‘This unmissable book from a strong new talent should be put at the top of your to-read list…
I was totally immersed in this book, and the world that was created. When We Have Wings works as crime fiction, speculative fiction and literary fiction.’ Mark Harding, Shearer’s Books Blog
Review on Shearer’s Books Blog:
Claire Corbett catches the exhilaration, the thrill and the dangers perfectly. I was totally immersed in this book, and the world that was created. When We Have Wings works as crime fiction, speculative fiction and literary fiction.
– Mark Harding
Interview on Rowena Cory Daniells’ Blog, with some great questions from Rowena. Also an interesting discussion in the comments on cover design.
Rowena asked: Do you believe genre books have a place in spreading ideas and provoking thought?
‘Yes, very much so. Speculative fiction in particular is increasing in importance almost by the day. Lis Bastian, the head of Varuna, has spent fantastic amounts of energy and time trying to raise awareness about climate change; she was one of Al Gore’s ambassadors. She was telling me the other day that presenting facts to people just isn’t working; they have to engage their imaginations, really feel what it might be like to live in a different world. Orwell’s 1984 has done that, Huxley’s Brave New World did that. I’ve just read The Windup Girl, set in a post-peak oil, post bio-plague world where the cities are drowning. I loved it; it made me look at our world with new eyes.
When We Have Wings is also set in a post-peak oil world where we can’t be so profligate with our natural resources. This is one reason being able to fly is so important in the story. When We Have Wings tackles urgent contemporary issues, such as how will parents use the powers that reproductive technology and genetic engineering put into their hands. Contemporary events prove that such powers will be used to the utmost; they already are, as the history of sex selection and surrogacy shows us.’
A key element in humans being able to fly in When We Have Wings was engineered carbon fibre bones and muscles of greater explosive power. Seems like the science has caught up with me already.
From the article:
‘Baughman and his colleagues have produced a formulation that’s stronger than steel, as light as air and more flexible than rubber — a truly 21st century muscle. It could be used to make artificial limbs, “smart” skins, shape-changing structures, ultra-strong robots and — in the immediate future — highly-efficient solar cells.
“We can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle,” said Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas.’
This is a very different blog post, looking at the influence of landscape seen from the air in When We Have Wings and on the divide between the City and RaRA-land.
I look at how I used Google Earth and all those Earth from the Air photos and books in my research and also at issues such as the transfer of pesticide resistance from engineered crops to wild plants.
Had such a good time yesterday returning to my alma mater, the University of Technology, Sydney, for an interview with Stephanie Coombes for Radio 2SER’s Final Draft program. I won’t be able to listen to the broadcast – I’m too far away – but I’ll put up the date and time as soon as I know it and link to the podcast when I can.
I felt so nostalgic walking into the great grey-brown tower again – I love that place. It may look ugly on the outside but inside was functional and fun. A great university and I loved doing my two degrees there.
Stephanie Coombes was lovely to do an interview with and very professional – she read my book on very short notice and had thought a lot about it. I loved your comment, Stephanie, about enjoying the voices of the children so much and how well captured they were. I love that aspect of the book too. There’s something wrong, as you said, when you read pages of dialogue between small children and adults and you can’t tell who’s talking. Yes, famous writer of westerns who’s dabbled in post-apocalyptic sci-fi, we’re looking at you!
I love the title of this review – Flights of Dark Imagination.
I have to be honest and say this review has some criticisms of the book, saying there’s too much detail about flight (a criticism I’ve had a few times but also something many readers have told me they’ve loved). There’s some vivid thoughtful praise and the link’s below if you’d like to see the reviewer’s caveats:
“I confess that when I began reading this book, a tiny, scornful voice in my head kept repeating the words, ‘winged humans, this is ridiculous’. But Corbett renders her world in such thorough and vibrant detail that even I was convinced. With lucid, evocative prose, she weaves a wonderfully vivid sense of place, a world of rich colours, sharp contrasts, and soaring perspectives: when Peri flies, it’s ‘sheer giddy pleasure to skim through air, transparent blue and gold,’ and see ‘fields strict as tiles, squares of raw red earth ripped into furrows and laid next to rectangles of emerald pasture, the joins shocking as cuts.’ ….
But When We Have Wings is still a remarkably original and well-executed novel. What’s most striking is how Corbett uses a fantastical concept to reflect our own world so starkly back at us: human wings (or lack thereof) become a metaphor for the dangers of power and privilege, and the human cost of technological advancement. The dilemmas faced by the characters in Corbett’s novel are not, after all, so far removed from our own, although we may not be soaring through the skies for a while yet.”
Just over a week until I attend the first ever CSIRO Tweetup as part of NASA’s launch of the Mars Curiosity Rover. This is going to be so fascinating.
From the CSIRO website: “The CSIRO Tweetup will provide @CSIROnews and @CanberraDSN followers with the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at CDSCC and speak with scientists and researchers. This CSIRO Tweetup will run for 24-hours and will include a “meet and greet” session to allow participants to mingle with fellow Tweeps and the people behind CSIRO’s and CDSCC’s Twitter feeds. Participants will get a special tour of CDSCC, hear from guest speakers, watch the launch and tracking activities, enjoy a telescope night-sky viewing (clouds permitting), and a tour of CSIRO Discovery Centre, plus more.”
Access to this site is normally restricted so this is a wonderful opportunity. I will definitely be writing something about this experience and will let you know where to find the piece when I do, so please check back!
The fourth post in my blog tour is a post for the Readings Blog, which asks the question, would you give your child wings?
“I thought about the history of plastic surgery and of fertility technology while writing the slightly futuristic ‘When We Have Wings’. I say slightly futuristic because these technologies of the self are already here, they show us what will happen as our power to alter ourselves colludes with economic power: we will stop at nothing to get what we want, especially for our children.”
The prolific fantasy author Ian Irvine is very generous with his knowledge and has made a vast amount of information available on his site about writing and publishing.
I’ve contributed a post on his writing series:
http://ianirvine.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-reading-like-writer-claire-corbett.html
