Last night I popped over to Bath to see Michel Faber who had an event at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights. For those not in the know, Faber was born in the Netherlands, raised in Australia, and now lives in Scotland. He’s a highly respected writer of literary fiction, and would probably have been a Booker finalist by now were it not for his Dutch nationality. However, his last novel, Under the Skin, is about an alien visitor to Earth who kidnaps humans and sends them back to her planet. His latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things, is about a Christian missionary who is sent to an alien planet.

With such a record, it is inevitable that Faber gets asked whether his work is — *gasp* — science fiction. Unlike a certain Canadian author whom we might mention, he’s perfectly happy with this. He also has a pretty decent knowledge of SF history, having read a lot of it during his teenage years in Melbourne. However, he’s pretty clear that what he is writing is LitFic. The primary subject of his new book is the relationship between Peter, the missionary, and his wife, Beatrice, whom he has to leave behind on Earth. Sending Peter to another planet creates a degree of separation that isn’t possible on Earth with modern communication and air travel. Also it isn’t clear how much worldbuilding Faber has done. He noted that he hadn’t thought to create an ecosystem for his alien planet until his wife pointed out that it was daft not having one.

That said, Faber clearly has thought about a number of issues. I asked him about the theological issue posed by alien life, and he said that is in the book. He mentioned that his aliens, the Oasans, are more like a bee colony than individuals. He acknowledged the existence of colonial themes in the book. And he made a point of how the human mission to the Oasan world was very carefully selected to ensure that its members would get on well together. He felt that the fractiousness of so many space missions in SF tests his suspension of disbelief. I recommended that he read Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To…, which speaks to exactly that frustration.

So I am looking forward to reading the book. I can’t spend too much time on it before BristolCon, but I read the first couple of chapters on the way home last night and boy that guy can write.

I note also that Faber’s wife, Eva, died of cancer in July. He was nursing her while writing this book, so I suspect a lot of very emotional content will have seeped into the story. Towards the end of the evening Faber read a number of exceptionally moving poems about losing someone close to you. I managed to get through that without turning into a blubbering heap. I do hope that Canongate publishes them at some point.