An Interview with Chris Flynn
Chris Flynn is an acclaimed Australian author whose work blends sharp wit, inventive storytelling, and a deep curiosity about the human condition. Best known for novels like Mammoth and Here Be Leviathans, Flynn’s writing spans fiction, essays, and commentary, often exploring the intersection of nature, technology, and history. Chris was kind enough to share some insights into his creative process, the inspirations behind his work, and his thoughts on the evolving landscape of publishing in Australia as a righteous proponent of good speculative fiction.
Q: What got you into writing in the first place?
I’ve been a writer for as far back as I can remember. I was a prolific reader as a kid growing up in Belfast, and my local librarians soon graduated me to the adult section, where I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, Piers Anthony and Clive Barker. I began writing escapist stories of my own in my teens, and even a couple of novels. This was on a manual typewriter, mind you, so my devotion to purpose was strong.
Q: Are there any particular authors you look up to?
Iain Banks has always been the writer I perhaps admire the most. I recently re-read the entire Culture series and was blown away all over again, especially with Matter and The Hydrogen Sonata, neither of which I recall loving first time out. The endings of both are just so devastating. I lived in Scotland for two years when I was 18 and had the chance to meet him at a bookstore signing but couldn’t get out of my shift at the supermarket. I should have quit that fucking job and gone. It would have been worth it. I also used to buy 2000AD every week when I was a lad so had an early exposure to writers like John Wagner and Alan Moore. I couldn’t wait to get that comic in my grubby mitts on a Friday morning.
Q: What are you reading, listening to, or watching at the moment?
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shroud has just landed on my desk, so all appointments are cancelled. How does he write so many bangers, year after year?
I love the Children of Time trilogy and Cage of Souls is another favourite of his. Meeting him is on my bucket list. As for music, I’m going through a period of silence at the moment and not really listening to anything. I do that sometimes when I’m deep into the writing of a novel, which I am. Having said that, I went to two gigs in Melbourne this summer, both at PICA–Jamie XX and Caribou. What can I say, I’m a child of the techno revolution. My brain operates to a bass thrum. I’m loving the new season of The Last of Us (played the games so many times) and Murderbot looks surprisingly good. I’m not a Star Wars obsessive, despite seeing the original in the cinema when it came out, but I’m shouting myself Disney+ for a couple of months so I can catch season two of Andor.
Q: Is there a gap between what Australian readers are hungry for and what publishers believe they’ll accept?
Now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty. The simple answer is ‘yes’ but it’s way more complex than that. Part of the issue is that ‘what readers want’ often tumbles down the list of priorities in publishing, not to mention being a twisting, writhing Lovecraftian worm that defies categorisation. Right now, readers want romantasy and dragon sex. Chances are next year they’ll want something entirely different. How do you plan for that if you’re trying to run a business with dozens, or even hundreds of employees on the payroll? A business that moves at a glacial pace, to boot. Even when working at a breakneck speed, the process of writing, editing, printing, distributing and marketing a book takes fucking ages. So what seems like a smart acquisition choice today could be dead in the water by the time it comes out. Not much can be done about that. Sometimes other forces prevail. But your question hints at a deeper dissatisfaction, implying that publishers might not be serving readers very well by wilfully neglecting certain types of writing. This has been undeniably true since the invention of the printing press and is a source of understandable frustration for genre writers, but the publishing labyrinth is full of surprises and secret doors. An astonishing number of people who work in the industry are firmly on the rebel side and will take every opportunity afforded to them to champion a difficult or strange or unfashionable manuscript. It’s often said that publishing is a risk averse industry, and in many ways that is true, but on balance way more risks are taken on books than in other creative industries. Try getting a movie off the ground, or a game, or an album. You need $$$ and connections up the wazoo. In publishing, you just need a pen and a sense of righteous determination.
Incredibly striking art by Eirian Chapman.
Q: Australia is such a striking setting — strange, vast, extreme. Why do you think so few big-name Australian literary authors explore it through a science fiction lens, compared to magical realism or alternate history?
I’ve only asked myself this question, oh, a thousand times or so. I’ve even tried to convince loads of literary authors to make their next book sci-fi, or at least sci-fi adjacent. It seems so obvious! There’s a reason why that Vin Diesel gem Pitch Black was filmed in Australia. It passes easily for another planet. And although literary fiction gets all the press and prizes and pats on the back, it is itself a low-selling, unpopular genre. So why isn’t there more Australian sci-fi penned by skilled, established authors? I don’t really know. Snobbery, maybe. That’s nothing new for SF and fantasy. The academy has looked down their nose at genre since forever. The misguided belief that in order to be taken seriously as a writer, you have to write deadly serious fiction? Could be a factor. Apprehension at entering an arena populated by writers of prodigious imagination? Probably. Or it could be simply that most lit writers have no knowledge of the science fictional universe because other than The Lord of the Rings when they were teenagers, they don’t have the depth of reader knowledge and wouldn’t know where to begin. You’ve got to account for the fear factor. Writing sci-fi and fantasy requires serious big brain energy. It’s not for the faint hearted.
Sci-fi often gets pigeonholed as “genre fiction” rather than “serious literature.” Have you noticed a shift in how it’s perceived in Australia over the last few years?
A little bit, but despite sci-fi dominating TV and film, there still seems to be a reluctance to fully embrace the fantastical genre in Australian literature (and the arts in general). There are a few crossover writers straddling the literary and SF worlds, like James Bradley, Laura Jean McKay, Claire G. Coleman and me, I guess. Look, you’re touching on a longstanding bug bear of mine here and I freely admit that part of my (maybe not so secret) agenda is to gently introduce fantastical elements to a wider reading audience without scaring the shit out of anyone by going full throttle space opera. Baby steps.
Q. Are there any contemporary Australian sci-fi or speculative authors you think deserve more recognition?
I mentioned James Bradley above, who is underrated and definitely pushing more towards being a pure SF author with each book. Greg Egan is the white whale, though. Incredible short stories and novels, and a very cool retro website (he is a programmer, after all). I love the fact he doesn’t do events or interviews and that there are no photos of him online and no one knows what he even looks like. There are people in forums who claim to have met him, but no confirmed sightings. Massive respect to you, Greg, if you’re listening.
Q: Do you think publishers are becoming more open to riskier, less conventional speculative fiction — or are they still looking for the next safe “literary” success?
A really short, unconventional spec fic novel just won the Booker Prize, so I think we’re in business? Publishers in the UK and US are definitely more comfortable with breaching convention in the genre. Not sure we’re quite there yet in Australia, but I’m working on it, leaning in a little more each time. Some publishers hated the manuscript of Orpheus Nine, while others loved it, so there’s a broad spectrum of responses. I’m generally finding publishers to be more SF receptive than ever, especially as the notion of literary success becomes more elusive. I’ve just read an early advance copy of a book by Geelong author Rhett Davis called Arborescence (Hachette) and it’s basically an arthouse sci-fi flick set in Australia with echoes of Stanislaw Lem. Maybe it will win the Miles Franklin and we’ll be off to the races.
Q: What advice would you give to emerging Australian writers who want to tell weirder, more speculative stories but feel pressured to write “realistic” literary fiction?
Write the stories that you want to write because otherwise you’ll be miserable but temper your expectations. This is true irrespective of your chosen genre or style. My honest advice is that if you’re in this game for the long run and don’t just want your ego boosted by seeing a one-off book with your name on the cover on the shelf at Readings, then it pays to strategize. A super weird, tricky debut might not unlock the doors of publishing and could be better suited as your third or fourth book, say, once you’ve established yourself as a viable talent who can get it done. Look at your list of projects and don’t be scared of tackling a more user-friendly story as an alluring calling card. I’m not saying don’t be weird. Weird it up, by all means. But think about how you’re delivering that weirdness. There are devious defence grids that must be bypassed. A cloaking device of some kind is often required.
Q: Your novels often feature unexpected perspectives — like the animals and objects narrating Mammoth. What draws you to telling stories from such unconventional points of view?
It’s partly that I’m a misanthrope but also that I find it freeing to step away from a human perspective. Introducing that distance allows me to be more critical and satirical. What inspired me to take this approach was an otherwise forgettable passage in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, where protagonist Joe Chip returns home to his apartment and engages in an argument with both the door and the toaster. They each have high-level AI and are bored, petulant and petty, refusing to cooperate with Joe until he settles his debts with them. An early example of the Internet of Things that blew my mind. You can have a talking door in a story? Of course, you can! That was a game changer for me, and now the challenge lies in resisting the impulse to populate my stories with too many incidental non-human, non-living characters. It’s a hell of a handy tool sometimes, though.
Q: Here Be Leviathans leans heavily into the speculative and surreal. How do you balance emotional resonance with the sheer playfulness of those concepts?
That’s a tough question to answer because the truth is I’m not really sure. Maybe it’s because I’m Irish and we like telling jokes at funerals? What I know is that writing for me is never an intellectual exercise. I’m just not educated or smart enough to pull that off. It’s an emotional undertaking that comes from the heart and the gut. Stories work best for me as a reader when they invoke an emotional response. I’m basically always close to laughter or tears in life, and I yearn for that in books too. If I manage to achieve that balance in the stories I write, then that’s a sweet victory.
Q: There’s often a deep undercurrent of environmental and existential anxiety in your work. Do you consciously weave those themes in, or do they emerge naturally through the writing process?
It may sound disingenuous, but I never consider themes before sitting down to write anything. My brain comes up with premise, then story, then characters, and I don’t question or interfere with that process. It’s often not until much later (sometimes not until I read reviews) that I find out what the book is supposedly about. So I guess grand themes that I might be subconsciously pondering must come out naturally as the story manifests. I’ve learned to trust my creative mind. It seems to know what it’s doing, even if it neglects to inform the rest of me sometimes.
Q: Your stories blend humour, melancholy, and big philosophical questions so seamlessly. Is that tonal balancing act something you plan out carefully, or do you find it while drafting?
Similar to the answers above, I don’t plan any of that. In fact, I’ve only recently begun to plan my books at all. I’ve always been wary about over planning. It feels like creative death to me, writing the book before I’ve had a chance to enjoy writing it, if that makes sense?
I work from a very tentative superstructure, allowing myself to find joy on a macro level as I plod along. The aim for me is to avoid becoming bogged down in misery or wearying routine. It’s probably a fatal flaw and I’m doing it all wrong, but so far, the jaunty, seat of the pants ‘unusual characters in unexpected situations’ technique seems to be working. I am trying to refine that to a more methodical approach but it’s not my natural state to follow rules, which are irritating human constructs anyway.
Q: How do you find time to write? What does your typical writing routine look like, and how has it evolved over the years?
I’ve had forty-two different jobs in my adult life, including pillow stuffer at a factory in Coburg, hanging off the back of a garbage truck in St Kilda, life model for hundreds of art classes, sumo wrestling referee at a fairground attraction for kids, and many more. I always squeezed writing into my spare time. My last job was as writer in residence at Melbourne Museum, which ended in June 2023. Since then, I’ve scraped by on my income as a writer alone. I just turned 53 and rent in a small regional town, so it’s manageable. But that means I have all the time in the world to write now, so I’m forging ahead on a number of projects. As a result, I have established a strict writing routine. Since I’m in bed by 930 every night, I’m awake at 530. Get up, feed the cats, go for a run or lift some weights in a pathetic attempt at maintaining a ripped, youthful body, breakfast, shower and hit the desk by 730. Which means I have all morning to get shit done. I lapse into flow mode pretty quickly, no distractions or procrastination. I walk away at lunchtime and don’t push it. The afternoons are my own. Errands, reading, gorging on cookies. Other writers hate me when I tell them this. They have kids and friends and actual jobs. I have books and a thriving jalapeno plant.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a writer, and how did you overcome it?
My first two books were low-selling literary titles that left Australian readers baffled. I tried to switch codes to SF after those failures and that only confused publishers even more. So I basically quit and went to work in an animal shelter for five years. I figured if I couldn’t make it as a published author, at least I could do something useful with my wretched life. But that fiendish creative impulse just wouldn’t accept a dignified exit and kept bubbling away in the background. It was working (and communicating) with animals daily that cracked open the method for writing Mammoth, which was to tell the story from the perspective of the fossils. Ironically, that book brought my career back from the dead.
Q: Is there any work you have coming up that you would like to speak about?
Orpheus Nine was released at the end of March, so that’s still fresh. I’ll be at festivals all year with that one. Now that I’m with Hachette and they’re totally on board with my nonsense, books with my name on the cover should appear with more regularity. One day I may even get a chance to publish the Iain M. Banks style sci-fi epic I’ve been working on for the best part of a decade, set 42,000 years in the future. I keep returning to it, tinkering and rewriting and I’m still not satisfied. Maybe by the time it’s ready, my readers will be willing to take a great leap into the unknown.
You can find out more about Chris’ work at his website here.