GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022/23
An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author Edward Barnfield
Your longlisted story, ‘Digital Twins’, involves a (semi-fractured, or fractious) sibling relationship, a fraught futuristic UK, computer simulations and local government. There’s a lot going on! How did the story first come to you, and how did you set about writing it?
Many of my stories come from running ideas on parallel tracks and then crashing them together, to create a scenario where realistic characters react to something impossible.
With ‘Digital Twins’, I was thinking about the rise of warm banks in the UK, what it meant that they were somehow seen as an acceptable solution for soaring energy bills, and that sparked the Cool Bank concept, where people had to stay alive in communal air conditioning. I figured that was a story catalyst and let it percolate for a while.
In parallel, I was reading about digital twins, which are existing tools used in product design and project planning. My core take on these kinds of ‘transformational technologies’ is that their potential is exaggerated and their benefits undelivered, because existing social pressures reassert themselves too quickly. The corporate evangelists who sold the last wave of disruption jump on the new bandwagon and it all gets ugly. Story two.
From there it was a matter of crossing the streams. The sisters came to life initially representing the two narratives, and that set me thinking about work culture – who is listened to; who is rewarded, and who does the actual work – and the story flowed from there.
One of many things that is so impressive about ‘Digital Twins’ is that it dabbles in sci-fi (and dystopia), but remains absolutely recognisable as 'our world'. Some of this, I think, is down to your treatment of place and the setting of Leicester. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
I don’t consciously think of my work as science fiction, although my stories often slot into that category. It’s more that I’m interested in how people conceptualise the future – where we think we’re heading, how we think we’ll get there – and then trying to root those ideas in current reality.
Leicester, which is my hometown, provides some pretty solid roots. As a city, it carries the weight of its history but struggles with its future, which makes it a good setting but also an ideal mark for the consultant grifters of ‘Digital Twins’.
Also, the line about it being the ‘dead centre of England’ has been banging around my head since I was a grumpy teenager. These days, I’m a life-long expat and so that sense of re-examining your home after a time away is very real to me, so that grounds the story – I hope – in emotional truth.
(Probably worth saying, I have a lot of affection for Leicester, and feel it is underrepresented in literature and the sci-fi genre in particular. This is my contribution to addressing the imbalance.)
The climate crisis is coming to a head in ‘Digital Twins’. Is that a big concern and creative focus for you?
A story I wrote in 2021, called ‘Live from the Troll Factory,’ has turned out to have surprisingly long legs in terms of people reading and liking it, and that is probably my most deliberate piece of cli-fi.
However, I’m not sure you can write any serious contemporary fiction without reference to the climate crisis on some level. Otherwise, you’re one of those 1930s writers crafting tales about country houses and debutante balls just as fascism creeps across Europe.
That’s not to say that all fiction must be dystopian or to advocate despair. It’s just that climate breakdown is our collective reality right now, so I feel that my characters should probably take notice of it.
Tell us more about your writing generally. Are you working on something at the moment? Do you have a set routine? Do you write methodically or in snatches, does it change from project to project… all those things!
I try to be always writing, to always have one story – and one only – in development. The worst time for me is when I’ve finished something and am looking for the next subject.
In terms of craft, I’m a jackdaw, finding time between work and life commitments to get the details down. There is a lot of writing on my notes app, on car journeys, or when I’m waiting to collect my daughter from a class. Sketching plots out doesn’t work for me – I agree with Flaubert’s line about the impracticality of dissecting your children before procreation – so I walk around with a big block of fiction in my head and chisel it down.
As for projects, ‘Digital Twins’ is part of a series of stories about neo-futurism and how we live today. I’m pulling those together now, and then there’s a longer piece that has been gestating for about a year.
And what about other writers? Who do you admire, and what are you reading at the moment?
My lodestars are Isaac Babel and Mikhail Bulgakov. Babel has everything you need in his stories, all the style and structure and precision, whereas Bulgakov has a truly transformative imagination. After them, Hilary Mantel, Primo Levi, Gabriel García Márquez, Thomas Ligotti, Javier Marias, Gustave Flaubert, George Saunders, Naguib Mahfouz, Derek Raymond, Dubravka Ugrešić, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and Arundhati Roy.
Alice Munro is still leading the way for short stories, along with Jhumpa Lahiri, Raymond Carver, Mia Couto, Lauren Groff and Flannery O’Connor. Throw in Philip Larkin, Pablo Neruda and Seamus Heaney for poetry. There is some great work in flash fiction as well, from people like Elisabeth Ingram Wallace.
I’m writing something about the global flow of illicit money, so a lot of my reading is around that. Project Brazen, which is a journalism studio, is producing a murderers’ row of excellent work on the topic, as well as generously recommending other works. I’m excited to read the new Eliza Clark novel, ‘Penance’, that’s coming soon.
What about other art forms and genres – movies, paintings, TV, music…?
In terms of film, I love ‘Another Round’ by Thomas Vinterberg, ‘Battle of Algiers’ by Gillo Pontecorvo, the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, anything by Shohei Imamura, ‘Hell or High Water’ by David Mackenzie, ‘Fish Tank’ by Andrea Arnold and ‘Mad Max – Fury Road’ by George Millar.
I was in my element in the box-set era of great TV – ‘Deadwood,’ ‘Justified’, ‘The Wire’ and ‘Rome’. Streaming wars and mass cancellations have basically killed all that, which is another thing I can shake my fist angrily at a cloud about.
Visual arts – I love anything big, bold and adolescent. Give me a giant Mexican mural and I’m happy. Wandering around the Musee d’Orsay in Paris a few years ago was a joy, with all the Degas and Manet stacked high. Closer to home, I’m impressed by Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, which is one of the major springboards for artists in the region.
I alternate between sad bedsit music and sugar water. ‘Modern Love’ by David Bowie, ‘First Cut is the Deepest’ by P.P. Arnold, ‘You Don’t Miss Your Water’ by Otis Reading, and anything by The Pogues and Charlie Parr. Basically, the tunes I loved when I was a kid, only played at a gentler volume.
Any good writing tips to give, or that you’ve received?
Trust in the curative impact of time. I’m fortunate in that I’m a plodding, consistent writer who produces a steady output, and I benefit from leaving work to settle once it’s finished and then revisiting it a story or two down the line. You see a lot more in the text when you’ve moved on to a different narrative in your head.
That also applies to failed and rejected stories. A lot of my calamities turn out to be the basis for my favourite stories later.
My other tip is to have very different personas whether you’re in writing or editing mode. The writer needs to be flexible and open to change, chasing after ideas and characters, willing to surprise themselves. The editor needs to be a hard-faced security guard determined to make every word and phrase earn its place, and all too eager to kick the extraneous out.
(And what’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?)
Any writing tips that blur into life advice should be ignored. People who tell you to quit your day job or wake at four each morning to write are usually wrong.
Also, someone tried to convince me that ChatGPT, AI and language models were the future of fiction recently, and that conversation ended badly.
Finally, let’s do a fantasy literary dinner party. Who would you invite, where, and what would you have to eat?
Can I be sentimental and invite my favourite depressed and/or tragic writers to a seafood lunch overlooking the water? White wine in cold glasses, people eating with their hands, good weather, shy jokes.
Anthony Bourdain, F Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Walter Benjamin, John Keats, Clive James, Federico García Lorca, Kabelo Duiker, Spike Milligan, John Kennedy Toole and Emily Bronte. Throw in some of the other writers I’ve mentioned, add family and friends I haven’t seen for a while. (And my daughter would like to meet Julia Donaldson).
And everyone just gets a moment, just that slight reprieve, when they realise how loved they are, and the difference they made. Yeah. That would be good.
EDWARD BARNFIELD is a writer and researcher living in the Middle East. His stories have appeared in Roi Fainéant Press, Ellipsis Zine, The Molotov Cocktail, Retreat West, Third Flatiron, Strands, Janus Literary, Leicester Writes, Shooter Literary, Cranked Anvil, and Reflex Press, among others. He’s on Twitter at @edbarnfield.