John Shirley is an adventurer, returning from dark and troubled regions with visionary tales to tell.
-Clive Barker
Sometimes reading Shirley, I can hear the guitars, like there's some monstrous subliminal wall-o'-sound chewing at the edges of the text.
-William Gibson
John Shirley is one of the most important contemporary science fiction and horror writers. Along with his friends and collaborators William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, he is considered as one of the “fathers” of the cyberpunk movement and his novels, the Eclipse (A song Called Youth) Trilogy and City Come A-Walkin', have been extremely influential. He has also written many horror novels, including Demons, Crawlers and the splatterpunk classic Wetbones (one of the most unbelievably violent books that I ‘ve had the pleasure of reading). His collection Black Butterflies won the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writters of America. He has co- written the script for the film The Crow and contributed lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult. He was the first person to interview Kiss, back when nobody knew them and is also a punk singer and songwriter, having fronted the bands SadoNation, Obsession and the Panther Moderns. His official website is http://www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/.
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GB:What were your major literary inspirations when you started out?
I was as influenced by film makers, painters and musicians as by books—but I read a great deal of JG Ballard, a fair amount of William Burroughs, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Baudelaire, Thomas Hardy and William Faulkner. As a youth I read Poe, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and the other Burroughs, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who affected how I have, for better or worse, structured many stories, I suspect; in later years I read a lot of Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein. In the sixties and early seventies like many people I read a good deal of Vonnegut, who showed me how political or existential ideas could be expressed in fantastic settings, or with strong allegorical symbology without writing something painfully didactic like The Pilgrim's Progress. CS Lewis also modelled method for me, especially in That Hideous Strength. I read politically too—Emma Goldman, and other radical writers. My writing was affected—perhaps to the detriment of my commerciality—by being my steeped in the music of Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and other progressive rock voices; by the influence of dada, and surrealist painters, like Max Ernst, and by film makers like Roeg and Fellini.
GB: Do you think that cyberpunk has run its course as a science- fiction subgenre, or is there still more to be done with the form?
People can still write it well—just as they can still write hard boiled detective fiction based on the 1940s model. But it will have a "pastiche" quality, will seem almost a parody, perhaps, if they don't look for ways to make it fresh. My Eclipse books and City Come A-Walkin' and certain short stories will have to remain my own cyberpunk statements.
GB:You have worked in
It was not fun when they shot and killed the star of the movie. Brandon Lee was killed by accident, in the course of filming, when the film makers neglected to check the gun that was used in the scene, and thus failed to notice something stuck in the barrel, which was projected by the blank into his heart. This carelessness was a reflection of their values. I would have preferred to write the script alone—I wrote the treatment and first four drafts—and it was very much the
GB: What kind of music have you been listening to lately?
I vacillate between old stuff, like rediscovering the Sex Pistols, listening to the punk channel on Comcast rhapsody (streaming internet radio), listening to Iggy Pop and the better Lou Reed and Sisters of Mercy, the Toadies, Jim Hendrix, Muddy Waters-- and listening to new bands like the Kills, Monster Magnet (a bit "Spinal Tap" sometimes but one of the best bands on the planet anyway), the White Stripes, The Hives, and a million bands and rappers my son plays for me, like Atmosphere. My son Julian is an accomplished Eminem-style rapper RWK Regime (aka Keith Kourage). Of course I still listen to the Blue Oyster Cult, I have a long time loyalty to them—they are the sardonic intellects of hard rock,and virtuoso musicians--and I record my own material (MP3s under "hear John Shirley" at the John Shirley website). There is so much artistic outpouring and so many sources for music now, so much cross pollination, it's overwhelming, it's like the whole world is roaring with creativity, and it's hard to make out any one voice for long.
GB: How did you end up writing lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult (for Heaven Forbid and Curse of the Hidden Mirror)? Are there any plans for a new album?
I was a fan of theirs in 1972 and wrote a novel called Transmaniacon, the title inspired by one of their songs, and they were aware of that; then mutual friends knew they were looking for a new lyricist and hooked me up. I wrote 18 songs for them counting two on soundtracks. Since they're older guys and no longer media-hot, the albums got only a little airplay and almost no critical notices, good or bad. Scarcely anyone knows these new albums exist, though they are available at Amazon and itunes and at major stores. There are, however, plans for a new album—I've given them lyrics and we'll see. I do think that there are at least three songs on the two cds I did with them that would have been hit songs if radio programmers weren't prejudiced against older guys. Even the Rolling Stones, with a bunch of good songs on their new album, aren't getting much airplay, and they're all over tv and filling coliseums. Radio programmers are narrow minded little pussies and people are stupidly prejudiced against older rockers—so I'm starting a band called The Screamin' Geezers, to prove that Old Geezers can still scream. (I'm 52).
GB: The occult often plays a large part in many of your stories. You have been associated with the Church of the Subgenius (popularised through the work of Robert Anton Wilson) and have written an acclaimed biography of legendary philosopher and mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. Do you consider yourself an adept, or is it a matter of research for your work?
Certainly I'm not an adept. And "the occult" is mostly nonsense. Most of the supernatural imagery in my novels, like Demons, is fantasy, is just symbolic for me, or imagery designed to give the reader a great time. But that doesn't mean there isn't a spiritual reality. My opinion is that almost everyone who thinks they're a psychic is imagining it or is a fraud; and people who think they can do magic are filtering objective reality through their subjective assumptions and needs, and in fact they are not doing magic; most "magic" is psychological. Shamanism may occasionally connect certain shamanist adepts (who are rare) to something beyond themselves; it may provide insights from a higher—or at least, another—place. Sometimes. Telepathy occasionally happens. Precognition occasionally happens, in its own good time. But 99.9 per cent of apparent supernatural phenomena—especially channelers and mediums—is the imagination or deception at work. But think of it like this—if you go looking for diamonds, you see mostly quartz. You at first imagine the quartz to be a diamond. Then you give up, realizing you're finding only quartz. But that doesn't mean there are no diamonds. It's just hard to find. You have to work hard to find it. Work is the key word, here. The New Age people are allergic to real spiritual work. The outpouring of interest in the so-called Kaballah represents more deception—self deception and the other kind. It's not so easy. The key to real spiritual achievement and something like what people think of when they think of "the occult", is consciousness. Is an expansion of awareness on three levels at once. Drugs only provide a glimpse. Real achievement in consciousness requires hard work—it's like climbing Everest. I'm still climbing. Gurdjieff is being misrepresented by charlatans—there are good places to learn about him, like the Gurdjieff Foundation. I recommend Vipassana Buddhism, or the more authentic Sufi schools. But be prepared for real work on yourself, over years. As for the church of the Subgenius, it is a satirical "church", designed to take the piss out of institutional religion and as a great humorous art project (www.subgenius.com).
GB: What do you think about the current scandals that rock the Bush administration? Do you think that the neo- cons finally went too far?
I am interested in the fact that the scandals are reaching the major media—for so long much of what Bush got away with was known but not discussed in major American media. The fact that it is now suggests that someone is allowing it. Who? I suspect that there is a faction on the right—perhaps the John McCain faction—that is disgusted with Bush and his greedy cronies. People are starting to wake up to him—to realize that he stole both elections. Now if they would only realize that the Pentagon has been lying about how many non-combatants have died in
GB: Any chance of a sequel to Wetbones? I thought that the Akishra (interdimensional parasitic entities who also appear in a story in Black Butterflies) are of the most interesting- and gruesome- creations in modern horror fiction.
The Akishra make an appearance in John Constantine, Hellblazer: Warlord, the novel I wrote about the
GB: You have written John Constantine, Hellblazer: Warlord, a novel about the adventures of legendary comic book magician John Constantine. Some of the most acclaimed comic creators have written about him in the past (Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, etc). What was your approach to the character? Will there be a series of novels?
There will be one more novel, Subterranean, and after that we'll see, it depends on sales. My approach was to try and make him the Scouse from Liverpool that he is in the comics—to try and make him as authentically the blond, hard drinking, smoking, cursing, arrogant, suffering, tatty, talented, insightful, tricky John Constantine that he is in Hellblazer. The book has several scenes that take place in the Iraq war by the way—it's about wars and magic…And you know, John Constantine, was born in 1953, has blond hair, was a singer in a punk band, is interested in metaphysics, has self control issues—and all those things are true of me! I feel like he's an alter ego.
GB: Do you have any more books or live shows planned for the near future?
My novel A Splendid Chaos, maybe the weirdest novel I wrote and one of the weirdest anyone wrote, is coming out soon from Babbage Press, and InfraPress, who reissued my novel In Darkness Waiting, is going to do my novel Cellars in a new edition. In Darkness Waiting and my novel Demons have both been optioned for films –the script is being written for IDW. I already mentioned The Other End. The first edition is from Cemetary Dance and we will hopefully sell that to a major publisher, which is how we did it with Demons. The Other End is a novel about the end of the world as we know it, but, like in the REM song, you will "feel fine" about it. Those people who say we will be "left behind" are, in this "other end" of the world, the ones who are left behind. It's a reversal of Judgment Day stories and it's also an inverted horror story—it starts out with horror after horror and each one is made right, in a bizarre imposition of impossible justice. It's a radical, highly allegorical book. It's like, what if you got to decide what happens to this great fascinating mess of a world, if you could redesign it from the ground floor up, would you? As an author—I can!
Interview taken by D.Kontogiannis
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