Review Fix Exclusive: Christopher Laine Talks ‘Screens’

Review Fix chats with author Christopher Laine, who discusses his newest work, “Screens.”

About Screens:

We have all wondered if our devices are listening to us, or if the government can see into our homes through the cameras on our phones, iPads or monitors. But what if that was the least of our worries? In a chilling and creepy near-future, physical printed manuscripts begin appearing to a select group of suspicious and seemingly unconnected readers. The documents reveal motives much more sinister than advertising or government surveillance in Screens by Christopher Laine [Girl Friday Productions, January 26, 2021].

In a moody and atmospheric entry into the dark sci-fi canon, a manuscript has appeared which describes a horrific presence feeding off humanity through our screens, and their ultimate goal of destroying all life on the earth. Those that read the manuscript have either been murdered, have disappeared, or have completely disconnected themselves from all digital communications. There is no information online about this manuscript, or of any of the surviving readers who have formed an anonymous collective who spread knowledge about what the manuscript describes — known as The Network.

Review Fix: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Christopher Laine: I have always loved stories, both hearing them and telling them.  As a boy, I made up stories for my friends, fantastic, nonsensical stories which kept their attention and entertained them. Yet, looking back now, the person MOST entertained and enthralled by the telling was me.

I was nine when I knew – deep-down knew – that I needed to be a writer.  I have followed a circuitous path to where I am now in life, but writing and reading have been with me all along.

Review Fix: Why does writing matter?

Laine: The written word is a fundamentally human skill.  No other species on our planet uses written language, and as such, can be thought of as one of the primary characteristics of homo sapiens.  

The conversion of ideas into complex written symbols which can be understood by anyone who can read is a fascinating and engaging idea in and of itself.  That we have elevated that concept to a place of artistic expression is all the more wonderful.

Writing matters because writers (like artists, scientists, and philosophers) are a driving force behind human intellectual and cultural evolution.  Writing pushes us forward (whether we wish to be pushed forward or not).  Writing gives us a means of exploring aspects of ourselves through characters and narratives otherwise unavailable to us.  Writing exposes us to ideas and feelings and ways of being which would otherwise be unavailable to us.

Review Fix: What directly inspired Screens?

Laine: For  a number of years before I started writing Screens, I’d been working on my Seven Coins Drowning series (of which Screens is one).  The series is made up of a total of seven tales, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins.  

So, when it came to my writing, the idea of Sin was often on my mind.  What is Sin?  What did it mean to me?  How was evil alive and well in the post-modern world?   That sort of thing.  I don’t ascribe to any religious views on Sin, but as an author and a student of religious history and philosophy, I find the topic fascinating.  

I happened to be back in San Francisco in 2015.  I was attending a conference, and found myself on a Muni train headed uptown, when I noted the only people not staring into their mobile phones were an old lady and myself.  It struck me as odd, even creepy.  A rising tide of people who couldn’t live without their little devices pressed to their eyeballs.  Their blank faces, their slightly-gaping mouths, it’s unnerving when you really observe people with their phones.  I could all but see the electromagnetic shack between the digital heroin and those people’s faces.  I saw in myself the very real need to score that fix.

And that’s when it came hammering home on a sinewave of my addiction-riddled past.  I had my next Sin. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give some credit to Frank Belknap Long, the great science fiction / horror writer.  It was his work above anyone else’s which inspired the horrors of Screens.  He is often overlooked when we talk of Cosmic Horror, but he very much changed my outlook on what is disturbing and awful.   

While my notions of evil may derivate from the original intent of the writings of Long and writers like him (the so-called Lovecraftians), I feel I keep to the deeper meaning which originally inspired Cosmic Horror.  Yet without the writings of Long, I would never have known the existential dread and wonder one feels when reading exceptional science fiction and horror.

And of course, Screens is deeply, deeply inspired by my life in San Francisco as a young man, living as a scumbag on the fringe, and working in the messenger scene.  As self-destructive and harrowing as that life was for me, it was the time which most shaped me as a person, as an artist.

Funny how our worst pains can be our greatest inspirations, eh?

Review Fix: What was the biggest learning Lesson from Screens?

Laine: Don’t give up.  Ever.

I wrote Screens as a novella in under 2 months.  I put it down for a few weeks, then read it back, and realised it was far, far less than it needed to be.  The other works in Seven Coins Drowning are novellas, and they work really well as novellas. Screens was no novella.  It needed more, much more.

Five years later, and Screens if finally live to the world.  Five years it took for it to go from concept to finished novel.  It was exhausting, tireless effort over a long time.  I will admit there were times I thought of giving up, but I couldn’t.  I just could quit.

Why?  Because it had something to say.  It had something to say as a novel, but it also had something to say to me.  Not just its contents, but that this was something I wanted but it was going to be a schlep to make it a reality.  I had to put in the ‘hard yards’ (as they say in New Zealand).  I had to push myself beyond my own self-imposed limitations to do something I wasn’t sure I could do.

So yes.  Never.  Give. Up.  If you truly want something, want that sense of accomplishment which only comes of you doing what is required (hell or high water), you cannot give up.

Oh, and it’s good to explore our shadows.  Jung was very much correct on this front.    Explore the parts of yourself which sicken you, which are full of pain and shame and trauma.    Those are the missing parts of you which you really do want back.

Review Fix: How will it improve your work moving forward?

Laine: Interesting question.  Screens touched on a number of very painful personal subjects for me, parts of my life I was not willing to share – with others OR  myself.  This was particularly difficult as I wrote, but looking back, I realise a form of interpersonal therapy.  I allowed my pain and ugly aspects of myself to shine through in the book (albeit via characters in my work), and in the end, I believe this is what makes Screens exceptional.  

I will be less afraid to share those less-than-appealing aspects of myself through my writing. It is not only good for me as a person, but great for my writing.

In the end,  this is what really what inspires others when we create. People aren’t inspired by our better angels, but our worse ones. 

Review Fix: What’s next?

Laine: Ha!   After five years on a single project, it feels like there is no “What’s Next”, but clearly there is.  I intend to do an audio version of Screens, as I hear that’s quite popular.  I will take a small break (for me a small break is a couple days or a week off), and then I’ll start working on my next novel.  The next one is a sort of a sequel to Screens, but only in a sly, roundabout way.  I’m really excited to get stuck in on it.  It feels like the right book for me to write at this stage in my life – both as a person AND as an author.

Without giving too much away, the book takes place right after the events of Screens, and run sideways to it.  It is a mixing of quantum physics, magical realism, folk tales and yeah, horrific things on the trail of humanity.  It’s gonna be a hoot to write, so hopefully reading it will lay down the same vibe to my readers.

I’ll be getting back to training martial arts (as I took a year off to finish Screens, and as my next book is — in a roundabout way – about martial arts).  I’ll get back in my garden.  I’ll get back to reading heavily again.

And yeah, I’m really enjoying doing art again.  For Screens, I invested a lot of time and effort in not only producing the book, but in creating ancillary pieces related to the book. Illustrations, a music playlist, and my book trailers.  I really enjoyed that scene, and so want to explore that further.

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Laine: Yeah.  One of the biggest takeaways for me from writing over the years is that as writers and readers we have the power to reshape human civilisation, to guide it in a new, better direction.  The ideas and emotions and concepts which we exchange in writing are more than just for easy consumption.  We have a real power to reshape things, to do our part to improve the world around us

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Oftentimes, we no longer see it this way.  Art, literature, music, we’ve denigrated these as ‘consumables’, things which are produced and which we ingest.  That is only natural, given we are civilsations with consumption forever on their respective minds.  This is a failing of where we’ve landed as a species, one in which the only thing left to us is to keep consuming.  Time for us to evolve, to look to our writing, our art, our philosophies, our sciences, to go up a step.   We have an opportunity to evolve beyond our brutish and ignorant monkey history of violence, hatred, and stupidity.

This can only be done through ideas, through new mythologies and vistas for what matters in life.

It’s our responsibility to help guide our rather lost and self-destructive species down a more sustainable road.  We have that power in us, and it is our duty to take advantage of it.  We do this by sharing ideas, of believing in change – both in our species and in ourselves.

It can feel in this post-modern age that we’ve seen and done and thought it all.  But of course, this is patent nonsense.  I’m sure our ancestors thought the same at various stagnant points in history, only to be shocked when a new age was upon them.  We stand upon such a stagnant plateau.  Now we get to decide what’s next.  The same bullshit trapped in the same evolutionary cul-de-sac, or do we take a chance and actually evolve, move on, and become something which can go on at peace with ourselves, our species, and yes, our beautiful planet.

Make a choice.