8/6/2019 Lucy and Phil an Interview With Lucy Sussex

1/3

Lucy and Phil: An Interview w ith Lucy Sussex

by Frank C. Bertrand

NOTE: Lucy Sussex is an Australian/New Zealand writer, editor and researcher, who works in theareas of science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and children's literature. She has written twonovels for younger readers, The Penguin Friend (1997) and The Peace Garden (1989), two foryoung adults, Black Ice (1996) and Deersnake (1995), and the adult novel The Scarlet Rider(1996). Her short fiction has appeared widely, and was collected as My Lady Tongue (1990). Shehas edited four anthologies, of which She s Fantastical (1996) was short listed for the WorldFantasy Award.

Her short story "Kay and Phil" has been published in Alien Shores, edited by Margaret Winch andPeter McNamara (Aphelion Publications, 1994), and in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy byWomen, edited by A. Susan Williams and Richard Glyn-Jones (Viking-Penguin, 1997). An articleshe wrote about the experience of writing this story is titled, "The Anxiety of Influence.What is/was the genesis/impetus for your story "Kay and Phil"?Noting that two very different writers had had the same idea of a future dystopia ruled by theNazis, Dick's The Man in the High Castleand Burdekin's Swastika Night, originally published in1937, I thought there was some possibility that Phil might have read Kay's (Katharine Burdekin's)novel, which was published under the pseudonym Murray Constantine by Victor Gollancz. Iwondered what he might have thought of it had he done so. He couldn't have known it waswritten by a woman, something he might have found problematic, given his troubles with hiswives and particularly his mother. In addition descriptions of Kay put me in mind vaguely of PKD'sown mother. I thought it would be interesting to throw the two writers together in a fictional formatand see what happened. Of course, the most interesting time for them to meet would be when hewas writing The Man in the High Castle, but at that time Kay was bedridden. I let my fancy takeover from then on.

Just when did this first germinate?In the early 1990s, when we had just moved to Brunswick, which is a suburb of Melbourne, a verypolyglot Australian city, with one of the biggest concentrations of expatriate Greeks and alsoholocaust survivors. Brunswick in particular is a real melting pot, with a high Muslim population.Seeing the women in headscarves, it was hard not to think of Burdekin. Seeing a (very small)upsurge of neo-Nazism in the suburbs, in fact they got run out of town and have not returned, itwas hard not to think of both PKD and Burdekin. From memory I had the story idea and then putit down in words only when I got asked to contribute to a German sf anthology. THEYABSOLUTELY HATED IT! And wanted to know why I hadn't written about Australian instead ofGerman racism. Well I have, repeatedly, in novels such as The Scarlet Riderand Black Icebut itwouldn't have seemed appropriate for the story, which was in fact less about the Nazis than itwas Kay and Phil, and the writing process.

The story in fact sold on the third attempt, to an Australian market. How it ended up in ThePenguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Womenis complex. It was A. Susan Williams who contactedme initially about using another story of mine, "My Lady Tongue". I said, fine. The problem wasthat the anthology was arranged chronologically, and she wondered if I had a slightly laternarrative, to be the final story (which is a huge compliment, as the intro and extro stories of ananthology are as important as the closing and opening bars of a symphony). This wholeexchange was conducted by fax, between Australia and England, by the way. I asked her if sheknew who Burdekin was. Yes, she said, she had Swastika Nighton her shelves. That meant shewas an informed and possibly ideal reader. So I faxed her "Kay and Phil" and in the fax the nextmorning was her acceptance.

8/6/2019 Lucy and Phil an Interview With Lucy Sussex

2/3

8/6/2019 Lucy and Phil an Interview With Lucy Sussex

3/3

Now that it's done, what afterthoughts might you have about the whole thing?Not many. I'm generally not interested in a story after it's been published, but in preparation forthis interview I went and read through "Kay and Phil" again, and didn't see anything that made mewince, so I guess it's ok.

Did you learn anything about PKD and/or his work that surprised you?The version of his character that emerged as I wrote was not quite what I was expecting. I knewhe was going to like cats, and that he was ambivalent towards his womenfolk. What emerged wasa kind of eternal writer archetype, scribbling away, making something out of nothing at all. And hiswriting is what makes him important, not the somewhat tortured human in real life.

Would you want to write anything else (story/essay) about PKD?I've pretty much given up sf criticism, after an Australian critic fabricated a story that a famouswriter had threatened to take an axe to me for a negative crit. If you write and also criticize in oneliterary area you can end up shitting in your own nest. In any case I'm writing a history of earlywomen crime writers, so that's where my non-fiction focus is at the moment. Would I ever writeanother story about PKD? If the fancy takes me.

Any particular PKD story or novel stand out for you as representative of his work?I still think The Man in the High Castleis a great book.