"Dinosaur Blood," (Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Jan/Feb 2006, also on www.fictionwise.com) is about the world's last road trip. In an energy-depleted future, an heiress named Trista inherits a museum-full of automobiles and a 500-gallon tank-trailer of gasoline -- the world's last. She winds up touring the deserts of the American West with a geeky friend, Rhona, in an SUV powerful enough to pull the trailer through the decaying roads of her post-industrial world. What makes this a personal favorite is that I sent her to remote areas I know intimately, with the idea of seeing how places that have deeply etched themselves in my soul might transform her.
What is a setting from a published fiction story by another author you would compare this setting to and why are they similar?
I'm a big fan of setting-related mystery. Some mystery is simply puzzle. Other is an excuse to introduce a setting -- geographic, cultural, it makes no difference. Dick Francis's horseracing stories are a great example. I'm not a horseracing fan, but these stories brought me into a world I loved to learn about. Tony Hillerman's Navajo stories are similar.
How would you describe the way you introduced this setting to readers of your story?
The settings all appear through Trista's eyes, and since they vary as she roams, I drew on prior work as a travel writer. For example:
"[They were on] a circular plateau of jet-black basalt, barely larger than the estate where Trista had grown up. If the navel of the world was an outie, this was it. Below, the Hummer was a dot on the edge of the playa. Late-afternoon sun glinted off the water behind it, while the mountains stretched for dozens of klicks in an unbroken escarpment … A jumble of hills rose nearby, while in all other directions, more mountains etched snow against pale-blue sky.
"'Trout Creeks, Pueblos, Jacksons, Sheepheads, Pine Forest Range . . .' Rhona was reciting from an internal map, but Trista was too awestruck to care what anything was called. She sat on a rock and for the next hour said nothing as she studied the emptiness spread out before her. Without the ever-present roar of the Hummer, the silence was as unearthly as the view, and it touched something within her, something for which she had no name."
I'd written similar things (albeit in my own first-person voice) for a smorgasbord of newspapers and travel magazines, so for this story I simply drew on that background.
How would you describe the integration of characters and setting in this story?
These lands -- Trout Creeks, Pueblos, Jacksons, etc. -- have transformed me at a deep level. I am who I am because I've been there: on foot, by 4-wheel-drive, bushwalking, whatever. I gave Trista a selected handful of my most powerful experiences and watched to see how they would affect her. Part of what makes the story a favorite is that I had no pre-selected endpoint. She could either respond or go back to who she'd always been -- I let her reaction to the setting decide.
How would you describe the interaction of story and setting in this story?
This is really the same answer as above. The setting alters the character, transforming her on a deep level, and causing her to question the value of her life, to date. She then decides there are things she wants to accomplish and, when given an opportunity later on, she is now a person capable of acting on that opportunity.
How much research did you do for the setting of this story, and what did that involve?
Very little. I'd been to all the places Trista visited, long before I conceived of the story. When possible, I prefer to send characters to places I know, or at least analogize to places I know. In part, this is a purely economic decision. But also, there are a lot of places about which I know little. I don't feel competent to write about them without visiting.
To what extent would you describe the setting of this story typical or atypical of the settings in your fiction stories?
When possible, for the reasons outlined above, I prefer to write about places I know firsthand. Though, as a science-fiction writer I can't always do that. Then, if I can, I use places that some science magazine has paid me to research for features or news stories.
How do you usually decide on or develop a setting for fiction stories?
The story usually dictates the setting, in general terms. My latest story, for example, is a collaborative novella, set on the Moon. That was fixed from the moment we started. But I instantly started inserting details from things I personally knew. One of the characters is a 5,000-meter runner in college, for example. Why? Because I coach distance runners, and I know how they think. Anything I know first-hand (or from attending a science meeting on the topic, such as those at which NASA's latest findings from the Moon, Mars, or Saturn are described) will take precedence if I can fit it in. That gives me much greater faith in getting the details not only right, but with the verisimilitude that makes them feel right.
To what extent do the settings of novels you read have an impact on why you read them, and why?
I love to learn about places and cultures. See my earlier comments on Dick Francis and Tony Hillerman. But I'm more interested in some places than others: rural areas over cities, mountains or deserts over wheat fields.
Author website: www.richardalovett.com
