Interview: Emily Devenport on Her New Novel Medusa Uploaded

Medusa Uploaded is the story of Oichi, a young woman transformed via genetic modifications and surgery into a “worm”: a living, breathing component of a massive generation ship. As a worm, Oichi is beneath the notice of the powerful Executive clans that call the ship home, but not being noticed is a gift for a woman intent on challenging the powers that be — one assassination at a time.

Author Emily Devenport recently shared her thoughts about the novel and what it has to say about the world around us.

Unbound Worlds: This is quite a protagonist you’ve come up with: Oichi Angelis is partially deaf, dumb, and blind. She’s practically a slave, and beneath the notice of her supposed superiors. Yet somehow, she has turned most of these conditions into an array of lethal advantages. What was it like developing her? Was it a gradual process, or did she spring to mind whole?

Emily Devenport: Oichi showed up in a dream, and she already knew who she was. What was gradual about the process was the original idea – some writer friends and I were tossing around the concept of a serial killer on a generation ship. But we didn’t come up with anything that sparked, so I forgot about it until I dreamed about Oichi. Even then, I ended up writing it as a novella; I didn’t see the bigger picture until maybe a year after the novella was published in Clarkesworld.

By the way, you can’t take Oichi at her word when she says she’s partially deaf, dumb, and blind. Even before she meets Medusa, she has managed to side-step those restrictions, thanks to her father’s implant. This is part of the reason she’s so dangerous. She seems to have handicaps (in the literal sense of the word), but she can get around them and kill before her targets know they’re in trouble.

UW: I don’t necessarily want to define “generation ship” fiction as its own genre, but there’s certainly a tradition there. As a writer, are there any advantages inherent in such a setting? Any potential pitfalls?

ED: I think “generation ship” qualifies as a sub-genre (possibly a sub-sub-genre?). The advantage of that sort of setting is that it’s fascinating. The very name pushes your “WOW” button. As a writer, you’ve got the advantage of having characters who start out in peril from the get-go — they’re risking everything on the gamble that they’re going to reach their destination and then successfully colonize a new world (or conceivably a solar system with useful stuff in it, if they choose to keep living in space).

I can’t see any pitfalls in the idea. Every challenge is interesting: what will they do to simulate gravity? What drives the ship? Will they be in stasis the whole time, live in a habitat where they grow their own crops? Some combination of the two? And the list of things that can go wrong is a long one. Stuff going wrong is what drives a story.

UW: In science fiction, ships are often “characters” in their own ways. Can you talk about the ship itself, its AI, and how both interact with Oichi? Are ship and character substantially separate?

ED: I believe a good setting is a character in its own right. Olympia is an unfolding mystery, partly because it revealed itself to me in parts — and it’s so huge! I deliberately avoided saying exactly how big, because I didn’t want to limit the possibilities. It’s a place of contrasts: The airy Habitat Sector where the executives live and craft their laws; the endless, narrow tunnels where the worms live and work; the man-made mountains and valleys of the hull, where few people venture.

Medusa and her sister units can interface with Olympia‘s systems, and so can Oichi. So I can’t say they’re separate. When they’re all linked together, you could think of that as a sort of consciousness. In my opinion, consciousness is always a composite creature.

UW: The story is set in the far future, but there are plenty of relatively contemporary references in the novel. Oichi’s father quotes media theorist Marshall McLuhan, at one point. It occurred to me that authors always have a choice to make when it comes to including contemporary ideas in their fiction. One way is to put it into action in the narrative and hope the reader gets the message. Another is to directly quote the ideas’ originators. I think you do both, but did you consider it important to name-check your sources, as well? Are you hoping that your readers will check these out?

ED: I think it’s only necessary to check sources if the reference is supposed to be accurate. For instance, Ashur thinks there was a famous schemer named Machiavellia. Distortions and misunderstandings can add flavor to a story. But we did try to check our sources for a lot of things (and I hope we got them right). One thing about it — if you get them wrong, it does prompt people to investigate, and that can be a good thing. (And HOORAY for copy editors.)

UW: Speaking of culture, music is obviously very important to the story. Is it important to you? Could I listen to songs referenced in the novel as a sort of playlist?

EM: Music is very important to me. I’ve always had a profound reaction to it. When I was a kid, music was a device that freed my imagination. In the movie “Fantasia”, the narrator tries to explain imaginative visualization to the audience, beginning with Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” I had been fascinated that it was necessary to explain something that came so easily to me, but now it makes sense. Not everyone connects with music that way, and it’s a process that can be learned.

I heard a lot of music at home, but one of my best exposures to it was in movies and on TV. The score of a movie is always at least as important to me as the images. The music for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” makes me shiver. And the theme song for the “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” TV show is adventure personified.

You can absolutely listen to any and all of this music. You should be able to find it on Youtube, and also for sale online (in the format of your choice).

UW: Am I off base here, or does Medusa Uploaded also function as a kind of critique of late-stage capitalism? Were you specifically hoping to hit some of these kinds of notes in the story or did it just evolve that way?

ED: That was my bitter resentment leaking through. I actually have nothing against Capitalism – in fact, I think it’s essential for a free society. But I think it needs to be balanced with some Socialism (and vice-versa). Authoritarianism is the thing I consider to be the biggest danger. The freedoms that we currently enjoy in the U. S., the right to vote, the right to spend our money where we choose, and the right to speak/dissent, are the only balances we have against authoritarianism. We shouldn’t give any of them up.

UW: There’s a sequel coming. Do you have a date?

EM: The sequel will be out in 2019, but I don’t have the exact date, yet.