Simon Stephenson is an author and screenwriter (and once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away he was a medical doctor). He is originally from Edinburgh in Scotland but currently lives in Los Angeles, California. He enjoys all kinds of books and most kinds of movies and loves just about everything that has four legs except the chairs in his dentist's waiting room. His spirit animal is P22, their local friendly neighborhood mountain lion.
Stephenson’s first book, Let Not the Waves of the Sea, was a memoir about the loss of his older brother, Dominic, in the Indian Ocean tsunami. His new novel is Set My Heart to Five and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Set My Heart to Five?
A few years ago, I moved to the Bay Area. Everybody I encountered there seemed to be working on an apocalyptic-sounding start-up and it got me wondering what our shared future will look like. The job I had moved there for was writing a screenplay at a company famous for the emotion of their movies, and so it wasn’t a huge leap to decide I was now going to write about a screenwriting android.
Are Jared, Amber, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals?
Jared is closer to me than I sometimes admit. I don’t mean that I am an android—at least, if I am I have been programmed to be unaware of that fact—but we share a tendency to overthink things, interpret things too logically, and sometimes draw the wrong conclusions. Likewise, Jared’s story is ultimately one of a search for a deeper connection with his fellow beings, and I think this is something that a lot of us—and especially readers and writers—can relate to.
How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version?
I had the story and structure more or less sketched out before I began writing, so the real trial-and-error in the writing process came in finding Jared’s voice. That said, there was a scene where Jared watched the movie Titanic that got the chop, and I miss that a bit. The joke was that Jared found the movie heartbreaking, not because of anything to do with Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet, but because seeing such a beautiful machine wrecked due to human error was a profound tragedy to Jared.
Artificial Intelligence, and its potential threats, has been a theme in speculative fiction for decades. It is the subject of short stories, novels, movies, and television. Do you have a favorite representation? A least favorite? (I realize that you may not want to address this one and if that is the case, please don’t. But I also realize it might be so bad that it could be fun to answer.)
Hal 9000 in 2001 is the AI overlord under which we all serve, but there have been many brilliant takes on this, both on the screen and on the page. Still, the narrative generally tends to be that AI are malevolent villains who want to destroy us innocent humans and our precious planet. This always rings a little false to me, not least because we are of course ourselves already destroying the planet. I was therefore more intrigued by a narrative where the robots are the good guys, and this is what happens in Jared’s story. I don’t recall many earlier models of this idea, but If we were able to trace back my own neural pathways, I wouldn’t be surprised if my early exposure to the inimitable ‘Johnny 5’ from the 1986 movie Short Circuit might have played an important role in my lifelong affection for robots.
Do you have an idea or theory regarding why Artificial Intelligence and its potential threat to humans is such a regular question explored in speculative fiction?
I do! I think as humans we have been evolutionarily programmed to fear the unknown. No doubt there was a survival advantage in this when we were cavemen and the darkness actually did harbor dangerous predators, but our world has progressed and our brains have not yet caught up. So, this pre-programmed fear needs an outlet, and just as we once feared the supernatural (witches) and then disease (vampires) and then an unknown ideology (the cold war), I think AI is simply the unknown bogeyman of our time.
As a debut novelist, what have you learned during the process of getting your book published that you would like to share with other writers about this experience?
I think the best thing I can ever tell another writer is also the simplest: keep going. There were a few points along the way with Set My Heart To Five where I might have stopped, but I am very glad I did not. I’d also say that it is a marathon not a sprint—I published a memoir in 2011, and there were nine years between my books. It takes time.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
The Writer’s Library by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager. These two great writers—and readers—traveled around the country interviewing their colleagues about the books that shaped them, and the result is a fascinating and illuminating insight into both the individual writers featured, but also the importance of reading.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
My brother and I loved The Hardy Boys, a series about two young amateur detective brothers who solved ridiculous crimes. We also loved Willard Price’s Adventure series, about two young amateur naturalist brothers who solved ridiculous wildlife crimes. So, basically anything with two young brothers as heroes who solved ridiculous crimes of one kind of another.
Maybe those books were simple wish fulfillment, but I think they also show why representation is so important. Would I have fallen so deeply in love with reading if I hadn’t had access to so many stories where the protagonist looked like a version of me?
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
No, but after I’d made my way through the kids’ section, a kindly librarian used to pick out books from the adult section for me. With hindsight, I suspect she probably kept me away from anything too controversial.
What is a book you've faked reading?
Jane Austen. We studied her work in my final year in school and were meant to read the entire canon. But by the time I had plodded through a couple, I concluded they were all the same story and so when called upon in class I’d just say generic things like "I found the proposal scene quite moving" or "I really think she should have married the young vicar." I got away with it, but in hindsight perhaps nobody else had read all of them either.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
Anything with a cover by a British designer called Jon Gray, who works as Gray318. You might know him from Zadie Smith’s Swing Time,or Jonathan Safran Foer’s black-and-white Everything Is Illuminated. If you are the single person in the United States that purchased the hardback edition of my memoir, Let Not The Waves Of The Sea, you might know him from that, too.
Is there a book that changed your life?
All of them! I spent my childhood in the public library, and whether it be a new perspective, factual knowledge, or an emotional journey, I think every book I have ever read has changed it in some way or another. So I would say that reading as a whole changed my life immeasurably, and I have no idea who I might be without it.
But here is a silly example: Thomas Harris’ Silence Of The Lambs. I read it far too young, staying up late and trembling in fear yet being unable to stop reading. There is a scene in that book in which a senator’s daughter is abducted after stopping to help the serial killer load furniture into a truck. To this day, if I see anybody loading furniture into a truck I do not stop to help, but immediately cross the street.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
You Know Me, Al by Ring Lardner is just about the funniest book I have ever read. It is styled as a series of letters by a journeyman baseball player to his friend back home, and just about every sentence will make you laugh-out-loud. It was first published in 1916 and is sadly all but forgotten now.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
It would have to be Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I do still re-read it, anyway but I would love to be able to come to it completely fresh again.
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, tv, more traditional art forms) that has impacted you?
A couple of years ago I was in a deep funk and the musician Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger In The Alps reached me in a way that nothing had done for a long time. It’s hauntingly beautiful and brilliantly written—in the first few lines she uses "Walden" as a verb, and as far as I am concerned it now forever is one – and opened me back up to the world after a long period of feeling shut down. As a fellow Angeleno, it also has special resonance because there is a song called "Scott Street", about the place in Echo Park. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I lived right off there, and Echo Park also happens to be where Jared lives in Set My Heart To Five when he arrives in our city.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
This has changed so much this year. In previous years I might have said I’d like to wake early and cycle in Griffith park, head out to Malibu with a dog, and then attend some wonderful rooftop party with all my friends and family. This year, I’d settle for just being able to go to an air-conditioned movie theater on a hot day without worrying that we are all going to die.
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
"Would you like a dose of this coronavirus vaccine, that has been proven to be safe and effective?"
"Yes, Dr. Fauci, don’t mind if I do."
What are you working on now?
During the long gap between my first and second books, I promised myself that I would prevent that from happening ever again by having the third book completely written and ready to go by the time the second book was published. Needless to say, the second book has been out for a month and I am just now sitting down to begin work on the third book.
