Reading about William Gibson’s Collected Essays in The Guardian this morning, I was delighted to learn that Gibson was once an obsessive collector of mechanical watches. I learned also that he had written the introduction to a monograph by Canadian photographer Greg Girard entitled Phantom Shanghai, a collection of images documenting the planned destruction of the old city and its replacement with carbuncular structures in concrete and metal.
The images chart a tumbling of empire, and I’m not talking about the last faded remnants of colonialism. The deliberate destruction of the texture, imagic language and layers-deep history and culture of this richly cosmopolitan city is, to paraphrase Gibson, almost more than one can bear to contemplate. It’s also hard to write about without spilling story ideas. Images of forgotten cities and vanished civilizations are commonplace in fantasy novels, yet our awareness of the way these same stories are being played out in the world we now inhabit and within our lifetime is often dangerously thin. Historical fiction is supposedly today’s most popular literary genre, yet it is those stories that slip past us, hidden on the back pages of a travel supplement or broadcast, in the silent hours, on the World Service, that are most agonizing and resonant because they are ours.
Gibson’s concern with old watches and exploded hotels in the French quarter of Shanghai seems to me profoundly science fictional. Only a writer who understands the past can begin to imagine the future, which (as Gibson said) is really only the present properly observed. Great writers preserve and remember as well as invent.
It seems that fate has been nudging me in the direction of things Chinese this week. As well as Girard’s photographs I also discovered the writing of Ken Liu, in the form of his novella The Man Who Ended History: a Documentary. I loved the form of this piece. I loved the way Liu was able to take past, present and future and bind them together. The background to the piece, which I am ashamed to say I had not been aware of previously, has been haunting me all week. Liu’s story wears its science fictional content lightly and is all the better for that.
Work continues well on the novel. Absolutely the most complex thing I’ve ever tried and it’s good to have to fight for it. If I’m fighting I know I’m working to the best of my ability.
Weird experience of the week? Hearing Ian Mond and Kirstyn McDermott’s spirited discussion of The Silver Wind on their monthly podcast The Writer and the Critic. As I say, a weird experience, but good weird. Thanks, guys.