The Interview: Bookbag Talks To R Julian Cox

The Interview: Bookbag Talks To R Julian Cox

Summary: Sue was impressed when she read R Julian Cox’s eco-thriller Shadow on the Sun, an elegant conflation of fact and fiction which kept her on the edge of her seat. She and Julian had quite a few things to chat about when he popped into Bookbag Towers.

Date: 11 January 2013

Interviewer: Sue Magee

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Sue was impressed when she read R Julian Cox’s eco-thriller Shadow on the Sun, an elegant conflation of fact and fiction which kept her on the edge of her seat. She and Julian had quite a few things to chat about when he popped into Bookbag Towers.

• Bookbag: When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, who do you see?

R Julian Cox: Tricky this for it asks that most important of marketing questions: who is the target market? In my mind's eye I see men and woman who read such techno thriller authors as Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton or who are interested in 'science' and what it is doing to our world.

• BB: What inspired you to write Shadow on the Sun?

RJC: Having written everything for everyone over my life (inc speech writing for M Thatcher, national newspapers as a journalist, copywriting etc etc) with the only gap being whether I could write a 'novel'?

Shadow on the Sun began many, many years ago on a wet day after a wet fortnight of a wet holiday. We were in Bude on the North coast of Cornwall, clothes were drying round the fire (again) and I was doodling on my lap top. It began: 'It was always the same dream.... He drifted down long stone, corridors illuminated by flickering flames from wall mounted torches, then through the granite wall and high into the air. He was now looking down on the battlefield.......'

Months later I looked at what I had written on wondered: What happens next? The essential question any reader needs to ask.

The obvious spur to my original words was King Arthur. He had an alleged connection with the close by town of Tintagel. And King Arthur is a character one can never find. Was he real or merely a character from fiction? Either way there was enough wriggle room to make him 'mine'.

Sited on the cliff tops and easily visible from Bude are the 'Satellite' Tracking dishes belonging to GCHQ Bude then called by the nondescript name of 'Composite Signals Organistion: Bude. That I thought was a great technology link to my story. But how?

And so it began. I had the ingredients for my novel.

• BB: You tackled some big issues in the book. I was particularly interested in the potential conflict between scientific discovery and religious belief. Do you think this is a widespread problem and does something similar trouble scientists who have no religious belief? I liked the character of Jonathan Anderson. Is he based on anyone you know?

RJC: Let me answer the second part of your question first.

I really don't know about the aetheistic scientific community. I suppose this would boil down to morality. One could be very cynical about this. Look at what German 'scientists' during the Second World War did on human beings?

As for those who do have religious faith I've read a lot of Rev John Polkinghorne, once a great theoretical physicist and now merely 'Rev' but someone who has achieved much in the scientific world but is now better known for his writings on 'Religion' and the so called science divide (Google him!!).

I based my character Rev Gill who appears in the Chapter 4 on him.

I think British scientist Freeman Dyson (a former Manhatten Project scientist and a towering figure in science) summed it up best when he said both ask the same question; who are we, where are we going, where do we come from?

In terms of whether Science produces religious conflict with scientists one only has to look at what happened when the first atomic bomb was exploded at Alamagordo. Many who were there said God! What have we done? The father of the project, Robert Oppenheimer most of all. He later opposed the Hydrogen Bomb and was then branded a communist, his security clearances revoked. It took the US twenty years to say they were sorry. A bit like our own treatment of code breaker and computer genius, Alan Turing without whom Bletchley Park would have been an empty shell!

It is true, as I have depicted in the story, that if equations have a beauty to them, it is hard not to ask the question 'why is that and is it the hand of God!' It was this fact that so troubled our 'hero' Jon Anderson as it also troubled Einstein whose famous e=mc² equation led to the atomic bomb.

As for Jonathan Anderson, he is 'composited' onto a real person, someone whom I know from the financial services sector and whom is also called Jonathan Anderson! By 'composited' he is real but many other characters were also mixed in with him.

• BB: The imminent arrival of a grandchild has prompted Prince Charles to speak out about the world which we’re leaving to his - and our - grandchildren. How do ‘’you’’ feel about this?

RJC: Not good. Basically there are too many people in the world. There are limited resources and infinite demand. Something somewhere has gotta give. Global warming is one aspect of burning too much fossil fuel either via coal fired power stations (look at the so called BRIC nations) or via the automobile. The 'poor' understandably want what the 'rich' of the West have had for years and hang the consequences.

The question is whether we are gonna reach a global 'tipping' point at which the perma frost starts melting, releasing methane gas which further impacts warming. This creates more melting ice caps the fresh water of which impacts the oceans and their currents. Not a good outlook particularly for the UK!

• BB: Prior to the Fukushima nuclear disaster I was coming round to the idea that we might have to make more use of nuclear power, but I’m now back to thinking that it’s rather too perilous. Where do you stand on this? How will we produce the amount of power which we seem determined to demand otherwise?

RJC: Nuclear power is perilous and the impact of its 'waste' lasts for a million years, longer than mankind can imagine. I outline what the Americans think is the solution to its bi products ('vitrification' as outlined in Chapters 3 and 6 which are both true) but no one wants to take responsibility for the 'end product'. I'm not surprised. But is there any other way? James Lovelock (q.v.) thinks not and as again I mentioned in Chapter 6. I think in the absence of nuclear fusion (which is what Jonathan Anderson was all about) there is simply no other quick fix to our forseeable energy needs.

• BB: I loved the neat flashbacks to Arthurian legend in Shadow on the Sun. Is this a particular interest of yours?

RJC: As a kid I was always fascinated by Greek Mythology and the Arthurian legend. I used to devour books about them! They still interest me.

The Arthurian aspect I could write a book on!! There was even Melvyn Barg this very morning in his 'In Our Time' series on BBC Radio 4 discussing same. Quite clearly there were some of his 'guests' who did not know what they were talking about.

Whilst I think we have the issue of the fictional Arthur pretty well sorted (if not its author, Thomas Malory!!!) we know next to nothing about the 'real' Arthur and whether he existed at all.

Although there are some historical writings from the past (the British cleric Gildas from the sixth century for eg although he never mentions Arthur by name! ) there's not enough to establish his certainty. Legend usually has some basis in fact. The 'ex Persian' Lucius Artorius Castor from the late second century I think comes pretty close to an historical Arthur although he's a three centuries too early! But what's that in the tribal memory of a nation? And there are reasons why this 'memory' of Artorius might well have lingered and which I touch on in my Arthurian flashbacks (qv Chapter 20 The Sarmatians and which were the original 5000 imported troops Artorius once led on behalf of the then occupying Romans).

• BB: It must have taken considerable skill to combine an eco-thriller with a ‘time travel’ element and avoid the plot falling apart at the seams. Did you find this difficult - and how long did it take you to pull it all together? Where and how do you write? With or without music?

RJC: It was a problem but not as much as trying to get inside the heads of the 'Arthurian' people I was writing about at that historical time! It is a whole can of worms trying to do it!! The sad part is most of it was quite rightly cut although I thought it was pretty good. !!!! However the 'plus' part is I still have it left over for Book 2 or 3!

I deliberately left the time travel aspect somewhat 'open' to give me room to manoeuvre later. The 'Katrina' character's (modelled on historian Bettany Hughes) experience could have been an illusion, a quantum effect of the mind (explored more fully by Cambridge mathematician Roger Penrose in his 1989 book 'The Emperor's New Mind').

Tom Santos was different. He actually had to undergo 'time travel'. But this was not so hard to write as I'm a keen a reader of developments in quantum mechanics and its 'many world's' theories along with cosmology and its similar though different 'alternate world's' ideas.

You ask 'how long did it take to pull it all together?' The first words I wrote must have been nearly twenty years ago!!! But I looked at it as a hobby as I had to earn the daily crust. So whenever I had a spare moment I would pull it out and scribble a few more lines. It has been in the last three years when I thought 'I must get this finished!'. The first draft came in at 167,000 words!!! Its now 91,000! I'm hoping to use those 'spare' 70,000 words in my later SShadow on the Sun books.

In terms of 'pulling it all together' this was accomplished in two stages. The first draft at 167,000 words took about two years. Prior to this it was a bit like a patchwork quilt with chapters and themes all over the place. Then having employed an editor she gave me her opinion in March 2011 (You've got three plot lines here when just one will do') and I re wrote it incorporating most of her comments from Sept 2011 to March 2012 although the bit about 'vitrification' I referred to above was not actually written until July/Aug 2012 when I was on still on a month's holiday crossing the States c/o Amtrak!

About 'where do I do it?' - well originally it was written anywhere! On trains, on buses, on airplanes (using the then late, great Psion Organiser). Some of it even at home!! The editing process was done from 'Roger's Shed (where I'm typing this even as we speak!). It has a loo, a shower (the best in the house) a bed, aircon. We've often used it as a guest bedroom though less so now since I've had an 'extension' added to my timbered, Grade 2 listed house! (think here of beams and interior oak timbers, huge brick fireplaces, white painted exterior timbers, two olde worlde external gas lamposts). I mention this because most of the things I own are from a past era. The house, the cars etc. I should have been a historian!!!! Or an artist (I'm pretty good with pen and ink or watercolours !). Instead I went into business where my skills at writing (the dictionary provided me with my palette of colours) were what my various businesses (PR, marketing, computers, magazine publishing, event organisation, corporate finance) were built on!!

And sometimes I listen to music but more often I work in complete silence! I get wrapped up in what I'm doing and forget the exterior world! Even forget things like 'lunch'.

But mostly I recognise that being an 'author' is 'a business' which needs to be treated as such. 'The book' is the product which needs marketing. I also recognise that 'waiting' for inspiration is for the birds.

Its a job!!!

I give you a story here. Some years ago I was digging around in the attic and I came across the very first feature article I had ever written for a national newspaper. I read it for the first time in many, many years. It was very, very good. I didn't believe I could even as I re read it, have done any better. And I had been so young back then. This thought depressed me for a couple of days afterwards. Even with all my later skills and professionalism I could not have done any better.Then I remembered that the original article had taken me a couple of weeks to write. I could do the same now in a couple of hours!!!That's the difference. It's where 'experience' comes in. I brightened up at this thought.

So I hope it is with 'book writing'. With Shadow on the Sun I set out with not a clue!!! The editor (whom I still hate) was absolutely invaluable (don't tell her). Now I know!!! So watch this space.

• BB: What are you reading at the moment and which book which has influenced you most?

RJC: Bad question to ask at this time!!! I'm reading Kristen Lamb's (Google her) 'We are not alone:The Writer's Guide to Social Media' as well as 'The STIG, Man of Mystery', a fun book one of my daughter's gave me for Christmas. Also by the side of the bed is James Hilton's Lost Horizon which I'm re reading. And on the Kindle is Andre Camileri's 'Excursion to Tindari (an inspector Montalbano mystery whom I love. Am even off to Ragusa in Sicily for my holls and which is where the film series is shot) . Generally I usually have three or four books on the go at once to go with whatever mood I'm in when I want to pick them up.

As to 'influence' there are two books: Arthur C Clarke's 2001:A Space Odyssey (completed after the eponymous film as the original was taken from a short story of his called The Sentinel) and something far more esoteric The Notebooks of Malte Laurid Briggs by Rilke.

• BB: You’ve got one wish. What’s it to be?

RJC: That's easy. To own and ride once more a 998cc Vincent Black Shadow (look it up!) before it gets nicked.

• BB: What's next for R Julian Cox?