Lancelot Schaubert — When was the first time you made up a story, Andrew Najberg?

Andrew Najberg — Hm. I started writing short stories in 5th grade. To put it nicely, I was a bit…disruptive…in my classes. I’d just been moved to a new city and school from a place I’d been very happy, and I can’t say I adjusted well. For one reason or another, the teachers I had gave me a lot of leeway to guide my own activities though because a) if I did, I was not disruptive, and b) I would self-direct to constructive things – books, puzzles, educational games – and, then they got their first classroom computer which I was one of the only kids in the class who knew how to use (the teachers actually didn’t know how to use it either which is a bit of an amusing story itself). There, I discovered the word processor. Turned out I could spend the whole school day writing stories and since my grades were high – they were totally cool with that.

Lancelot Schaubert — How much extra time did you log that way from the norm?

And what were some of the first stories you wrote or pulled from?

Andrew Najberg — So, I literally would get a couple hours of free time like that a day – I did at the time mostly draw – but that worked to teach me a LOT about the value of detail.

The earliest stories were largely fan fiction that drew from predominantly from the Ninja Turtles, Garfield the Cartoon, and the Alien franchise – I was actually quite obsessed with all three. That was about the same time I started reading Stephen King and Fantasy like Lord of the Rings and Wizard of Earthsea though, so my writing really started moving towards creepy short stories and writing the opening chapters of fantasy novels (but never more than the opening chapters).

After a while, I started to draw a lot from folk like Poe and Hawthorne as well because they both wrote some pretty wicked short stories that I think still hold up today.

LS — First encouraging note? Who was it? What did they say?

AN — So, the first encouraging note I remember was from Mr. Sherwood, my 8th grade English teacher. I asked him if he could read some of my short stories, and he told me they reminded him of old gothic ghost stories. However the note that had the biggest impact was my 10th grade archeology teacher. I sadly have forgotten her name, but she allowed me to take more creative approaches to the assigments and on the top of the third one I submitted she wrote “these have been really lovely. You have a gift.” It really stuck with me more than anything else.

LS — How did you ramp up your artistic practice?

AN — Well, even as a teenager, I started to develop something of a compulsion to create. It’s just one of my absolute top choices for how to spend my time. However, I entered college as a computer science major, but at the start of my junior year, I enrolled in a poetry workshop as an upper level elective. I really clicked with both the workshop format and the professor, Dr. Arthur Smith. When I took a fiction workshop the next semester, I switched my major to English. Since then, alongside the practice of just “doing” writing, I’ve completed my BA and MA in English and received an MFA in poetry.

AN — On a side note – got voted into the 2024 indie horror brawl with Gollitok. It’s gonna be a fun event!

LS — Yo! Congrats.

What do you think are some of the key pickups about the art of fiction you’ve learned along the way? And what are some successes you’ve fielded so far?

While we’re at it — you teach too, right? Have your students taught you anything about the art of writing that you didn’t expect?

AN — Oh, there are so many things to be honest. If I had to pick a place to start, I think Id begin that your vision of the story and the plot are two very different things and that the latter can succeed while the former fails- but much less so vice versa. If you get consumed in conveying all parts of your vision to the detriment of the experience of you story in sensory terms, readers are likely to disengage. However if the experience of events is compelling and clear, your reader will often forgive deep ambiguities.

Another point I would emphasize is the importance if keeping the core emotional drive of the piece simple and even primitive. Someone protecting their family. A child angry at a parent. The loss of a sibling. Need for food. These are shared drives that resonate and can be at the heart of the most complicated story. However, if the story ISNT driven by something that resonates, you’ll struggle to convey a story that feels like ita more than a complicated artiface.

As far as teaching goes, I learn from students all the time, both by examining their work critically and by experiencing their work as a reader. When I examine their work critically, the thing I see most often is the value of structure. The need for consequential actions that turn the narrative; for characters to have a recognizable desire; setting to matter. The value of paragraphs. Reading their work as a reader – I am consistently surprised and delighted by the variety of visions and approaches. Sure, some work, some don’t, but they always remind me of how many ways stories can move from point a to point b.

LS — That’s a good word.

You work a lot with motivation / reaction units?

And what was the process of this story that you wrote for OGAG?

AN — Yeah – even in my own work, when I think of the next scene – I almost always put it through what I think of as the “this happened, therefore this happened” test. If the causality in the story reads “This happened then this happened” in most cases something is going wrong. I find that if I want an “outside force” to operate – it needs to enter WHILE the character(s) do something that has resulted from the prior scene.

AN — We Have No Spare Parts in Of Gods and Globes III is a piece I’m really fond of – I LOVE science, especially science where space intersects with medicine, and this piece really let me dig into both. I’ve had a long interest in “long-term” space-faring stories and “stranded at sea” stories for some time, and it’s a topic I’ve broached before in the context of a generational ship, so I wanted to write a more survival based story that contained a horrifying element drawn from the innate human desire to survive.

However, I didn’t want to resort to something as simple and done as cannibalism, but I happened to be thinking at the same time about both Zeno’s Paradox of the Ship of Theseus and the idea of uploaded consciousness. Since both those stretched the limit of what it actually means to be human, they felt like a really natural intersection. From there, it really became a question of creating a central character who is confronted by a false binary – the choice that they either must upload or have their parts systematically replaced. I’ll admit – I’ve always found those choices philosophically antithetical to that which makes us human, and so I wanted our protagonist to face down that fact, and I know from the outset that whatever decision he makes at the close, it has to assert his humanity over artificiality.

From there – much of what remained in the composition tackled logistics – because I’d drawn from the ship of Theseus, I wanted to embed elements of myths of Theseus as a major theme – which is where their mining mission came from. The asteroid belt is itself a kind of labyrinth, and of course I needed to bring in Persephone – especially with all her underworld tones.

Yeah – even in my own work, when I think of the next scene – I almost always put it through what I think of as the “this happened, therefore this happened” test. If the causality in the story reads “This happened then this happened” in most cases something is going wrong. I find that if I want an “outside force” to operate – it needs to enter WHILE the characters do something that has resulted from the prior scene.

LS — Or the desire behind it?

AN — From there – much of what remained in the composition tackled logistics – because I’d drawn from the ship of Theseus, I wanted to embed elements of myths of Theseus as a major theme – which is where their mining mission came from. The asteroid belt is itself a kind of labyrinth, and of course I needed to bring in Persephone – especially with all her underworld tones.

LS — Can you talk a little about how the story shifted a bit with editorial notes?

AN — Well, I think one of the most important roles of the editor is that distance they bring – where a strong editor looks at the piece from outside the muck that clogs most writers’ minds when it comes to

What their piece is “about.”

In this case, the most interesting edits pressed on the thematics of the material, making sure the ideas said where the ideas meant – and those kinds of clarifications can affect the piece in unexpected ways; in this piece, for example – I found myself viewing the end of the piece in a significantly different light with all editorial notes conisered.

LS — Yeah it’s hard to talk about it without spoiling, but I think I had the heaviest hand on this story compared to my editorial notes on all of the others. I did it because I believed your story had the greatest potential of the set, specifically because of the themes mentioned. Brandon’s in volume two affected me similarly; LJ Cohen’s in the first. I mean, they’re always rejectable, an editor’s suggestions, but it seemed to be a milestone for me as an editor to be able to say, “Hey if we invert this entire paragraph line by line and do some callbacks here, here, and here, then shift this structure here, it’ll really sing.” I don’t know if it felt that way, I hope it was a good experience for you, but especially with the Ship of Theseus theme, it made me wonder how much we could milk that for the sake of what it means to be human

AN — Yeah – I really liked the adjustment. I have no issue rejecting a change – I’ve had pieces where there were definitely editorial recommendations that I felt would damage the large intent of the piece. In this case though, when I hit the suggested ending, I actually felt it cut right to the thing I was working toward.

LS — So if someone’s a fan of your work — or scifi and fantasy in general — why do you think they’d like this story or the anthology in general?

AN — Because of the way it generates both meaning and tension from body horror drawn from the uncanny. This, to me, IS largely a science fiction story with clear philosophical undertones – but the way in which the limits of being human are explored are most certainly grotesque and the premise itself is grounded in existential dread (forever adrift – but with just enough means to sustain the suffering and isolation almost indefinitely). Readers of both The Mobius Door and Gollitok have pointed out that both books are perhaps as much science fiction as they are horror in their own ways – and those readers will feel right at home here.

LS — Is it connected to your other stories at all?

AN — Depends on how you look at it. I’ve never deliberately linked my stories, but I also recognized while assembling my forthcoming collection of short fiction in which We Have No Spare Parts appears that there is something of an overlapping vision of the future in my science fiction writing. This story could exist in the same universe of a couple other pieces, specifically “Robot Fish Don’t Know Theyre in Water” and “The Taste of Lemons”.

LS — Do any of the characters reappear? Or any of the tech?

AN — No none of the characters reappear – but the tech level is certainly comparable. They all tackle an Earth in nascent space exploration, and there are a lot of societal parallels as well.

LS — Can we make Lancelot’s rule of canon, right here, right now?

How about this:

Unless an author declares otherwise, by virtue of being the author of two discrete works and therefore the hub of disparate spokes, if two works can conceivably occupy parallel narrative or subcreative space, they do. Even when the author is silent on their canonicity.

— Lancelot’s rule of Authorial Canon

Which is a fancy way of me saying, “Please, please, please make them the same world.”

AN — Lol! Sure, lets run with that.

LS — You heard it here first, folks. OGAG III contains not merely great fiction by Andrew Najberg, but great fiction from Andrew Najberg’s canon.

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