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An Interview with Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author Catherine Asaro
JMW: Hello, this is Jean Marie Ward from BuzzyMag.com, With
me today is best-selling science fiction and fantasy author Catherine
Asaro. Welcome, Catherine.
Catherine Asaro: Hi.
JMW: I understand that in just a few weeks, less than a month,
you're going to be the guest of honor at Windycon.
Catherine Asaro: That's right.
JMW: And, in honor of the occasion, they have put up an anthology
called "Aurora" --as in, the goddess of the dawn - "in Four voices." Which
features a lot of your shorter pieces and, in fact, a discussion of
physics?
Catherine Asaro: Well, actually, what we did for that anthology is that it's got
a collection of several of my novellas, including "The City of Cries,"
which is one of the best things I've ever written; "The Spacetime Pool" --
which I won the Nebula for and also "Aurora in Four Voices" which is the
title of a story in the anthology.
The stories in that anthology were picked with a particular theme in mind,
which is the mathematics that I use in my writings. Several of the stories
in there depend on a specific, sort of, "mathematical tricks" that I was
playing with; including one that was eventually published in the American
Journal of Physics about getting around problems at the speed of light. It
doesn't work physically because it requires you to make your speed an
imaginary number, which don't exist. But mathematically it works just fine.
There was another story, "The Spacetime Pool" which was one I wrote about --
a lot of things happened -- but there was a lot of math that the story is
based on; including can you model the Moorish arches and architecture from
the Moorish mosques, palaces; like the Alhambra -- these beautiful
buildings that were built by the Moorish.
If you look at the repeating arches, gorgeous arches, you can model those
as sinusoidal functions (the sums of sinusoidal functions). And if you take
a Fourier transform of them, all sorts of interesting things happen. So I
got intrigued by that when I was describing the palace that the story is
based in.
I talked about that and I sent pictures and an essay of the arches for one
of the cathedrals, which used to be a mosque, in Spain. I showed that if
you actually take a sum of sinusoidal functions, they look like the arches
and then I took the Fourier transform and showed them. I also talked about
some of the math behind some of the stories.
JMW: Yeah, but you've not only used the math to describe the
visuals. You've used math and physics as the basis of some of your stories.
Catherine Asaro: Oh yeah, of course.
JMW: How does that work?
Catherine Asaro: Well, it's funny. I never really thought that I was doing it
because I've been a scientist my entire adult life. I got interested in
physics and chemistry when I was in my last couple years in high school but
I didn't really get into it till college. I've done it ever since then. So,
to me, it's just natural to include in my writing; I don't even think of
it.
But when I was trying to get published and I sent -- David Hartwell had
look at some of my work. At one point I asked him "Well, what are you
interested in particularly now?" He said, "Well, the hard science fiction
that you write is really what -- I would like to see more of that."
I was very naive at the time, I was just getting into the field, and I said
"what is hard science fiction?" So he said, "you know, science based.
You've got a lot of science in your fiction." And I said, "I do?" He said,
"Yes, you do."
So for some of my novels, like "Primary Inversion" -- of which you can get
a free version of it in the free library on Baen Books, it's a rewritten
version that I specifically gave to the library. That one has a lot of the
physical basis. In fact, the physics comes from that paper I wrote for the
American Journal of Physics, which describes how you can go faster than the
speed of light. I used all those cute little tricks in mathematics in the
story, and went into a lot of details. Maybe even more detail that some
readers wanted. In a few places I had numbers.
Another one of my books "Spherical Harmonics" does that too. In fact,
"Spherical Harmonics" is this beautiful angular momentum mathematical
function. I had pictures of them in the book and pictures of flying models
and so I get a little carried away.
JMW: Which came first for you, the science fiction or the physics?
Catherine Asaro: Oh, definitely the science fiction. I didn't grow up thinking I
would become a scientist. I was a dancer when I was little. I got
interested, when I was 3 to 4 years old, in ballet. And I started taking
classes as soon as they would let me take ballet classes -- since I was
about 5 or 6. And I did it for most of my life until in college, once I
decided to try math and science; the dancing had to go by the wayside for a
while. You can only do so much and I had to catch up on all these years of
science and math classes. I got back and took some in college. I directed
mainly jazz dancing in Harvard University Ballet at the graduate school. I
was running the whole program for a while; we had dance classes and I was
[inaudible 06:13] shows. I was also writing my doctorate in physics so I
finally had to stop dancing and finish my doctorate.
JMW: But you've picked it up again.
Catherine Asaro: Oh yeah, I've always picked it up.
JMW: And aren't you going to be appearing in Showboat?
Catherine Asaro: Yeah. The run goes from October 21st till November 19th. It's
Saturday and Sunday evening performances. I mean Friday and Saturday.
JMW: There's Windycon in the middle of it
Catherine: Yes I have three days off from the showboat so I'm going to be
[inaudible 06:50].
JMW: But you're also singing in showboat.
Catherine Asaro: Yeah I'm singing some songs and I have the dance lead in that.
JMW: But you've been singing more. I'm trying to get you to give a
plug for your new model, which like "Diamond Star," is as dependent on
music. I mean, Diamond Star, didn't it start as a cycle of songs, instead
of a novel? Or am I getting that wrong?
Catherine Asaro: Well, A little bit. I always had in my mind the story of this
rock star. He's kind of the red sheep at the royal family. He just wants to
be a rock star, he doesn't [inaudible 07:24]. So it was his story and I
wrote the music and a little of the lyrics for the book. I worked with a
rock band called Point Ballad, to kind of soundtrack, basically for the
book, the main song -- the big finale of the whole book. Which bears a lot
[inaudible 07:54] story. It all comes to a finale in the concert with the
main character, where he sings this very powerful angry song called
[inaudible 08:04]. Essentially a song that could start an interstellar was.
The next book "Carnelian," which came out last week, has a lot more going
on than about the rock star character. He only actually comes in a few
scenes in the book. It's about the fallout from that song, which comes at a
really tricky time in relations between the two warring powers in this
civilization and that song could blow apart their attempts to find a peace
treaty.
JMW: The unintended consequences and other things the characters
do.
Catherine Asaro: Yeah. It depends, you know? The character himself might not have
intended to disturb the peace process but he provided their enemies with
this tool, this very powerful thing to use against them.
End Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author Catherine Asaro Interview PART 1