The Human Experience · Episode
Episode 71 – Michael Marshall Smith – World Class Fiction Writing
A conversation with Michael Marshall Smith
Michael Marshall Smith is a writer that writes in various formats: novels, for screen and short stories. He also writes under the name of Michael Smith (initially due to a similar author named on another book,…
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Michael Marshall Smith is a writer that writes in various formats: novels, for screen and short stories. He also writes under the name of Michael Smith (initially due to a similar author named on another book, but he adopted it more fully as a way to publish in different genres: modern day novels under Michael Marshall, horror and sci-fi under Michael Marshall Smith.)
He was born in Knutsford, Cheshire, England, before going through multiple moves with his family, first to Illinois, then Florida, then South Africa and Australia, before returning to England in 1973.
He studied Philosophy, and Social and Political Science at King’s College Cambridge, and once leaving, earned his living as a graphic designer and writer of corporate videos, with his fiction writing happening on the side.
He became a comedy writer and performer on the BBC Radio 4 series And Now in Colour. He also wrote material for surreal comedy Dare to Believe. He toured with the Cambridge Footlights (a comedy club famous for members including Monty Python).
His first published story was The Man Who Drew Cats, and this won the British Fantasy Award in 1991 for “Best Short Story”. His first novel, Only Forward, followed in 1991 and won the August Derleth Award for best novel in 1995 and the Philip K. Dick Award in 2000. He has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 95, 96 and 97. His stories have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including volumes of Dark Voices and Dark Terrors. Other notable novels/stories are The Straw Men novels (The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels).
A number of Michael’s stories have been looked at and reached various stages of adaption by the movie and TV industry, and he has also provided extra materials for other shows and movies. These include TV seriesDare To Believe(2002),Cruise of the Gods(TV Movie, 2002) andLater(2011).
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Michael’s first published story was The Man Who Drew Cats which won the British Fantasy Award in 1991 for “Best Short Story”. He has been published in Postscripts. His first novel, Only Forward, was published in 1994 and won the August Derleth Award for Best Novel in 1995, and then the Philip K. Dick Award in 2000. The plot involves the lead character, Stark, having to find a missing man he believes to have been kidnapped, and travel through the strange zones of his city. In 1996 his second novel, Spares, was released, a novel in which the lead character, Jack, goes on the run with clones who are used for spare body parts for rich people, when he realizes they are people with feelings. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks purchased the film rights for Spares, but a film was never made.
In this episode we spoke to word class fiction author Mr. Michael Marshall Smith. In it we discuss Michael’s writing style, various aspects of genre writing if you are a budding author or just curious you will love this episode.
This conversation will engage your writing genius.
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Find Michael and his work Visit michaelmarshallsmith.com.
or at http://www.ememess.com/
on Instagram: @ememess
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Transcript
A full transcript has been published for this conversation.
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Quotes
Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.
“We often ring-fence extreme behavior as an incomprehensible evil belonging to people unlike us. That is comforting because it protects our identity. I was interested in another possibility: serial killing may occupy the far end of psychological tendencies that also exist, in far less extreme forms, throughout ordinary human behavior.”
From the conversation“My publishers wanted a different name to signal that a new book was not the strange science fiction readers associated with me. I resisted inventing an entirely separate identity because that felt false. The compromise was to shorten my existing name, preserving continuity while giving readers a clear cue that the work occupied another genre.”
From the conversation“We all have small superstitious rituals and irrational sources of comfort or discomfort. I mistrust any philosophy or fiction that completely shuts the door on that dimension of experience. My stories disturb the boundary of consensus reality because I do not believe that rational description exhausts what human beings actually perceive and feel.”
From the conversation“The human mind and the human animal are more interesting than many simplified accounts pretend. Reading Jung and later interpreters strengthened that conviction. Psychology becomes richer when it makes room for contradiction, symbol, shadow, and the strange material that neat theories tend to exclude.”
From the conversation“When coincidence and serendipity increase, we can ask whether the world changed or only our perception changed. The distinction may be impossible to settle, and perhaps it does not matter. Either possibility is fascinating: reality may be arranging itself differently, or attention may have shifted enough to reveal patterns that were always there.”
From the conversation
About the guest
Michael Marshall Smith
Michael Marshall Smith is a writer that writes in various formats: novels, for screen and short stories. He also writes under the name of Michael Smith (initially due to a similar author named on another book, but he adopted it more fully as a way to publish in different genres: modern day novels under Michael Marshall, horror and sci-fi under Michael Marshall Smith.)
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