Mullen generously responded to my questions with detailed, and even charming, answers. (His last line's a keeper for my flow file.)

Q&A with Thomas Mullen

Q: You said in another interview that you don't read much science fiction and that, when writing The Revisionists, you were more interested in character and the politics of the story. You did a neat job of working in the time travel. It's funny that we don't usually lump magic realism with science fiction. This book, literary with strong elements of genre, flowed smoothly for me. Shouldn't there be a category called "Doesn't fit into a category"?

Yes! There should certainly be such a category, if for no other reason than the fact that I'd finally have a place to fit in. Although, honestly, I'm such a nonconformist I'd probably still find a way to exist outside of that category, too.

You make a great point about magical realism and science fiction. They're similar in that they both bend the rules of reality in order to tell a story, but the former is usually considered a high-brow literary thing (like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Jonathan Safran Foer) and the other is thought of as a genre thing (picture a book whose cover is black and has some space ships or aliens on it). I think this is a problem of association—we hear "science fiction" and we think of a particular sort of reader, and certain standard tropes like Mars colonization or time travel, and we confine it to those strict borders.

Honestly, it's a difficult topic to discuss without angering people on one side or the other. Margaret Atwood is a highly decorated literary author who, in a small percentage of her books, has written in science fictional, futuristic settings. She once said that she preferred the term "speculative fiction" to science fiction when discussing those books, and I also like that phrase, which I've heard people use to describe some of my books. But then Atwood was criticized for that remark by Ursula LeGuin, who thought Atwood was unnecessarily ashamed of the term "science fiction," as if it was some badge of shame. And I think that's a great point, too.

Ultimately, to get back to your question, I think all that truly matters is telling a great story in a wonderful way. I think most writers of the previous generation or two, for whatever historical or cultural reasons, felt that there was a strong divide between genre (sci-fi, mystery, western, spy) and literary fiction. I happen to be of the younger generation that just doesn't feel that way. What matters is how well the book is written and how good the story is. I would rather read a beautiful, intelligent book about a spy or a bank robber or a ghoul than a banal, empty story about a middle-class suburbanite cheating on his wife. But I'd also rather read a thoughtful, hilarious tale of just such an everyman scamp than a clichéd, badly written story about spies or robbers or ghouls.

Q: The persistence of pointless intergroup conflicts obviously bugs you. You posited a utopian solution (making it illegal to retain memories of wars and tribal differences) that turned dystopian by its forced nature. What about a third option, where we naturally and gradually forget all the trivial differences among ourselves, keeping the few bits that are personally meaningful? Did you intend to be thought-provoking in that way?

I don't necessarily agree with [my character] Zed's assessment that all such conflict is "pointless," but yes, I was definitely trying to be thought-provoking with that. I think it's true that any conflict, when viewed from a certain disinterested remove, can look pointless. Many of our greatest wars or tensions derive from a sense of grievance over a perceived past injustice, some of them very past.

When studying the Bosnian wars of the Nineties, for example, it was fascinating to see that two groups (which to an American seem awfully similar) despised each other, and, when asked why they were fighting, they often cited massacres and battles from the 1500s. And that sense of grievance would lead one side to attack or commit some other act of violence, which the other side would then use as a reason to counterattack, etc., etc. In a way you could say that much Middle Eastern tension has a similar long-ago roots, and that last year's war or the one from ten years ago was a response to a response to a response to something that happened in Biblical times.

Because Zed comes to our time from a future that lacks such sectarianism, he's fascinated by it. To him, all the conflicts that he sees (Bosnians v. Serbs, Jews v. Arabs, white Americans v. black Americans, Hutu v. Tutsi, on and on) seem stunningly simple-minded. And they usually pit two groups of people who are almost totally the same, but who hate each other because of that one difference.

As for what would happen if we all voluntarily forgot about the things that divide us, I'm not sure that would ever happen. Even if it seems like a rational way to avoid conflict to some of us, others would disagree, and would insist that those very qualities (religion, ethnicity, race) are the most important parts of their lives, and that they'd rather die than give them up. Which is a hard thing to disagree with, if that's how people feel about their identity.

And some people, I'm sure, would say that the very fact that you and I are discussing such a thing means that we're wanton materialist secularists, and that our "enlightened" willingness to forget "trivial" differences like God and His rules means that we're deeply wrong-headed and must be stopped.

REVISION & MORE

Q: Beautifully put, Thomas. True and disheartening. Meanwhile, while the world continues on its doomed path, let's talk about your revision process. Do you revise as you go along or after a book is done in first (and second and tenth) draft?

Both. I typically begin a day by rereading what I wrote yesterday-this relieves me of the pressure of having to be creative first thing in the morning. It reminds me where I was and gets me in the zone, but it also serves the practical purpose of allowing me to edit what I wrote. So in that sense, I'm revising every day. Sometimes I'll get to a point in the book, after 100 or 200 (or 400!) pages and feel stuck, or bored, or I'll feel like there are things that aren't working, or I'll just be sick of my keyboard, so I'll print everything out and grab a red pen and some coffee and I'll edit and revise that way. And then, yes, at the end of the book, I read the whole thing once more and fix what needs fixing.

The Revisionists required more revising than usual because it took me a while to get things right. There are at least three main storylines that converge and four protagonists with very different backgrounds, so finding the right tone and style for each storyline was tough, as was finding the best (most believable, most suspenseful, most artful) way of interweaving the tales. It also was challenging to write about contemporary political issues like the Iraq war and post-9/11 security/privacy debates without resorting to obvious partisan talking points, so I had to push myself to avoid either of those poles, to write compelling characters who felt real and not like mouthpieces for a political opinion. Once it finally clicked I was able to speed through with less revising, but that took months.

Q: Your characters keep secrets and lie a lot, for understandable reasons. Is writing fiction your way of lying?