PART I

LEV GROSSMAN: People describe you (as they do me) as a writer who works in the shadow lands between literary fiction and science fiction. Is that how you’d describe yourself?

CHARLES YU: As much as I like the idea of being some kind of creature lurking in the shadow lands, I can’t say I do think of it that way. I wish to politely yet firmly deny the premise of the question. There’s a kind of “implied map of fiction” embedded within the whole way of thinking about this—the idea that “literary” is Norway and “science fiction” is Sweden. Not only do I not think those two sovereign nations are mutually exclusive; I don’t think they are even well-defined territories, right? I don’t believe in the genre distinction.

It’s not as if I sit around classifying myself. When I sit down to write, I don’t think, Today I shall write fabulist-inflected literary fiction, etc. It’s more like, Unnngggh, and, Grrrrr, and, I can’t believe I squeezed out 150 words today and they all suck. But maybe that’s just me.

I’ll flip the question back to you: how do you describe yourself?

LG: I once thought as you do. Lately I’ve been getting more interested in borders. I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing the different conventions of literary fiction and fantasy off each other, and I feel like you can’t do that unless you’re committed to the idea that somewhere out there there’s a line between them. Though I wouldn’t want to have to actually point to it.

I’m pro-border: I like them because I like sneaking across them.

PART II

LEV GROSSMAN: What do you think makes your work different from “straight” science fiction?

CHARLES YU: Tone. Voice. I like playing science-fiction songs on my acoustic guitar. I would argue that you are doing something more complicated: you are writing something that works on two registers: if someone wants to listen to your stuff as a “straight” fantasy, it’s wildly successful on that level. But if someone wants to look at all the lyrics, and read the liner notes, and knows music theory and history, etc., and appreciates all that you’re doing on all of those levels, that stuff is there, too. You make a complex wave that can be decomposed into constituent frequencies.

LG: It’s important to me that my books can be read by someone who’s just looking for straight fantasy. I love that reader. I want that reader to have everything he or she wants. But then, yes, there’s all this other stuff that’s resonating above and below it, too. I think of Watchmen as a model. It’s a magnificent, brutal dissection of superhero comics—but if you so desire you can read it as a great superhero comic. There’s always that option.

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