Chris Lodwig
Seattle, WA
USA
Good morning, Chris, and welcome to Vision and Verse, the site for Art and Authors and those who love them. Can you tell us what you’ve written?
I’ve just completed Interface, the third novel in my Systemic series. One of the unusual—and I think cool—things about the series is that each book is very different. Systemic was sort of a Rural American Cyberpunk Utopian/Dystopian novel; Host was a neurodivergent, post-apocalyptic coming-of-age-story; and Interface is an eco-technological heroine's journey. But they all fit together seamlessly and contribute to an overarching narrative that I’m really excited about. I think the series is unique and—honestly—feels timely given the ways technology, and in particular AI, are shaping our lives and the world.
What is your favorite genre to write?
Speculative fiction. I’m an anxious person. I look at things around us—what’s going on with our technology, politics, environment, culture—and I worry about where these trends will take us. That feels to be an inherently speculative activity. You combine that with my love of beauty and people and detail, and out pops big-ol’ spec fiction novels. There is something therapeutic aboutknowing that whatever happens, there will still be people, we will still pursue love and connection and reach beyond ourselves. There will still be humor, and there might be some sentient fungus.
The Sentient Fungus, hmmmm, that sounds like the title of a great sci-fi book!
Favorite food.
Yikes. I honestly cannot think of a food I’ve tried that I haven’t liked. I live in Seattle, and we have tons of fantastic food from all over the world. Restaurants that are in continual rotation in the Lodwig family: Thai, Japanese (especially sushi), Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Indian, Caribbean, Turkish, Mediterranean. I don’t get enough Filipino food in my life, but I’d throw that in there too. And of course, few things beat a good pizza or burger. (Sorry I haven’t had breakfast yet)
Tea or coffee?
Coffee.
Pizza or ice cream?
Pizza (thin crust, Italian preferably.)
Wine or beer or soda or what?
A cocktail, please. Preferably something with bourbon in it. Unless it’s Monday trivia at the local brew pub: then beer.
Where would you like to visit?
Pretty much any place with food on the food list above. My favorite places to return to are places where I have friends: Copenhagen (great food town, by the way), Amsterdam, Belgium. I would go back to New Zealand or Iceland in a heartbeat. I’ve never been to Asia, so a stint there would be cool, especially Japan. I’ve also never been farther east than Italy, so eastern Europe would be interesting except for Russia. I’m pretty annoyed at Russia these days.
Favorite musical artist.
Might as well ask about food. My longest-lasting favorite was Neutral Milk Hotel. I still get pretty jazzed when I listen to The Aeroplane Over the Sea, or On Avery Island. Sadly, I’ve stopped identifying with bands. This is one of the casualties of our move from albums in favor of the Spotify’s auto-generated “Songs to listen to while doing the dishes while filled with ennui” playlists. But on current heavy rotation are Idles, LCD Sound System (their collaboration on “Dancer” is pretty great), Frightened Rabbit, The Beatles, Russian Circles, Pelican…whatever pops into my mind. We were on a Barry Manilow kick for a while after a friend talked us into going to his show. I’ve decided he is underrated (Barry, not my friend).
Do you listen to music when you write?
It depends where I’m at in my writing process. When I’m editing, I listen to my books using Word’s Narrate feature so that I can get a feel for the phrasing and cadence of the words. So, I can’t listen to music when I’m editing. But when I’m in the early spewing out ideas bit, I do listen to music.
Okay. What?
Nothing with words because I get focused on lyrics, so I go for Post Rock: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Russian Circles, Pelican... Lots of texture, good dynamics, slow patient crescendos toward crazy climaxes.
What makes you laugh?
Ridiculous things make me laugh. For example, I love The Onion. The fact that they deal with actual current global events, like politics, all the way down to some silly quirk of our internal monologues and report it as “news”—just that framing alone makes me giggle. The Daily Show is entertaining for much the same reason. They point out the ridiculousness and the hypocrisy of the things that we see every day and in doing so, they give voice to my feelings of frustration and powerlessness and helplessness in the face of all the horrible things that happen on a daily basis. I think that sort of humor is valuable. I love a good meme as much as the next guy, but I love and miss long-form jokes. I try to remember them and repeat them as often as I can, but I feel and fear that the long-form narrative joke is a dying art.And, of course, I love banter. I have a couple of groups of close friends who either in person or on a text thread keep up a running commentary of silly memes, innuendos, and friendly jibes. Those friends—their cleverness, their irreverence, their silliness—I find endlessly entertaining and enlivening.
This is an Author AND Art blog, so I am obligated to ask: Favorite work of art or sculpture.
Strangely, I’m not sure I have one. Instead, here are a couple things I love. Cleverness of ideas that still have an aesthetic quality and technical skill to them. I’m sure that makes me a philistine, but whatever, I’m not an art expert. The thing that pops to mind is this image on the God is an Astronaut album cover (the hand-drawn one, not the photoversion) that manages to tell me the entire story of a hunter in the woods in the dead of winter who has returned to his cabin hoping to find refuge, only to find it’s burned downand he’s screwed.
(https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273f682220fac054e88a347a243)
Here are some things that have really made me marvel:
When I see a marble sculpture that looks like it can breathe or would be soft to the touch; the way some painters can capture candle or fire light; when I can almost put my nose to a still life and look at a flower petal and still not see the brush strokes.
How old were you when you started writing?
I started keeping a journal when I was 15. I think I still have them lying around, but they’re completely unreadable because I was 15. I wrote my first novel when I was in college between the ages of 21 and 24. Also completely unreadable. I fancied myself very clever and was trying way too hard to be edgy and literary. After that, I didn’t write until my late 30s. I was on the bus after work and my cell phone and laptop died. All I had was a notebook and a long bus ride ahead of me. So, I started describing a scene that I had in my mind from a trip I’d taken through Montana. I wrote four handwritten pages on the way home that evening and I just kept writing. I have been doing it every day for the last 12 years or so.
Do you plan out your book with outlines and notecards?
Or just write?
I prefer to just write if I can. That’s the most joyful way for me to write and I think it’s the most therapeutic and has the most interesting outcomes. That said, at some point, I impose a structure on it so I can keep track of what I’m doing and what I’m writing. Also, when you get into a trilogy it becomes even more important to have structure so that you can make sure to close out certain plot lines, make sure the character arcs hold up, those sorts of things. So, out of necessity, I tend toward outlining. By the way, Scrivener is absolutely essential for this sort of work, so any writers out there who aren’t using Scrivener go drop a couple bucks and spend a couple hours figuring it out. You will thank me.
Describe your perfect evening.
I sit down and have dinner with my wife and daughter. Then we go for an after-dinner walk with the dog down to a local park. Soon, my wife will get tired and decide to watch some show I don’t want to watch, so I go out to a local bar with a couple of my friends and crack stupid jokes until we’re all tired. Then I get home just as my wife is heading to bed and we read to each other.
Where do you get your inspiration?
The base—the roux—is anxiety. That’s always nice and rich for me. I love to think about science and nature and technology and culture and psychology. I enjoy imagining the way places make me feel, be they landscapes or cityscapes or interiors. I toss all that in with a bit of obsessiveness about some idea I’ve been annoying my friends and family about, and out pop stories.
What do you do when you get writer's block?
I write. The willingness to write crap combined with a very aggressive instinct to delete said crap really does keep me from getting writer’s block. I think that if I really do get writer’s block someday, it will be because I don’t really have anything to write about, and I’ll just stop writing and do something else.
Who is your favorite author?
Cormac McCarthy. Though I just happened upon Karen Russell and I might have to add her to the short list. Oh and Kazuo Ishiguro is pretty amazing…this is another food, music question.
Best book you ever read.
Moby Dick is pretty impressive. But so are Ender’s Game, Blood Meridian, Klara and the Sun, and The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Perdido Street Station, and Dune. Tough to say.
Last book you read.
We are Legion (We are Bob).
What would you do for a living if you weren’t a writer?
I am not fortunate enough to get to write full time, so I would have to say I would probably be a technical program manager at a large software company…since that is exactly what I do. If I could do anything, I would be some form of teacher. I really enjoy learning about something and then teaching other people about it.
As a retired teacher, I truly appreciate that!
Who is the one person who has influenced your personal life the most and why?
I’m going to set aside the obvious people (Mom, Dad, Amy, Anya, I love you all, but you make for boring answers) and say Larry Harvey. He’s the guy who started Burning Man. I’m not one of those weird old men who still hang out at Burning Man—I haven’t gone in 25 years—but the ethos that went along with Burning Man back then, that art can and should be done for its own sake, and that we are all artists and can build community around our ideas, that was very influential to me. A lot of great things happened in my life because I believed in those ideas. Some of the parts of my life that I’m most proud of, the ones I carry around with me and I whip out in conversations like old wallet photos came from those times and the cool things that came out of them.
If you could sit down and have a conversation with ONE person, living or dead, real or fictional, who would it be and why?
I bet Ben Franklin would be interesting. From what I understand, he was wicked smart, creative, funny, clever, wise, idealistic and not afraid to do things. I think a world of self-confident polymaths would be a pretty cool world to live in.
What advice would you give someone who aspired to be a writer?
Write. Don’t think about writing. Write.
Stephen King said the first draft is for you, the second draft is for your readers (I think he actually said, “you write the first draft with the door closed and the second with the door open” but it means the same thing). So, edit ruthlessly. Listen to your beta readers, listen to your editors. The more clever you think something is, the more annoying others will find it.
Chris Lodwig writes speculative fiction that explores the psychological, social, and historical impacts of technology and pseudo-religion. His Systemic Series spans centuries: from a world run by a morally ambiguous AI, through its collapse, to the divergent civilizations struggling to rebuild from what it left behind.
By day, Chris is a Principal Product Manager at Microsoft with over 30 years in the technology industry. That perspective — building systems that shape how people live and work — runs through everything he writes.
He holds degrees in Comparative History of Ideas and Communications from the University of Washington. He co-hosts the No “I” in Writingpodcast, which explores the messy, collaborative process of turning drafts into finished novels.
Chris lives in Seattle. When he’s not writing or shipping software, he’s fly fishing, listening to NPR podcasts, playing music, eating good food and drinking good drinks with friends.
THE CONCLUSION OF THE SYSTEMIC SERIES
Three hundred years after the fall of the System, two rival cultures are still sifting through the ruins, trying to rebuild their societies.
Scab is spreading from the outskirts toward the technophobic city of Seal Tooth. Rather than send aid, the Host votes to seal the borders and leave the people in the outlying towns to their fate. Avalina, a young doctor, can’t accept that. She and Kavi, the city’s only expert on heretical tech, break quarantine and ride east across the sagelands toward the mysterious town of Prower, hoping to discover forbidden technology and a cure.
But Prower, too, is in crisis. The bio-amplified Forest that cares for its people is dying. A resurrection archaeologist is racing to replace the Forest’s gifts with the ancient machines he has recently unearthed.
To save their societies and repair the three-hundred-year rift between them, they must either give themselves to the Forest to heal it, revive the maternalistic AI that nearly destroyed humanity, or attempt something the world has never seen…and may not survive.
“A new kind of AI story — both dystopian and utopian, big picture, and very human.” — Ramez Naam, author of The Nexus Series
“A very human look at a traumatized society restructuring itself around entrenched traditions, tribalism, and faith.” — Ashley Nathan Feniello
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