From a magazine interview with Marten Weber during the launch of "Bodensee"
What is "Bodensee" about--and why the name of lake?
The
lake features as a symbol, a metaphor if you want, in the book. Lakes
are supposed to make you tranquil and at peace. Your mind it easier
influenced--or manipulated--if you are in a tranquil state. Mind
manipulation is one key element of the Bodensee story.
Can you sum up the story of "Bodensee" for our readers?
It's
hard to give you a summary of the book because any such attempt will
give away the key to this strange world. I can tell you this: The story
follows one man as he grapples with apparent memory loss in a strange
world, where some things are perfectly familiar, others remind him of
books he's read, and some elements are perfectly frightening. It's an
alien world that is also a part of him... but inhabited by creatures and
people he is at once familiar with, and terribly afraid of. Even his
own lover, or husband, seems unnaturally friendly, especially because
our protagonist simply can't remember falling in love with him in the
first place. There is an element of fear in even the most everyday
things he does.
In this world, mundane questions of love
and attraction play out in a mixture of futuristic techno-adventure and
19th century society novel. Our hero, although ostensibly gay, is
hopelessly attracted to a seductive woman who exhibits strange
quirks--she talks funny, says things which sound all too familiar, I
hope even to modern readers, but certainly anyone familiar with Henry
James or Jane Austen, and she seduces him, all the way. But their
attempts at intimacy always end in disaster... and that's where the key
to the novel lies.
You mentioned Henry James, Jane Austen... is this a mashup novel? Any zombies?
No,
not at all. No zombies? It quotes extensively from D.H. Lawrence and
Henry James, but not to copy or ridicule classical English literature,
but for a very specific purpose. The quotations are an integral part of
this alien world, and at the heart of the novel's conception of
sci-fi.
Why this book now? You've never done sci-fi before.
The
American election! My book, although it starts rather cheery, is a
bleak vision of the future. It depicts what I think will happen if
America goes down one of the paths open to it. The polarization of
American politics has me deeply worried. If the right-wing voices in the
Republican party win, and this party grabs the next election, I fear
that my novel will be more science and less fiction. The science
depicted in the book all already exists, it's just a matter of putting
it to such nefarious uses as I envisage.
But the novel ends well I remember reading...
It
does. Maybe not well, but hopeful. It ends with a positive,
programmatic vision of our future, in which tolerance and acceptance win
the day, maybe not in all countries, but at least in part of the
world.
Are you planning to write more sci-fi?
Absolutely.
This is only one vision I have, and I do dream of starships and
planets and alien worlds quite a lot. Over the next years I hope to
come up with a few exciting new sci-fi works. But they'll all feature
the same core values: liberty, a touch of the literary, and lots of
gorgeous men of course.
