Jon Courtenay Grimwood burst onto the science fiction scene 10 years ago with NEOADDIX and has defined the leading edge of speculative fiction since then, with books including REMIX, REDROBE, the ARABESK trilogy and STAMPING BUTTERFLIES. His latest U.S. release, 9TAIL FOX, is a noir tale about a San Francisco policeman who must solve his own murder.

BOOKGASM: Anyone can read a summary for 9TAIL FOX on the back of the book or on Amazon. But what kind of book did you set out to write, and was that what you ended up with?

GRIMWOOD: 9TAIL FOX was my sanity book. After nine strands across three timelines in STAMPING BUTTERFLIES, I wanted to write a fast-moving novel, told from one person’s POV, with a beginning, middle and end, all action taking place over a short time. I wanted to do it with almost no flashbacks, while framing the lot within the structure of a crime novel. 9TAIL FOX was the result.

All my books begin with an image, and the image for 9TAIL was Bobby Zha struggling awake in New York after being shot in San Francisco. I knew he’d messed up his life and that he was getting one last chance to redeem himself as a father, a law enforcement officer and as a human being. As soon as I had those two points, everything else followed.

BOOKGASM: What allure does San Francisco – and Chinatown in particular – hold for writers? Is there somewhere you’d love to set a story that you haven’t already?

GRIMWOOD: It’s that old saying: Someone tilted the U.S. on its side and a lot of the really interesting people rolled down the slope into San Francisco. It’s an amazing city. Not that big, of course, but it has a cast-iron identity in the way New York or Tokyo has. And I spent my teens reading and re-reading Raymond Chandler! So, 9TAIL is a homage to that.
 
The Chinatown thing is more complex. I grew up in the Far East, and many of my strongest memories are of Chinatowns in other cities: huge paper dragons at New Year, fireworks and crackers, even opium dens. There is something inherently fascinating about a city within a city. It suggests secrets and worlds that cross and yet remain separate. This is mirrored in 9TAIL in the tales Bobby Zha’s grandfather told him about the overlapping worlds of the gods, humans and spirits. 
 
Of course, the city within a city exists everywhere. There’s a city for teenagers, another for adults, and children, for men, for women, across race and class. All offer overlapping rings that contain a mix of different worlds. The whole planet is science fiction if you look closely enough.

BOOKGASM: How do you think 9TAIL FOX and Bobby Zha stack up against your other novels and characters?

GRIMWOOD: I love Bobby as a character. It’s been suggested I bring him back, but I think that Bobby fulfils his destiny in the book and I’m not sure it’s possible – or that I’d want to do it. At the moment, my two favorite books are 9TAIL FOX and END OF THE WORLD BLUES, with a soft spot for PASHAZADE because it was the first of the Ashraf Bey mysteries.
 
9TAIL FOX was my attempt to write the extraordinary as normal and the normal as extraordinary. In a way, I think my characters get more layered and the books simpler as time goes on.

BOOKGASM: So much of 9TAIL FOX is a slow reveal, moving the plot along with a snippet of the past here, a fragment of truth there. Was the pacing something you had to consciously keep in check?

GRIMWOOD: Yes, and not really, if that makes sense. After REDROBE, I taught myself not to chew up and spit out a whole novel’s worth of ideas on a single page. So all my books have slow reveals these days. It comes from the way my mind mostly works: It doesn’t embrace everything at once; it chews at facts or problems and eventually solutions fall into place. Most people I know work like that – but that might just be the people I know.
 
I think writing and reading a novel is like exploring a fresh city: You arrive, you take a look round, you get a sense of the people, and then you think you know the place. A little bit later, you realize you know almost nothing, and begin the process all over again. Most of the books I write these days work like that: You think you know something and then realize you don’t … until the end, when everything comes clear in one final reveal.

BOOKGASM: As an American sci-fi fan, one of my favorite parts of an international vacation are the bookstores, and all the great books that I can’t easily get in the States, from the UK publisher Gollancz. Are we ever going to see a day when one of your books gets near-simultaneous publication in the U.S. and the UK?

GRIMWOOD: Interesting question. REMIX and REDROBE were released in the U.S. in a distribution deal I don’t even remember agreeing with my then-agent. The Ashraf Bey books were published in the U.S. a couple of years after Britain, in slightly changed versions. There is a difference between U.S. and European audiences in what is acceptable for POV switches within novels, chapters and scenes.

Now, 9TAIL is being released by Night Shade and END OF THE WORLD BLUES by Bantam Spectra, and the gap is closing. Will the next round of books get simultaneous publication? I don’t know; it’s up to the publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, and my agent.

BOOKGASM: END OF THE WORLD BLUES – which just won the 2006 British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel – is due out in the U.S. in September, but what are you working on right now?

GRIMWOOD: A crime novel based in Heaven, Hell and Mexico City, featuring a several-hundred-year-old hero and Joan of Arc as his lover. It’s based around a back history of John Milton’s PARADISE LOST and Joan of Arc’s campaign to free France from the English. But it opens in New York and takes in Japan as well.
 
It’s probably going to be three books, although I won’t know for certain until I get to the end of book one and work out how much space I need to wrap up the plot. I’m taking the skills I learnt from writing 9TAIL FOX and END OF THE WORLD BLUES and applying them to “Thrones and Powers.” So expect a beginning, middle and end; a single main character, plus Joan; and assorted angels and demons.

BOOKGASM: Last summer saw your Arabesk trilogy and George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen trilogy released simultaneously in the U.S. What do you think these books say about Arab culture in relation to the state of the world today? About the role of science fiction?

GRIMWOOD: I haven’t read the Effinger trilogy. Although, since being told about it, I’ve bought old paperback copies that sit and stare at me from my unread shelves. All science fiction is about the time in which it is written – all fiction is. Science fiction just takes a sideways look at today.
 
In the Ashraf Bey books, I’m dealing with an alternate Ottoman empire that survives into our time, so it’s Turkish, although the books take place in Egypt and Tunis. It’s a liberal Islamic empire, trying to negotiate its way between a dominant German Empire, a French empire, a slightly isolationist U.S., and the Brits.
 
Our understanding of Middle Eastern and North African culture is limited. It’s as varied, in its way, as the culture across Europe. So religion, politics and everyday life in Saudi Arabia bears little likeness to life in Morocco, which is the whole width of Africa away. So in the books, I’m dealing with Ottoman and North African culture rather than Arab.

BOOKGASM: What books are you most looking forward to reading right now? Are there any up-and-coming writers we should look out for?

GRIMWOOD: At the moment, I’m sitting on a British Airways flight which is four hours late taking off. There are engineers crawling over the wing, and my section of cabin seems peopled almost exclusively with bit parts from a hideous mix of THE OFFICE meets a rerun of WALL STREET. Plus, I’m going to be late into New York, if this plane gets there at all. The only thing keeping me sane – apart from doing this interview obviously – is the fact I have a bound proof of the new Haruki Murakami novel, AFTER DARK.
 
One of the other books I’m looking forward to reading is China Mieville’s new novel for children, UN LUN DUN, which has had rave reviews at this end. There’s a whole stack of stuff back at the house but I can’t remember what it is at the moment, although I could describe the covers…

BOOKGASM: Anything else you’d like to add?

GRIMWOOD: Writing is an obsession, but being able to make living from it is a privilege. I get to set my own days and work my own hours. They might be absurd, but I get to set them myself! –Ryun Patterson

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• 9TAIL FOX by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

OTHER RECENT BOOKGASM AUTHOR INTERVIEWS:
• Q&A with FISH OF SOULS’ Gary Williams
• Q&A with GHOST RIDER’s Greg Cox
• Q&A with SECRETS OF THE MODEL DORM’s Amanda Kerlin