A novel is typically the story of someone going through a major changing point in his or her life. Most people just don’t have that many major changing points; I certainly didn’t want to have Festina changing, then changing, then changing with every new book. Therefore, I decided that each Festina book would center on a new character who was going through some significant crisis.
Festina would appear as a troubleshooter who’d help the central character reach some satisfying resolution … but the major changes would happen to someone else, not Festina herself. Therefore in all the Festina books after Expendable (which is Festina’s own story), Festina doesn’t show up until a hundred pages or more into the story. I like her a lot and she really helps keep things moving, but keeping her just a bit off center-stage means I don’t have to keep changing her in substantial ways.
LBR: Yet she does change—at least on a superficial level, or through the perceptions of those she interacts with.
JAG: Yes, Festina does change bit by bit, but she doesn’t go through the sort of major upheaval that happened in Expendable or that affects the central characters in the other books. In Vigilant, for example, (SPOILER ALERT!) Festina falls in love but eventually decides she has to return to her regular duties; however, the lead character (Faye Smallwood) completely reevaluates her life, resolves past issues with her father, and finds a new sense of purpose. So Festina changes a little, while Faye heads off in a whole new direction.
LBR: Tell us a bit more about the League of Peoples. What first gave you the idea for the League?
JAG: When I was a kid, I loved science fiction that had no limits: yes, you could exceed the speed of light; yes, you could sneak around the laws of thermodynamics; yes, you could create anti-gravity fields, time machines, and all those other fun things.
So I wanted that kind of universe—one with no ceiling on scientific achievement. Given that, it’s inevitable that there are alien races who far surpass human technology. Just think of how our modern tech compares to what people had two or three hundred years ago; and if there are intelligent aliens at all, some of them are bound to be thousands or millions of years ahead of Homo sapiens science. That means that they could easily use a combination of bioengineering, body augmentation, etc. to make themselves incomparably superior to us little old humans.
Next question: if there are creatures like that out in space—not just slightly ahead of us, but vastly—and if there are probably lesser species too, who are somewhat ahead of us but not by millions of years—why don’t we have any concrete evidence of these aliens’ presence? I decided there could be only one reason: whoever was at the top of the totem pole must have told everyone else to leave Earth alone. No one was allowed to conquer or assimilate us; we were to be left to our own devices. (Hey, do you sense a common thread here?)
Given all these considerations, I began to contemplate what those top aliens would be like. They aren’t what humans might consider benevolent—otherwise, they’d be actively trying to help us—but they would believe in “Live and let live.” Which led to the League’s central philosophy and everything else we’ve seen of them.
I want to point out, by the way, that in all the books I’ve written, the League has done almost nothing. I’ve read reviews where the League is called a deus ex machina … but in fact, the only time they’ve actually taken tangible action is in the first chapter of Hunted. The rest of the time, what actually happens is people saying, “We have to do this to please the League,” or “We can’t do that or the League will get mad.” The League isn’t present, it doesn’t give orders, and it doesn’t explain what it wants. Instead, you have a whole lot of people trying to second-guess the League, contorting their behavior one way or another because they think sort of maybe this might kind of be what the League will tolerate.
LBR: Are there plans for an origin story for the League? Or perhaps a story of when Earthlings were first accepted into the League of Peoples, and how we managed to achieve membership?
JAG: “The Young Person’s Guide to the Organism” was the first contact story. Ascending gives more background information on what actually happened when humans were “uplifted by the League.”
LBR: If such a thing as the League of Peoples exists out there in the Universe, and they made themselves known to us, how do you suppose we humans would react? Would they stop us from entering interstellar space, given our history of violence and self-destructiveness?
JAG: I think they’d behave as they do in the books. Humans certainly have the potential for terrible acts; but most people, most of the time, are decent creatures without murder in their hearts. We aren’t saints, but we aren’t casual killers. Average folks in the street might kill in self-defense or in defense of friends and family, but not just because they don’t like your face.
Of course, there are people who’ll murder for lesser reasons, or for no reason at all. The League considers them dangerous non-sentients and will exterminate them without remorse if they try to leave our solar system.
LBR: In Expendable, one of the themes you touch on is society’s tendency to find ways of hiding or ridding itself of what it deems undesirables. Members of the Explorer Corps, as we’ve mentioned, have various physical deformities that mark them as outcasts. The significance of society versus the individual (in this case Festina Ramos) is dominant. Is there more to the message of individuality being more important than societal acceptance?
JAG: I wouldn’t say that society gets rid of unwanted people. What happens in Expendable (and, I believe, in real life) is that individuals get rid of the unwanted, and society doesn’t care enough to put a stop to the practice.
In Expendable, and all the other Festina novels, the recurring “bad guys” are the admirals in the navy’s High Council. These admirals are ruthless and corrupt, holding onto their positions by various tricks and schemes … but they’re smart enough not to go too far (partly because they’re afraid of the League of Peoples). Civilian society lets the admirals get away with it, simply because the civilians can’t be bothered to stick up for the underdog. (There’s an old saying: “In order for evil men to triumph, all you need is that good men do nothing.”)
LBR: I agree with that. Very nice clarification.
JAG: But when I wrote Expendable, I wasn’t thinking a lot about the individual vs. society. My theme was actually “professionalism.” Festina and most other Explorers are set apart from the rest of the Technocracy, not by their “blemishes,” but by their discipline.
Look at the way Festina regards regular navy personnel: in Expendable, she always portrays them as childish and juvenile. Festina is an unreliable narrator—all my narrators are—and the way she describes people like Captain Prope is wildly prejudiced. Festina disdains them; she considers them unprofessional. Much of the book consists of Festina forcing herself to act professional when surrounded by people who don’t come up to her standards. Of course, the ultimate unprofessional is the glass woman, Oar: utterly child-like, and (just to get Festina’s goat) nearly indestructible. Festina is obsessed with her own vulnerability to all kinds of threats; Oar is essentially invulnerable, not to mention conceited, thoughtless, and uneducated. Oar is also quite lovable. She might be the reverse of Festina in many ways, but there’s plenty of room for the two to be friends.
LBR: Interesting. Perhaps the two themes are interrelated, from the viewpoint of Festina Ramos. Festina (and the other ECMs) are so disciplined that they would almost never look the other way when some wrong was committed, and also because of the way they are treated by others in the navy. They’ve had to rise above the non-concern that I was referring to in society.
JAG: Good point.
LBR: About Oar being the “ultimate unprofessional,” as you just suggested: wouldn’t that make her more unpredictable, more effective in some ways, than someone as disciplined as Festina Ramos? Or is she just potentially so, given her lack of education and social skill?
JAG: Indeed. I’m interested in the clash between discipline and the lack thereof. Obviously both have their strengths and weaknesses. This is one reason why I keep banging Festina up against characters who are more intuitive/spontaneous. In every Festina book, her most important companion is someone who is much more “unfettered” than she is (Oar, Faye, and Edward).
LBR: In Commitment Hour, you deal with the theme of sexuality in a decidedly unique fashion. The population’s annual change from male to female is symbolic of the dual nature of our personalities, and the effects that our physical maturation process has on that; it also explores the social awkwardness caused by our sexuality through the relationships of the characters. What gave you the idea to tackle such an ambitious subject in such a manner?