Breaking Down Walls

By Nicola Griffith on August 29, 2024

Not long after I was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame I sat down with Will Taylor for an interview for the Museum of Popular Culture. We talked about all kinds of things: the title comes from my recent decision to start making a concerted effort to break down the walls between my various literary gardens, that is, to get rid of all these artifical genre labels so that readers of my SFF know about the Aud novels, readers of Aud know about Hild, and readers of Hild know about my SFF. (And my memoir. And edited anthologies. And essays. And short fiction...)

Here's one small segment to whet your appetite.

Whose science fiction and fantasy work would you recommend for those who love yours? Who should be taking their place in the Hall of Fame next year?

I would like to see Suzy McKee Charnas in the Hall of Fame. She was a contemporary of Vonda McIntyre and Russ and Tiptree. She wrote the Holdfast Chronicles, and as a writer she was fearless, utterly unflinching. I've just written an introduction to a new edition of The Vampire Tapestry that I think will be out either the end of this year or beginning of next. Charnas completely changed vampire fiction. She also wrote the very first novel that I know of with no men in it at all. She was a great writer. And her influence . . . Think of her as the SF equivalent of the Velvet Underground. They might not have sold a lot of albums, but a huge percentage of people who bought one of those albums formed a band that did sell a lot. She's like that—more influential than first appears. I think a lot of people owe quite a bit to Suzy Charnas.

For those who like my books, who else might they enjoy? I would say Kate Atkinson—also from Yorkshire, also with a science-fictional mind. And if you like the Hild books, or at least the Early Medieval north, then Maria Dahvana Headley's Beowulf translation—it's not like any other, more a thrillingly modern but capturing-the- essence interpretation of the original, as Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red does with Homer. Elizabeth A. Lynn. Both her science fiction, like A Different Light, and fantasy, such as the Chronicles of Tornor. And Jo Walton, she has a wonderful range. Rivers Solomon is doing some very interesting things.

Breaking Down Walls, MoPOP, August 2024