An Interview with Grace Chan
Walking through Melbourne, the invisible overlay of the virtual has grown increasingly apparent. Myriads of screens flashing bright under trams stops, friends gathered yet lost in their own cyberspace, people strolling down the Yarra uninterested in natural scenery.
Phones, and the unreal world they allow access to, have become so endemic to our lives that Phantom Vibration Syndrome – imagining a vibration in your pocket without a phone – is commonplace.
Grace Chan’s newest book, Every Version of You takes this trend to its endpoint, revealing where Australian society may lead – a virtual garden overgrown and unkempt, intertwined so deeply into our experience that it is nigh impossible to remove.
Grace Chan is an award-winning speculative fiction writer from Melbourne, Australia. A psychiatrist by trade, Grace’s fiction explores the mysteries found both in our minds and the far depths of the universe. She has been published in Lightspeed, Escape Pod, Fireside, Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and many other places.
Her debut novel Every Version of You won the Sydney People’s Choice Award.
We recently had the chance to pose Grace some questions about everything from her inspirations and writing habits to her debut novel and her thoughts on the current speculative fiction zeitgeist.
What got you into writing in the first place?
It sounds a little cheesy, but I can’t remember not being a writer. My brain has a tendency to shape everything into stories. As a kid, I scribbled lots of stories and told everyone I wanted to be a writer. Writing has always been something that brings me unique joy. It’s not only my creative outlet; it’s the way that I express myself, figure out who I am, and make sense of the world.
We understand you have a day job – how do you find time to write?
Yes – like most writers, I have a day job! I completed a medical degree and psychiatry training, and I now work as a psychiatrist. Finding time to write has always been a challenge. During periods of my life when work was very busy or I was sitting exams, I just had to accept that I couldn’t write at all. I’ve learnt to embrace working in phases, embracing the rhythm. I’ll have phases where I’m focused on my writing and phases where I’m immersed in other aspects of my life—and that’s OK.
On a more practical note, when I want to get some writing done, I try to block off at least a few hours of time, as I tend to work best when I get into the zone. Small motivations like a warm drink, a tasty snack, moody music, or a spreadsheet of tasks can make a big difference.
Are there any particular authors you look up to?
I’m incredibly moved by Ursula Le Guin’s rigorous worldbuilding, social commentary, and deep empathy. I was inspired by Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, and Zen Cho, amongst many others, to write speculative short fiction. Recently, I’ve admired the speculative worlds created by Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, RF Kuang, Shelley Parker-Chan, and Fonda Lee.
How is your approach to short fiction different from your approach to writing a novel?
Short fiction feels more playful and experimental. My short stories spring from a central concept that I’m itching to explore through narrative—for example, a woman transforming into a tree in “As Though I Were a Little Sun”, or artificial intelligence neural simulation used in euthanasia decision-making for “Father’s House”—and my choices around character, voice, tone, world, and plot follow on from that. Short stories are a craft challenge—you’ve only got so many words to work with, so you really have to make tough calls about what stays and what goes. I often write a longer first draft to tell myself the story, and then whittle it down through redrafts to reach its final iteration. Short form also allows you to push boundaries—experiment with your own voice, try something new, challenge the reader, venture outside comfort zones.
Can you give us a few of your favourite pieces of short fiction? Bonus points if it’s Australian!
I really admire Elizabeth Tan’s work. She has two short story collections published: Rubik and Smart Ovens for Lonely People. Elaine Cuyegkeng’s Eugie Foster Award-winning The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter (in Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women) and These Constellations Will Be Yours (in Strange Horizons) are both fantastical and stunning. Other Australian writers I’ve enjoyed recently include Thoraiya Dyer, DK Mok (The Birdsong Fossil) and CH Pearce. The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild has some fantastic anthologies—Unnatural Order (I’m biased, as I have a piece in there), and Body of Work, which I’m very excited to dive into.
What’s one trope you’re tired of seeing at the moment?
We keep seeing traditional narrative arcs, especially in mainstream media: a hero, often male and white, supported by a mentor and a two-dimensional romantic companion; conflict as the main driver of plot and tension; a finale consisting of a homecoming and a reward. I’m finding these narratives increasingly boring. They don’t offer me anything new, they reinforce tedious stereotypes, and don’t have anything interesting to say about the world.
What’s one thing you wish people wrote about more?
I like stories that aren’t considered “high stakes” in the usual way. Finding compelling narratives in atypical characters and perspectives is much more interesting—those on the fringes of society, those who aren’t centered in stories or portrayed as heroes. We assume that tension comes from big battles and high stakes, but that’s not true at all. You can create exquisite tension in the most ordinary places, by creating a sense of unpredictability, uncanniness, uniqueness, or just making your readers really care about your characters.
“Tao-Yi doesn’t see herself in isolation, but as a continuation of her family’s heritage and generational story. She’s a migrant; she’s trying to define herself both in terms of where she’s come from and where she lives now.”
What inspired you to write Every Version of You?
I had gone through a period of change, and I was thinking a lot about the different selves that we grow into across the span of our lives, the choices we make, the relationships that shape us and the ones we leave behind. Then, as my mind does, I made the idea science fiction: how would virtual reality and the uploading of a human mind transform the relationship between two characters? How would it affect their separate identities and their love for one another?
How long did it take you to write?
I started writing Every Version of You as a short story in 2018. It grew into a very long short story, and then a novella, which was shortlisted for Viva la Novella. Thanks to some wonderful editorial feedback from Seizure editor Alice Grundy, I decided to develop it into a novel. Even after it was accepted for publication by Affirm Press, there were a couple of big rewrites, before it was published in 2022.
In your debut book Every Version of You, our imagined Melbourne of the future is filled with tiny details that hint to a wider history both rich and slightly terrifying in its implications. What was the process of building that world like, and does part of you believe we might be heading down a similar path?
So many readers have brought up a detail that is mentioned in one brief scene—a memorial in Federation Square, commemorating the lives lost in America’s airstrikes on Melbourne in 2041. It’s interesting to see how this single sentence has stuck in so many people’s minds. When I created the dystopian world of the late 21st century, I didn’t want to be prescriptive or excessive in my rendering. I wanted the reader to hypothesise about how this world could have reached this state. I included the detail about the US because I wanted to jolt the reader—we’re so comfortable in our assumption that we’ll always be aligned with America, the sidekick to its imperial superpower. I also tried to use visual and sensory details in my worldbuilding in a sparse but striking way—the dried-up fissure of Yarra, interesting bits of rubbish that Tao-Yi notices on her travels, the smells of the city, the melting heat, the empty airports—to evoke a future that could be a reality if we don’t do more to preserve our natural ecosystems.
Scenes involving Tao-Yi’s mother are quite striking and add a greater dimensionality to the character. Was Tao-Yi’s cultural background an important element of not only developing her as a fully-fledged character, but also addressing the wider themes of the novel?
Yes, absolutely. Tao-Yi’s relationship with her mother and grandmother, and her country of origin inform her character—Tao-Yi doesn’t see herself in isolation, but as a continuation of her family’s heritage and generational story. She’s a migrant; she’s trying to define herself both in terms of where she’s come from and where she lives now. And then, suddenly, there’s this big migration of humanity into the virtual world, and the question of how we redefine ourselves in light of this. So, there are plenty of feelings about migration, change, narrative identity, and multiple selves.
The virtual world of Gaia is fascinating: people socialise, work regular jobs, and even travel and eat inside its online world. The character of Tao-Yi struggles with accepting Gaia as fully as her partner Navin, but the idea of virtual worlds replacing our own lived experiences is something that is becoming more and more prevalent every day. Was there a particular experience or thought process that guided your development of this aspect of the story?
Yes, the virtual world of Gaia is very much a direct extrapolation of the virtual realities we already inhabit today. So many of our self-defining and relationship-defining interactions already take place in virtual media, and the design of online spaces shapes us powerfully. We have social media where we present a curated, alternate, idealised version of ourselves and connect with one another in evolving ways. We have games and alternate realities where we manipulate avatars and virtual bodies. We have algorithms that dictate our newsfeed content, the music we listen to, the videos we watch, where we eat, who we date, and more. I wanted Every Version of You to be a space to reflect on how technology is changing us.
Do you have any plans to write more fiction in this world?
I had always viewed Every Version of You as a complete story—the final scene never changed, throughout all those drafts. I don’t have any immediate plans to write more fiction in this world, but it’s not completely off the table. It would be cool to return to Gaia/Earth even further into the future and examine the dual societies of the virtual people and the left-behind people. Actually, in the earlier drafts of the novel, Tao-Yi was a middle-aged woman in the last section. We compressed the time frame during the edits. So, it would be interesting to return to that longer time frame.
What was the one moment that made you feel like a Real Author™?
I may have freaked out in the best way when a high school student reached out to me on social media and told me how much she loved Every Version of You—the scientific and philosophical concepts, the representation of Asian Australian migrants. It took me back vividly to the indelible influence that books had on me throughout my childhood and adolescence. I was honoured that she connected with my book so deeply. We ended up having a wonderful conversation. It’s still a bit surreal to be able to connect with readers like that.
How do you beat writer’s block?
There’s no simple answer for me. I’ll switch between different writing tasks—move from working on a novel to working on a short story. I’ll let a piece rest and come back and edit it later when I feel ready. I’ll spend time reading across genres—speculative fiction, literary, non-fiction, poetry. I find changing up my reading inspires me by jolting me out of my current mode of thinking. And I’ll try to do something unrelated to writing, like watching something purely for fun, going into nature, or exercising—I love playing soccer, as it takes me out of my head and into my body.
What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to new writers who are eager to break into the speculative fiction world?
I’d suggest reading contemporary short speculative fiction, especially from diverse writers. It’s the frontier and the heart of the genre in many ways. It will give you a sense of the current zeitgeist and inspire you. Writing, and speculative fiction in particular, is a conversation with the works of the genre, so you’ve got to be a reader and a supporter, too.
Is there something about the industry that you wish you knew before you got involved?
I think I would’ve told myself to write more slowly, get involved with the community, and be patient with figuring out my voice. These are things I continue to tell myself!
Every Version of You is out now in bookshops everywhere. A terrifyingly plausible depiction of an Australian future consumed by virtual reality, Grace explores this world through the eyes of Tao-yin, examining the struggle between unreal pleasure and the very real tethers of love.
Her latest short fiction Post Hacking for the Uninitiated is available to read for free in Clarkesworld Issue #205.