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| INTRODUCTION | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES | GALLERIES | BIBLIOGRAPHY | LINKS | WANTS |
| INTRODUÇÃ0 | AGRADECIMENTOS | ENTREVISTAS | ARTIGOS | GALERIAS | BIBLIOGRAFIA | LINKS | PROCURAS |
Entrevistas / Interviews
COMICS WRITER MALCOLM MACDONALD
<Hello Jose,
meSo, I think I may not be the man
you want to talk to
JCN:
First of all, let’s begin with some background, please. Your age, your
marital status, your academic
record and your profession? Any children?
Well, I don’t typically give out
too much personal history over the internet, because you never know what kind of
crazies could be out there. I’m one of those writer types who tends to
cherish anonymity. While I’m not an English “hermit” like Alan Moore, I
prefer it when the stories speak to the reader on my behalf.
Still, I don’t want to cheat your
friendly readers; hopefully, it’s enough to say that 1) I’m in my late
thirties, 2) I’m single, with no children, and none planned, 3) I took a
Baccalaureat in Honors English Language and Literature from university, and 4)
what I do outside of writing is not very interesting to anyone, including myself.
JCN:
Where did you born, grow up, and live today?
More personal questions! Are you sure
this isn’t an agency website? :-) But seriously, I was born and raised in
Canada. Currently, I’m in the southwestern US.
JCN:
How did you get started?
(Stan Lee and Jayme Cortez)
I was reading from a very early age,
and I liked reading enough that I started creating my own stories as soon as I
was able. That was the beginning for me; afterward, there was no going back.
Writing is a compulsion for me now; I couldn’t stop writing if I tried (and I
have tried, on occasion). Thankfully, I enjoy storytelling, …at least most of
the time.
JCN:
What is it that attracted you to comics and writing? What were your
Comics were like a window into a
whole other world. I had no idea that this realm where ideas and adventure could
mix even existed. When I got my first comic book at the age of six, it
completely blew my mind. It was a comic featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes
from DC Comics, and the fact that this comic book combined science-fiction and
*twenty-five* super-heroes was like finding heaven for me. Like most of
us who read comics as kids, I didn’t just want to read about these heroes, I
wanted to live in their world with them! It all seemed so incredibly cool. I
quickly realized that the closest I could ever get to living with the
super-people would be to write stories about them. I started at age six and
never really stopped. The comics world is always in my head somewhere.
My influences in comics writing
changed as I got older and gained more life-experience, and as I started to read
real literature. As a kid, I was very fond of Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin at
DC, particularly their JLA stuff which still has a subconscious influence on my
comics writing today, whether I want to admit it or not. I was also obsessive
about Jack Kirby’s `Kamandi’ series. Over at Marvel, I was in awe of Stan
Lee as a kid (weren’t we all?), and I also really liked Roy Thomas
(right) and Steve
Englehart’s writing as well. Later, Chris Claremont
changed my entire
perception of what comics could be with his first run on X-Men.
A few years back, the stuff coming
out of Milestone Comics (Blood Syndicate, Icon, Shadow Cabinet) also contributed
a lot to my sense of what comics could be about – what comics could examine
and embrace. Unfortunately, too many readers presumed that Milestone Comics were
only “superheroes for african-americans”, and missed the point entirely. A
lot of the kinds of ideas Milestone favored have since appeared in stories by
Morrison, Ellis, Moore, Millar, Bendis and the rest – Milestone merely went to
that place earlier, and it’s a shame so many people missed it when they did.
These days, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison are the writing
standard for me. If I write something I believe I could read aloud to either of
these men, and not feel embarrassed by the material, then I know I’ve written
something good.
JCN:
As a child, did you spend a lot of time indoors reading? Comic books only,
or mainstream literature also?
As a kid, it seemed like ALL I ever
did was stay indoors reading books and comic books! I got very pale, and my
mother used to have to order me to go outside and play in the sunlight. I still
tend to stay indoors too much, if the truth be told.
My early reading was mostly science
fiction that I found in my school library – what’s now called the
“juvenile fiction” of authors like Robert Heinlein.
(left) Lester del Rey (below), , Arthur
C. Clarke, and lesser-known authors. Most of that SF was at least twenty years out of date when I found it, but I was too young
to know or to care. The first novel I remember reading was “The Ant Men” by
Australian author Eric North. It wasn’t a great book, but I loved it at the
time.
I didn’t really discover true
literature until I was perhaps twelve, and that discovery was extremely
important. My writing started to improve then, because I was getting ideas from
beyond the genres I was familiar with – it opened up my mind as well as my
writing.
JCN:
What was the first comic by Alan Moore you read?
I think I owned a single issue of
“Swamp Thing”, but it was a piece from the middle of a major storyline (`Parliament
of Trees’, maybe?), so it didn’t really catch me. I felt like I’d walked
into the middle of a movie, and a lot of what was going on was completely lost
on me.
The thing I remember reading of
Alan’s which made me say to myself, “Who IS this guy? He’s amazing!”
was the first issue of Watchmen.
JCN:
Did it had a special impact on you? Why?
It felt like being hit by a bus –
but in a good way! Remember, I said that the superhero world has always lived in
some part of my brain, and here was this writer completely re-inventing the idea
of what a superhero world could be.
Moore basically took the cliché
question “What if superheroes existed in the real world” and answered it
fully. Moore answered that question with depth and originality, showing the
reader aspects and consequences of answering this question which no one had even
considered before.
JCN:
What do you think is his best work to date? Why?
Wow. That’s a tough question.
It’s no secret that Alan Moore doesn’t like to repeat himself, so all of his
projects are very different, I find it hard to compare them.
I think one of Moore’s most *overlooked*
works is the stuff he did on “Supreme” for Awesome Comics. You can now get
the Moore Supreme collection through two trade paperbacks released by Checker
Books, and available at http://www.amazon.com
. I understand that Checker is also going to release the “Judgement Day”
miniseries Alan did for Awesome very soon, also in trade paperback format.
Judgement Day is Alan’s version of a big superhero crossover miniseries, like
Crisis on Infinite Earths. As you might expect, he brings his own style to the
proceedings.
A lot of people dismissed the Supreme
work as merely an homage to the silver-age Superman but, typical of Alan, there’s
a lot more going on in the stories than just that.
Also, you can see many of the ideas
which Alan would develop further at America’s Best Comics first starting to
show through in the Awesome stuff.
The tone of Tom Strong, for example,
borrows heavily from Moore’s work on Supreme, while the work Moore did on the
character of Glory at Awesome, he would later alter and use as the basis for
Promethea.
You can see the beginnings of the
themes and ideas behind Promethea in Moore’s handling of the Glory character
… particularly in the first issues of the Glory series that came out through
Avatar Press. Glory was different from Promethea in some interesting ways, but
the common threads are there.
JCN:
What do you think of Big Numbers, if you’ve read the two published
issues?
I only know of Big Numbers by
reputation, and from reading Moore’s comments on the project in an interview
with Wizard magazine.
JCN:
What do you think Alan intended to convey with this very promising story?
Again, I’m biased by Moore’s own
comments on the series. If I remember correctly, Moore himself said that he
found the scope of the project to be too large to handle properly after a while
– he found it too difficult and too time-consuming to get what he really
wanted from the process. I have to be guided by Moore’s opinion here, since I
haven’t read Big Numbers myself.
JCN: Do you agree with Chaos Theory?
The idea that our world (and the universe as a whole, by extension) is ruled by
fractals, strange attractors and so on, where a little alteration on initial
conditions can cause large and unexpected alterations on the grand scale?
Well, I have two longtime friends who
are physicists, one of whom is an actual quantum physicist. So, it’s not a
question of agreeing or disagreeing with Chaos Theory, in my opinion. Chaos
Theory is simply a part of the mathematically proveable world of quantum
mechanics. It exists, like gravity exists.
That said, I have to say that
sometimes Alan’s grasp of chaos theory and quantum mechanics is somewhat
colored by his artistic and philosophic mindset. He occasionally draws analogies
or correlations or conclusions from quantum theory that can be misleading, as
far as my physicist friends are concerned.
For example. Alan sometimes plays
fast and loose with the notion of scale. Just because something is
mathematically true on the sub-atomic quantum scale, this does not necessarily
mean that the same thing will remain mathematically true on the grand, universal
scale.
Analogies are not the same as
mathematical equivalencies, and just because concepts *seem* to connect doesn’t
mean that they do connect. There’s some of this faulty analogy, or
misunderstanding of what quantum terminology means (or can be allowed to mean) in Snakes and Ladders, for
example.
I don’t want to sound like I’m
criticizing Moore here, I just wanted to point out that Moore’s take on what
chaos theory means would not necessarily match the scientific definition of
chaos theory.
JCN:
Could a graphic-novel comprise all the complexity of human existence,
common life, the whole Universe and so on, as an unique, united system -- as AM
intended to do with Big Numbers?
Again, Moore himself said in a Wizard
interview that he found the task of creating Big Numbers to be more work and
time and energy than it was worth to him, so I must assume that he knew what he
was talking about.
Myself, I don’t think such an
all-inclusive work of art is *objectively*
possible – the ideas would have to be framed and focused somehow, while
still indicating the infinite issues. Otherwise, how would the audience process
what was being communicated? How do you communicate the infinite to the finite
processing capacity of a human reader’s mind?
(Chris Claremont)
JCN:
Do you think someday Alan could change his mind and thinks about it again?
With someone as restlessly creative
as Mr. Moore, anything is possible.
JCN:
And for From Hell, do you think it could be considered a history of the
cradle to the 20th Century, with all its paranoia, conspirations and corruption?
I would resist the temptation to read
From Hell as a pure allegory. Allegory is a “dangerous” format in my opinion,
because it tends to oversimplify the subject matter. Every story element gets
converted into a kind of puzzle-piece which supports the whole of the allegory,
and thus loses any other potential identity or interpretation the story element
might carry.
Certainly, there is a LOT of
symbolism in From Hell, but I think that to lock those symbols into one
all-defining allegory would be a mistake.
JCN:
What are your impressions of Brought to Light and its references to the
CIA's covert operations around the world?
This is the first I’ve heard of
Brought to Light, so I can’t comment on it.
JCN:
Do you think that comics can be a political instrument , that they can
reach and appeal to a large audience?
Comics are already a political
instrument, or they can be -- because they communicate ideas. In my opinion, any
medium which communicates ideas can be political or politicized. 
Looking back, a lot of my own ideas
about social justice, the environment, and so forth were sparked by ideas I read
as a young child in the very earnest politically-minded superhero comics of the
1970s. Those comics seem silly and simplistic now, but they were the first place
I’d ever had certain political ideas -- such as the need to stop pollution --
explained to me in a dramatic way which my child’s mind could understand.
How large an audience political ideas
in comics can reach depends on how many people are actually reading the
material. These days, however, it seems that fewer and fewer people are actually
reading comics. Until that changes, that political potential of comics will
remain limited.
JCN:
And AM´s mainstream literature debut with Voice of the Fire, do you
think it accomplished its intention, to tell the history of magic, witchcraft,
shamanism and so on, through the history of Northampton?
I haven’t read Voice of the Fire,
so I really can’t comment on how well it achieved its goals.
JCN:
What do you think about Magic and about Alan's lyrics, CDs, The Birth
Caul and Snakes and Ladders?
Alan Moore’s beliefs are not my
beliefs, but I do recognize that Alan’s pursuit of magic is a spiritual
pursuit for him, and I do try to respect other people’s beliefs, even when I
don’t share them -- so long as those beliefs are benign.
One of the reasons I find the
Promethea series so fascinating is that, on one level, the series is Alan Moore’s
systematic examination of the universe from a magician’s perspective. As he
tours the reader through Promethea’s journey, he’s also laying out his
spiritual and philosophical views on the nature of existence. A lot of what
Moore suggests is both intelligent and insightful, but I don’t agree with him
on all points. Basically, I’m not a magician, and I have no plans to become
one anytime soon. :-)
JCN:
Movies and mainly music, can affect us deeply, rousing unseen emotions.
So it is with poetry. They can all transcend their initial genre limitations.
What about comics? Could comics share this quality also?
Certainly, comics can rouse strong
emotions! When you combine talented writing with powerul visual art,
a comic can pull a reader in and move him or her
just as profoundly as a movie or music or poetry. In my own reading,
comics have made me laugh, rage, and even cry once or twice.
JCN:
Could you mention examples?
Well, an easy example would be the
murder of the original Nite Owl in Watchmen.
Moore and Gibbons crafted this part
of their story so carefully, and with such effective use of detail, that I
actually felt genuine sorrow when Hollis Mason was so brutally murdered. I was
disturbed by the loss for days – the loss of a fictional character who had
never even existed. To be completely honest, it *still* upsets me to read
through that sequence!
With Mason’s murder, Moore and
Gibbons created an archetypal example of the kind of random cruelty and
heartless savagery we risk meeting every day in the modern world. And unlike
later imitators -- who only use brutality and murder to shock readers, or to
emphasize a cynical world-view -- Moore and Gibbons wrote their scene with
emotional depth and truth. The scene hurt because it represented how suddenly
and unfairly we can lose those rare good and kind things we cherish in our lives.
Daniel Dreiberg wasn’t the only one
grieved and enraged by Hollis Mason’s murder, I can tell you that!
JCN:
Would AM be the pioneer, and maybe the main representative, of this wider
role of the genre as a true art form?
Moore would be a shining example of
comics-as-true-art, certainly, and he is definitely one of the “pioneer”
writers who reminded (and who reminds) people of all that comics have the
potential to be.
The truest representative of this? I
don’t want to say that, and I suspect Alan wouldn’t want to either. Better
to call the art-in-comics thing a movement, and to view people like Moore,
Morrison, Ellis, Gaiman, and Millar as participants in that movement. Each
writer is contributing to this different way of looking at comic books.
JCN:
Returning to your own comics and writing, tell us more about it: your
motivation, your process, your objectives, and so on . What do you think is your
best comics work so far, and why?
In my case, the only things I’ve
done that anyone has ever actually *seen* were my stories for the Awesome
Outpost magazine. I was genuinely surprised that you wanted to interview me, José,
I’m not anywhere near as famous as some of your other interviewees!
b>
Anyway, at the Outpost I worked on
the Smash serial with the incredibly talented Allan Whincup and Dave Myatt, and
I also contributed to the “Eternity’s End” crossover of the Outpost,
masterminded by our lovably gruff publisher, Mick Swinarski. Early on, I also
did a Shaft story for the Outpost which was illustrated by Eric L. Kent. Eric
was very kind to me as a newcomer, and it was his professionalism in our
collaboration that helped me to stick with the Outpost.
JCN:
Is there anything on which you´re working that you´d like to tell us
about?
Well, my constant collaborator, Allan
Whincup, and I do have a project on the go that we would like to finish, but
Al’s a husband and a father to
two young children, so his time isn’t always his own these days. Besides,
I’m just his friend -- I can’t pay him for his lovely artwork, the way his
other employers can. Hahaha. You can see some of Al’s great work (including
some of the pencilled pages he did for the Outpost) here: http://www.toyangel.com/al/
JCN:
Whom do you read and respect nowadays?
In comics? Grant Morrison and Alan
Moore. As above, if I write something that I think I could show either of them
without shame, then I know I’ve done well.
As far as books go, I’ve actually
been reading very little of late. I spent so much time reading, studying and
analyzing literature when I was in university that, even seven years later,
I still enjoy the fact that I’m free to do other things right now.
Also, there is a dangerous tendency
for writers to read too much and live too little. I find that if I spend time in
the world, experiencing things and meeting different people, the quality and the
depth of my writing improves significantly.
JCN:
What are your writing methods?
I always start out working from a
point-form outline; usually, it’s a hand-written one.
Once I have my initial idea or
concept for a story, the next thing I ask myself is “how does this story
end?” I find that if I have a
beginning and and an ending, it’s much easier to design the rest of the story
– you know where you’re going, so you’re free to fill in the rest as you
see fit. You can be spontaneous, and add new things at the last second, because
you already know where your story has to end. 
I find that this method gives me
creative freedom, and it also prevents those horrible moments when you’re
suddenly in the middle of page twenty and you have no idea where to go next. My
method tends to kill writer’s block, which is nice.
JCN:
What prompted you to write SMASH, that Hulk-like character created by
"the wild boy" Rob Liefeld?
Ah, Rob’s not really a wild boy. I
met him once, and his reputation is completely exaggerated. He’s actually calm,
wryly funny, and incredibly polite – especially when you consider how some
people treat him.
At the San Diego Con where I met Rob,
people were actually coming up to the booth and visibly sneering at both Rob and
his artwork! How disgusting is that? Even if people don’t enjoy Rob’s work,
there’s no excuse for behaving so rudely. It amazes me that Rob can show such
self-restraint when he’s constantly being insulted by people who usually
don’t even know anything about him, other than what they’ve read. 
Rob’s blessing (and perhaps his
curse?) is that he’s extremely restless in his creativity. From what little I
know of him, Rob seems to be a person who’s most focused on the present, and
on the possibilities for the future. He tends to have great concepts, and great
ideas, but he often puts older ideas aside in order to pursue his newer passions
– whatever his newest projects might be.
People sometimes ask why Rob didn’t
just settle in at Image and pump out years and years worth of Youngblood comics
and bring in the money (rather like Erik Larsen has done with Savage Dragon)? My
opinion is, simply, that’s not Rob Liefeld. He seems to love his newest ideas
the most, and he likes to follow them where they lead. The new concept. The new
deal. The newest burst of his creativity. That’s Rob Liefeld as I understand
him, and I respect him for being true to his own nature.
Ironically, Rob’s newest comics
endeavor is a pair of Youngblood miniseries, one written by none other than Mark
Millar. Any curious readers can check it out at
And Smash. Well, I always liked Rob’s
attitude of “I will tell the stories I want to tell”. After Marvel editorial
kicked him off of the Heroes Reborn project, Rob couldn’t tell the stories he
wanted to tell using Marvel characters, so he made up his own “homages” to
those Marvel characters and went ahead to tell his own stories anyway. He
brought in Agent America (later Fighting American) for Captain America, his own
take on Thor, Smash for the Hulk, and so on
At the time I was considering writing
a serial for the Outpost, Marvel’s Hulk was in a bad place: Peter David had
stopped writing it some time before, and the Bruce Jones renaissance we have now
was still a long way off. At this time, there was even talk of the Hulk being
cancelled
So I decided to do a Rob Liefeld, and
use the minor character of Smash to tell Hulk homage stories. When I was a child,
the Roy Thomas/Herb Trimpe Hulk stories were a favorite of mine, and I wanted to
honor those memories in a creative way that would (hopefully) be fun for the
readers.
Interestingly, Smash took on a life
of its own very quickly for Allan, Dave and myself. By the third or fourth
installment, Smash was already starting to move away from being a simple Hulk
tribute. We began moving the character in a completely different direction,
although Outpost readers really didn’t get the chance to see that play out. I
regret that the Outpost had to suspend publication when it did. The best Smash
stories never got told.
JCN:
Which of Alan Moore's ideas did you use when you wrote the Introduction
section of the Outpost crossover issue?
I purposely pulled as much of Alan
Moore’s background for the Awesome Universe into the introduction as I could.
Outpost editor Mick Swinarski had already given me a plot outline for the
crossover, and I knew that the Book of Infinite Tales (created by Alan Moore in
Awesome’s “Judgement Day” miniseries) was going to be central to the new
storyline. I figured that if a Moore idea was going to be at the core of our
plot, I might as well surround it with as many other Alan Moore ideas as I could
reasonably include! It only seemed fair.
Awesome Comics released an issue
which contained most of Moore’s textual notes for the Awesome Universe. I
plundered everything I could use for the Outpost crossover. I’m still proud
that Allan, Dave and I were the first to use Moore’s concept of the
kabbalistic Tree of Life and its spheres – long before Moore covered the
subject in detail with Promethea.
JCN:
Any other projects related to Alan?
Not right now, unfortunately.
Although I secretly wish Alan had hired me to script the current “Terra
Obscura” miniseries, instead of the guy he did hire. Mr. Moore tends to create
interesting superhero worlds, and it would have been extremely fun to play in
that one.
JCN:
Are you familiar with the writings of such cultural luminaries as
Gurdjief, his pupil P.D.Ouspenski, Robert Anton
Wilson, Colin Wilson, Aleister
Crowley and so on? Some of these authors who are even recommended by Alan? What
other authors would you recommend?
I’m completely unfamiliar with
Gurdjief and P.D. Ouspenski. I know that Robert Anton Wilson is the mind behind
the Illuminati stories; although I’ve never read Wilson’s Illuminati stuff,
I am familiar with the concepts behind the work (fnord!). I also recognize the
name of Colin Wilson, but I don’t know anything about his work.
And Crowley … well, Alan Moore and
I would certainly disagree on Crowley. While I readily admit that Crowley was
very intelligent, my own readings concerning Crowley have convinced me that he
was also mentally ill, and absolutely obsessed with the furtherance of his own
fame.
I don’t think Crowley cared one bit
about the occult, as such – he cared about his own fame (or infamy), and his
power to attract followers and acolytes who revered him. For Crowley, the occult
was simply the means by which he sought fame and power for himself.
I’ve read biographical information
on Crowley provided by people who knew him when he was young (Crowley lied about
his own past regularly, often contradicting himself), and Crowley’s mother was
quite insane. She used to refer to Crowley as “the devil” regularly, and she
beat him in her fits of madness. Growing up under such horrible conditions, I
have little doubt that Crowley was at least half-mad himself.
Crowley was intelligent and capable
of scholarly thinking, yes, but it’s my opinion that he used his intellect and
his charisma primarily to build notoreity for himself. I believe that the occult
was merely a means to an end for Crowley, and that his true goal was fame, power
and personal influence over others.
I mentioned earlier that I respect
the beliefs of others, if they are benign, but I don’t respect Crowley because,
in my opinion, Crowley’s philosophy of the occult is neither healthy, humane,
nor life-affirming.
Moore’s interest in the English
magician John Dee sometimes amuses me – from the historical accounts I’ve
read, Dee was supposedly a bit of a scatterbrain. His own assistant in occult
studies abandoned Dee because the assistant thought Dee really didn’t know
what he was doing.
Still, unlike Crowley, I don’t
think Dee ever meant any harm. I don’t want to criticize Dee too harshly
because there may be some neo-magicians out there who respect Dee for his work.
JCN:
To be a little philosophical, what is your conception of Time? The fourth
dimension of space: is it similar
to Enstein´s idea, or something else?
I follow the school of thought which
says that Time is like a river – it always flows forward, and you can’t
change the past because the past has already occurred.
I do know, however, that one-way
backward time-travel is theoretically possible, if certain subatomic
observations prove true – but I still don’t believe that a person can change
the past.
If you were to travel into the past
to assassinate Hitler, or to prevent the 9-11 terrorist
attacks, or to discover
Brasil before Cabral, I believe circumstances would somehow prevent you from
succeeding. Either that, or an alternative-universe with its own timeline would
be created from the point of your actions (as Stephen Hawking suggests). In
either case, the original reality and its original timeline would continue
unchanged.
But I’m a writer, not a scientist,
so don’t take my word for it! :-)
JCN:
What do you imagine a being (or an object, like the Tesseract) from the
Fourth Dimension would look like if he/she/it
could appear in our tridimensional reality?
Exactly as Alan Moore and Steve
Bissette depicted such a being in the `Hypernaut’ story in issue #3 (“Tales
of Uncanny”) of the Image Comics miniseries “1963”!
Hahaha! I know, I cheated with that
answer, but I’m sticking with it! Besides, it gives all your readers who haven’t
seen Alan’s “1963” miniseries a chance to seek it out. It’s a *great*
comic book series! It manages to poke fun at all the silliness of early Marvel
comics while silmultaneously reminding us why they were so great. It’s satire,
but it’s done with love. A rare thing!
JCN:
Have you read any good story, book, essay or text about the fourth - or
higher - dimensions that you could recommended? Any images (films, pictures,
paintings, comics) concerning the same?
I always enjoyed Robert Silverberg’s
time-travel novel Hawksbill Station. The book uses the idea of reverse-only
time-travel, and describes how a future dictatorship uses one-way time travel to
exile political prisoners to the dawn of time – before even the dinosaurs
existed. The novel is very, very out-of-date now (I believe its near-future
dictatorship was set in the year 1982) and it is probably out of print as well.
Still, Silverberg writes a good story, and even though it’s not the author’s
best work, Hawksbill Station has stayed in my head all these years, so it must
be worth something. Silverberg’s novella “Sailing to Byzantium” is one of
my favorite time-travel stories ever, although it’s actually more about
recreating the past than travelling through time. A great story!
JCN:
Do you view our inability to see the higher reality as a problem related
only to human perceptions or does it involve our spiritual aspect?
I’m really not qualified to say. If
you want my opinion, I’d say that both perceptually and spiritually, the
question of *context* would figure largely. It’s not just a question of seeing
and understanding -- it’s also a question of knowing what to look at, and of
knowing what to look for …
To put it another way: if an ant
perceives a human, does the ant even know what it’s sensing? Can the ant ever
know the implications of what it perceives, even if it does sense the human?
When you add the fact that ants see in the ultraviolet spectrum, the questions
become even more difficult. Likewise,
when we humans strive to see higher realities, are we even looking in the proper
way – and how would we know if we *weren’t* looking properly?
JCN:
Are the cognitive limitations of present-day man technological,
philosophical or epistemological?
Probably a combination of all three
factors, each working in ways we don’t even understand yet. My previous answer
focused mostly on the epistemological problems with perception and understanding,
but I really do think all three factors play a part.
JCN:
Please, tell us what have been the three most important events in your
life?
I honestly couldn’t narrow it down
to three events. I’d be scared to try.
JCN:
What about nowadays? What is seminal for you now?
Again, I couldn’t say. It’s hard
to assess your own life while you’re living it. Ask me a couple of years in
the future what was seminal for me now –
I might be able to answer you by then.
JCN:
How do you imagine real-life computers and digital technologies in ten
years?
If I knew the answer in detail, I’d
be rich, José! But seriously, I think that the perfection of wireless
technology, and the integration of various personal electronic devices into one
single device are the obvious next big things. The first company that can give
us a handheld device which combines the functions of a cell phone, a PDA, and a
true web browser – all with wireless connectivity – that company will be
wealthy beyond its wildest dreams.
And I think that the tech companies know this already.
JCN: Bill Joy, one of the inventors of Java, claims that the robotics, genetics and nano-technology that are fueling the global economy also contain the seeds of our self-destruction. Do you think Joy's thesis is plausible?
I think Joy is simply stating a truth
we already know. Any sufficiently powerful or influential technology carries the
possibility of threat with it. That’s the nature of powerful forces. We have
atomic power, and we have atomic bombs. We have mass transit, but we also have
urban pollution. The computer revolution gave us instant access to information
and communication worldwide – but the erosion of personal privacy in the
Information Age is an serious ongoing threat.
I don’t think Bill Joy is saying
anything new; he’s just saying it about the newest powerful things which make
humanity nervous.
-What
are the ethics of your writing?
Ethics in my own writing is reflected
in its themes, I suppose. I think that the main ethical theme which recurs in my
work is this: unethical behavior is ultimately self-damaging or self-destructive.
Not necessarily in a mystical or karmic way, either. It’s been my experience
that the way you live will define the kind of life you have. Again, it’s not
necessarily karma, it’s more like simple action-reaction: what you put out
into the world does affect how the world responds to you.
JCN:
In your opinion, are culture and war the instruments of American
supremacy over the world? How do you judge the neoconservatism of Bush
administration?
I would say that culture, technology,
and money (economics) contribute most to the perceived superiority of America. I
say “perceived” because, in truth, how much does the US actually rule other
nations? There’s a difference between being supreme in theory and supreme in
practice. America doesn’t actually rule the world, although US influence can
certainly be felt in many ways. Influence is not the same as rule, however.
Countries can and do resist American influence on a daily basis.
Still, criticizing America (remember,
I was born in Canada, so I experienced this first-hand as a young Canadian) is
rather like being an “armchair football coach”. A person like me can sit at
home, watching TV, and criticize the decisions which are made almost too easily
-- because in the end, it’s never *my* decisions that will matter – and my
alternative plans will never be tested (proven right or wrong) because I’m not
really the one making the hard choices. And because nobody ever dies or suffers
if I’m wrong, it’s too easy for me to think that I’m always right.
America certainly makes big mistakes,
but no other nation carries the responsibility of trying to please the entire
world, every day, all the time. I’m not saying other nations couldn’t carry
this task also – I’m saying that, in the end, I don’t think another nation
would do any better in the job than America does. Some would definitely do worse.
Pleasing the entire world, all the
time is an impossible job. Whichever country has the “most powerful” status
is always going to be blamed and hated for its failures and have its good deeds
ignored. That’s the nature of modern politics.
As for the George W. Bush administration, I find I disagree
with it most of the time – but the truth is, unless the Democrats can offer an
intelligent, capable, and charismatic candidate for election in 2004, I fully
expect G. W. Bush will be re-elected. That’s the saddest part: four more years
of the younger Bush just because the US Democrats can’t get their act together.
JCN:
How do you perceive science and technology nowadays, and do you think
that we may lose control over them one day in the future?
As I said earlier, powerful
technologies are always a double-edged sword. Whether we control our technology,
or make a mess of everything, will depend on how wise future generations prove
to be. H. G. Wells wrote, “History is a race between Education and Catastrophe”.
I hope education wins out, but who knows?
JCN:
Are you familiar with the comic art of the now-famous Brazilian Mike
Deodato? What do you think of it?
José, I *love* Mike Deodato’s work!!!
Absolutely love it! When Deodato Studios was doing regular work in North America
(Wonder Woman, Ultraforce, and so on) a lot of reviewers commented on the
sexiness of Deodato’s women. While this was certainly true, I think the
reviewers missed the larger truth: Deodato brings genuine beauty to the human
form, both male and female. I always loved the way Deodato put such emotion into
the faces as well. Even with the most rugged, stoic male hero, you could still
read emotion in the character’s eyes. That’s a gift, and not enough comics
artists have that gift.
So yes, I love Mike Deodato’s work.
I think I would write for him for free if he asked me – at least for as long
as my bank account could stand it! He’s that good, and not enough people
outside of Brasil seem to know it.
JCN:
Finally, which places on the internet do you visit most often?
Well, computer games are my favorite
way to relax (TV is too passive!), so a lot of my favorite websites are places
like Gamespot (http://www,gamespot.com/pc/news.html).
Even my favorite online comic strip is about people who work at a computer-game
company (http://www.pvponline.com) --
although I also enjoy the current Popeye comic strip very much! (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/popeye.asp)
JCN: Well, that’s it, my friend.
Many, many thanks to you for sharing your time with us.
My pleasure, José. I’m flattered
by your interest in me and my work. It was an honor to be interviewed. Many,
many thanks to you and your kind readers.
As my friend Octavio Aragão from Rio
taught me to say: Abraços!