Street, Outside the Cage, Extremes, Bare Bone and others.

As for the future, it's an uncertain place. That's what makes it so exciting. I know for sure that my next novel will be a departure from my recent work - a dark, unpleasant, uncomfortable psychological horror called Face. I’m looking forward to writing that one, it’s full of challenges, in theme and content as well as structure. I've been asked to write novellas for a couple of markets, and I'm always working on short stories.

I'd also like to try something a little different. Spread my wings a little. I'm tinkering with what I think is a strong idea for a two-book fantasy, called Dusk and Dawn respectively (I read very little fantasy, which I hope will be a benefit as opposed to a disadvantage when it comes to writing one). I’m going to write some stories for my daughter Eleanor - she’s 7 months old, so I plan to give her a finished book every birthday. I also want to write a novel about Da Vinci, and I'd love to have a short story collection published one day. Other than that, love, contentment, a five book deal and world peace would make things just about perfect.

Razorblade Press

Originally appeared on the Masters of Terror website, 2000.