This month, it was my absolute pleasure to speak with author Stephen Graham Jones. He’s the New York Times bestselling author of some thirty novels and collections, with some novellas and comic books in there as well. Most recent are The Angel of Indian Lake (the concluding chapter of his acclaimed Indian Lake Trilogy—a must-read for slasher horror fans in this writer’s opinion—and the ongoing Earthdivers comic book series. Up before too long are I Was a Teenage Slasher, True Believers, and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.  He lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.

While his most recent and well-known works have fallen primarily in the horror genre, SGJ’s fiction covers the breadth and depth of the speculative including dark fantasy and science fiction, with a heavy dose of noir and crime thriller to boot. It was no surprise then to discover his YFAFA pick was an author who also defies categorization.

And the fact they’re both known by three initials doesn’t hurt either!

Who is your favorite author and why?

Philip K. Dick, easy. I was initially drawn to the sophistication and kind of clockwork mechanisms of his nested realities, and how all of this could be delivered or expressed in the most simple, unfancy language. But then I stayed for the sincerity. Every novel of his I read, it feels like he starts out just having to fulfill a contract, make a deadline. A few pages in, though, things get so wrapped up—ontologically, metaphysically—that it feels like the only way PKD can save his own life and extract himself from this reality he’s discovered is to write his way out. His stories matter to him, I’m saying. That’s what I appreciate the most in fiction.

I agree. The metaphysical element in PKD’s writing is something that resonates on the micro/sentence-level and the macro/plot and thematic levels. There is a spirituality behind it, a sense of meaning and purpose. I see the same in your writing because you’re often writing about the past and tradition and family but you also seem to find weight in slashers and basketball and pop culture nostalgia without prejudice or weighing one heavier than the other. Could you talk a little about the process of telling your own stories imbued with your own beliefs and things that matter to you?

I guess that’s just the only way I know to do it? I mean, if it’s going to matter to the reader, it has to matter to me first, and it only matters to me if it’s made from things that are real to me, and those are the things in my own life. I’m not saying there’s werewolves and vampires in my day-to-day existence, but there are people who act more like animals than I think they should, and there’s people who are definitely draining every life force they can. There’s zombies and ghosts all around us, too—at different times, I imagine I’ve been both.

When were you first made aware of PKD and when were you first drawn to his work?

I was twenty-two, my first year of graduate school. A friend in the program I was in, Keith Irwin, had a reissue of VALIS on his desk one day when I was over. I picked it up, read the back, and Keith told me that he thought I would like this writer, that he was trippy. So I took the book home, inhaled it, inhaled that trilogy, and then set out to find all the other PKD I could. Couple years after this, over at Keith’s apartment again, we needed to look something up and he opened “Google.” I asked what’s this?, and he said it was this new search engine. In retrospect, it was weird, seeing it for the first time, and in the same place I’d stumbled onto PKD.

How did what you were reading from PKD line up with or run perpendicular to or run away from what you were reading during that first year of grad school?

Between undergrad and my masters, over that summer, I plowed through a list of 110 novels a professor had given me that she considered essential reading. So, when I came to PKD, my head was still swimming with everything canonical. Which had included a bit of science fiction, but not much. So, falling into VALIS, it felt like a coming home. I’d cut my teeth on genre, and then got directed to all the literary stuff. Which was great. There’s wonderful craft and technique to be had and learned there, and just some strong storytelling. But genre, as alien and extreme as it usually is, it feels like home.

Speaking of genre and academics, back in ‘02 or ‘03, Octavia Butler was a visitor in my fiction workshop. It was going to be great, but then we got to talking about PKD right off the bat, and she said he wasn’t really a science fiction writer—more “science fantasy”—and I kept insisting he was, so . . . we just argued in front of class for forty-five minutes. And, of course, she was right, and it was actually and really wonderful having her there, and talking with her. Just, I should have been less stubborn, less defensive of a hero. But, all these years later, I do agree that PKD wasn’t interested in extensions of existing technology, which was Butler’s threshold for a writer or work being science fiction. PKD was interested in extensions of society, and his gadgets and science fiction trappings were just tricks he used to get us looking in the same scary direction he was.

Is there one particular piece of work from this author that you are especially fond of or that’s had a significant creative impact on you? What is that piece and what makes it so appealing or affecting for you?

Probably Ubik. The instability under both the characters’ and the readers’ feet is something I’ve never fallen out of love with. They, and we, think we know where we are, and what’s real. But . . . maybe not. Probably not, even. And there’s a moment, a sort of scene or image—all these people kind of half-in, half-out of a floor, a ground—that I’ve never shaken off, that I think I’m always sort of writing towards.

When you’re writing or even preparing to write, are you thinking in terms of images, scenes, or sequences like that? I feel like you have a deep reservoir of visual pop cultural touch-points on call, whether from PKD, slashers, comics, etc. but they’re never employed in a way that feels like “homage for homage’s sake.” Is this an organic process or one more considered and then cleaned up?

It’s more that when I think about the “terrain” or “landscape” I grew up, I don’t necessarily think of land or place, I think of media. Specifically, MTV, but also early Fox stuff—The Simpsons, Werewolf, all that. And then the shore I washed up on, finally, was Pop Up Video on VH1. That and Terminator 2 are probably two of the more important texts that inform what I do on the page. Okay, and X-Files. And Spider-Man comic books. And Louis L’Amour westerns.

How often do you revisit Ubik or PKD’s work in general? What lessons have you learned at various times from the work?

I read Ubik probably every three years. There’s always something more there. PKD was hitting on a lot of levels with that book. Well, with most of his books, really, but especially with that one. It’s got a sort of desperation to unlocking its secrets that’s so compelling, to me. So seductive. But it never forgets to be funny, either. The humor in PKD is one of the main tricks he uses to get you to believe this world is real.

Humor is such an underrated element in speculative fiction. I mean just look at something like horror where so many of its iconic antagonists in horror fiction are known for a good one-liner here or there. Are there any particular lessons in humor you’ve picked up from PKD and applied in your own writing?

Just that being serious and dour and “down” the whole time doesn’t flesh the world out. Like that, you’re just seeing one side of this reality. But no world is completely without humor. Yeah, there’s likely terrible stuff going on, but, under that kind of pressure, somebody or another’s going to find the perfect moment to crack a joke, just to ease all this tension. Comedy and humor makes worlds feel real. To say it different, when I’m reading or watching something with zero chuckles, I tend to drift away, as this all feels made-up. And I want to visit the real places, please.

Are there any pieces in the author’s oeuvre that have not worked as well for you? If yes, which ones and why do you think that connection was not as strong?

Some of his early-early works maybe aren’t quite as strong? The World Jones Made, say? I mean, you can see a lot of what he would later do already trying to happen in that one, and of course the title has a certain appeal to me, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe it doesn't hold together quite so well as what-all would soon be coming? Or, could be that it’s just so brief, that it’s over before I could quite get all the way lost, like I like to be.

What writing lessons have you taken, purposefully or accidentally, from your favorite author?

To not be too precious about the prose. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am too precious with my prose—the rhythm, the syntax, the inflections, the nuance, all of that. But, with PKD, you can translate any of his stuff out of English and not a single thing is lost. I really appreciate that kind of…“simplicity” is the wrong word, and “directness” doesn’t quite cover it. Just—unpreciousness about the prose. That’s the best way I can say it. And, it’s not to say he doesn’t have flourishes and fun in his lines, he does. But I think he had a larger goal in mind than pretty word-order, finally.

Are there any works in your bibliography that you feel are closest to the work of your favorite—whether in terms of style, subject matter, length, etc.? Talk a little about those similarities.

PKD does this thing in Radio-Free Albemuth where, mid-sentence in almost the exact middle of the novel, he stops after a clause, well before the period, then picks up again in the next chapter, like this has been a typographic mistake, an error in layout. Except? Now the end of that sentence belongs to a different character—the new protagonist! This took my breath away when I read it. The daring, the nerve. So of course I had to try to somewhat swipe that trick for my novel It Came from Del Rio, where we flip from one character to another mid-book. Just wanted to see if it was a thing I could, or should, do. And what it might gain me.

How would you rate the success of the attempt on your end?

The book’s not currently available—will be soon, here—but . . . people seem to like it enough, I guess? But, also, pulling that trick off, it let me feel like I was sort of alongside PKD for a half step or two. We were two sets of footprints on the beach for moment, there. And then he transubstantiated.

Where does your writing diverge from your favorite author’s? Are there any elements from your favorite author’s work that you would like to incorporate in your own? If yes, what are these?

His honesty, yeah. It always feels like PKD was only lightly disguising himself, or his various situations. He wasn’t quite writing non-fiction, but, all the same, he was very much revealing his own insecurities and foibles and fears. That’s a very honest thing to do, amidst all the lying and genre conceits, the reductions and exaggerations. And, I was always sort of jealous of PKD, that he had Nixon to dress up and rail against. But, then, well . . . then Trump happened, and we’ve all got someone to do that with, and to.

Back to your earlier Google story, it sure does feel more and more with these sliding levels of “realities” in play for various groups, that we’re heading closer and closer to PKD’s vision of the world and future, doesn’t it?

Definitely. His horror of the future was always this ad-driven media landscape, where you can’t walk down the street without a marketing drone settling into the whorl of your ear and whispering sweet, compelling nothings to you, to get you to buy this or that. We’re pretty much there already.

If a reader wanted to start reading your favorite author, what piece would you recommend they start with?

Maybe The Man in the High Castle, or A Maze of Death.. He was firing on all available cylinders, with both of those, but they’re also a bit more . . . “straightforward” would be the wrong word to use for anything PKD. So, maybe, “direct?” No. How about “thrusty,” then. Yeah, thrusty.

If you could ask your favorite author one question about their work, what would it be?

“Tell me more of that pink light, please. And how can I see it too?”

What do you have coming out next on the writing and publishing front? What are you working on now?

About to start in on an overhaul of my Last Stand at Sabre Ridge novel, a science fiction book, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is a very PKD story. But, before that, I have to implement notes on The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, as it’s up soon. And, I have a couple stories due quick-like. Had four due earlier in the week, but, as of today’s writing, just two are left. Oh, and I have to write a short script and finish up Earthdivers. All in a day’s work, as Reader’s Digest says.

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me about your favorite author. Where can readers find you online?

I don't know. Every day I think I'm maybe not on X anymore. But then I am. Maybe just nowhere?

[Readers: check out https://www.demontheory.net for the latest from Stephen Graham Jones.]