An Interview with Mr Reeve

First, I must say that this is one of the most delightfully imaginative novels, YA or otherwise, that I’ve read in some time. Whence came the germ of this idea?

I first thought of LARKLIGHT about ten years ago.  I was killing time in London’s science museum and came across their display of Georgian scientific equipment.  It made me think how nice it would be to do a sci-fi story full of all that brass and mahogany, and I thought at once of a big old house in orbit, and knew it would be called Larklight…  The idea always seemed too thin to hang a whole novel on, but I think the illustrated format – and David Wyatt’s beautiful pictures - lend it a bit more weight.

Your parody of Victorian adventure writing lifts the novel beyond the standard science fiction fare. Did you begin with that concept, or with the sci-fi?

I certainly wouldn’t want to write a conventional sci-fi book, and I’ve always been fascinated by the Victorian sci-fi of HG Wells and Jules Verne.  But their books strove for scientific plausibility, while LARKLIGHT gleefully ignores everything we’ve learned about the solar system and the laws of physics in the past five centuries, so I suppose it’s really fantasy rather than sci-fi.

While Brits and Anglophiles will have easy access to the book’s humor, I wonder if a general American audience of young readers will recognize much of the comedy. Do you worry about that, or did you simply decide to remain true to your concept and damn the torpedoes?

I suspect a lot of the references might go over the heads of a British audience, too, but as long as the story is gripping that shouldn’t matter.  I tend not to think much about the audience when I’m writing.  I just write what amuses me, and hope somebody else will like it too.  But it’s important not to underestimate the intelligence of young readers.  When I was growing up I enjoyed a lot of American humour – the Muppets, MAD magazine, Tom Lehrer, Woody Allen – and of course there were a lot of references I couldn’t hope to understand, but I picked up most of the meanings from their context.

The wide variety of space creatures reminds me of the original Star Wars film, but your principal villains are spiders. A stupidly obvious question: did you feel that using a familiar frightening creature might heighten the suspense?

No, I just hate spiders and couldn’t imagine anything scarier!

The major spider villain is Mr. Webster, who wears a bowler hat. However did you come up with Mr. Webster and his bowler hat?

A few years ago I was talking with my fellow writer and arachnophobe Brian Mitchell and we wondered whether spiders would be more or less scary if they could talk.  And naturally they’d talk with cockney accents.  But where the bowler hat came from, and why Mr Webster wears it, I have no idea at all.

Your pirates turn out to be benevolent. I developed sincere affection for the tentacle twins, especially. Was this one more twist of irony, or were you being sensitive to the delicate psyches of your young audience?

I wasn’t aiming for irony.  I’ve just finished a quartet of novels (called THE HUNGRY CITY CHRONICLES in America, for some reason) which are quite dark and violent, so I wanted to do something sunnier where nobody gets hurt.  (Except spiders, of course, and who cares about them?)  Hence the non-violent pirates.

Would you say that you have affection, nostalgia, or contempt for the old British Empire, with its certitude of bringing benevolent civilization (American spelling) to the savages?

None of the above!  The British Empire of the 19th Century was created by a series of historical accidents; some aspects of it were well-meaning, others hypocritical; much of it was a matter of simple greed.  It’s certainly not worth feeling nostalgic about, but I’ve no time for liberal guilt about it either.  The clichés of Imperial literature, of course, offer lots of scope for comedy.

At the end of the novel you destroy much of London, including some major sites dear to American tourists. Do you dislike London?

I love London.  And compared with what I did to it in MORTAL ENGINES, it gets off quite lightly in this book.

When will we see a sequel? Do you have ideas for Art’s next adventure? Will Ssil ever find her species? Will Myrtle ever loosen up?

I’m writing a sequel at the moment, and have all sorts of ideas, though I haven’t worked out yet which ones will make the final cut.  I can’t see Myrtle loosening up, though.  She’d lose all her charm.

And the final question:

Have you ever, personally, used a brolly as a weapon?

As an Englishman, the only weapons I deploy are ‘the sword of civility and the shield of exquisite tailoring’.