Author: Roland Allnach
Title: Oddities & Entities
Publisher: All Things That Matter Press
ISBN: 9780985006648
Pages: 268, Paperback/Kindle
Genre: Horror/Supernatural/Science Fiction
Author Interview with Roland Allnach
Author Interview with Roland Allnach
Title: Oddities & Entities
Interviewed by: Jason Lulos, Pacific Book Review
1. Some of these works, such as “Boneview” and “Elmer Phelps” and even “My Other Me” are coming of age stories. The characters discover themselves to be supernatural or mentally gifted/troubled. Were you drawing a parallel between this kind of self-discovery and the progression into adulthood?
I wanted to work with several themes in ‘Oddities & Entities’ and one of them is the uncertainty that resides in shifting states of existence. That may come across as a rather detached idea, but I think it’s something that has a direct translation into everyday life, and the way in which people segue from one phase of life into another. As people mature, the shift from the insular life of a pre-adult to the responsibility- and accountability- of adulthood is perhaps one of the greatest shifts we endure. So, the use of characters who are making that transition opened two creative possibilities: one, to touch on the more normal aspects of growth to ground the characters as accessible, flesh and blood people; two, to also take that process and use it as an open door for the characters to renegotiate their presence in the world with the varying states of bizarre awareness that blunder through their lives.
2. I was very intrigued about the concept of the “gray” being sort of like a superego but more like a balance between order and freedom. It seemed to me that “Gray” had a much broader philosophical statement about oppositions. Could you comment on that a little more?
Well, as you suggest, the title of the story itself loses its mystery as the story progresses. At first a simple name for a mysterious little creature, it transcends the locality of one being to encompass a greater view of the world. It’s for that reason that I decided to have Dave, the main character, work as an engineer. He struggles to live life within measured constraints by certain parameters, even as such things are driving him insane. Once Gray emerges from Dave’s head and Dave finds himself in a resulting and mounting mess, he then starts to see through the delineations he has tried to obey. I wanted to portray a ‘waking’ moment, the kind of disorienting awakening when someone emerges from the illusion in which he’s lived to perceive the illusion in full. Only from that perspective does Dave find the resolve to do the things he must. And, for me, that’s where the ‘gray’ concept reaches its fruition, because only in detachment does Dave gain the grounding he needs to save himself. I think it’s a compelling irony, part of the yin and yang coupling drifting through the end of the story.
3. My favorite line in the book: “If what he perceived as his intellect was a fantasy generated by his own flesh, then the perception of existence about his flesh was fantasy as well. Nothing was real, and so everything was real.” This is an interesting catch-22 in which embodied persons can disprove disembodied persons and vice versa. Was this a purposeful philosophical riddle? And in either case, would it imply (even coming from a fictional piece) that, if souls exist, they would be as skeptical of bodies as skeptical humans are of souls?
There is indeed a game of perceived, subjective realities underlying the tale of “My Other Me.” Excuse the plug, but on my website I have a feature where I talk about the creative considerations I put into everything I write, and for this story it started while I was walking across a parking lot at night, and my shadow was curling around me as I passed the lights in the lot. From there it didn’t take much to start wondering what the perception of the shadowwould be if the shadow had an intellect, an awareness, of its own. I’m flattered (and satisfied) that the quote you have above held such resonance, because it conveys so much of the story. I think as individuals we all live in our own subjective realities; the conflicting impressions of eye-witness accounts attest to how people can see the same thing but perceive it in vastly different ways. Taking that one step further, it can be argued that reality is only what we choose to believe or, with more subtlety, how we allow ourselves to perceive reality. There’s a cat and mouse aspect to the story between Mo and Noel as split personalities but, considering the fact that Mo is a compulsive liar, Noel’s efforts to sort out his personal ‘reality’ are more clouded. I believe in the idea of a soul, that said, I think a soul is quite a different state of awareness than that of a conscious body. It’s like two sides of a coin. If each side had an awareness, they could be aware of what they see, but never of each other. They would have to look through themselves, but that requires the leap of thought to entertain the existence of something that can’t be seen. Deny that, and, in effect, the faces of the coin are uncoupled from each other. Therefore, and for all practical consideration, what is unknown to each ceases to exist.
4. Just a general question. Could you talk about possible motivations or your philosophical/political positions, in terms of human interaction in nature, environmentalism, and/or ecology in relation to “Appendage.”
I tried to weave through the stories of ‘Oddities & Entities’ the notion of greater wisdoms that exist in the world around us, and one of those is certainly the wisdom of the natural world. “Appendage” serves as the final fulfillment of that theme, and that was indeed by intent. As individuals I think we often are mired in the everyday demands of life so that we lose sight of the fact that our existence is fleeting and, in the vastness of the natural world, quite inconsequential. When I look at the things modern society does to the world, it does bother me. We hack, slash, and burn our way through nature with little regard, partly so for the overwhelming scale of the world. Nevertheless, the natural world can’t be denied, and the folly of neglecting its order has been witnessed throughout history. But I think the greater folly is to forget our place as just one part of the natural order of our world. That notion is what led to the way I crafted the various characters in “Appendage”, and the way in which their conflict plays out. Randal, as the protagonist – a cynical, jaded mercenary – has nothing but contempt for the mess of the world. Yet, he finds his only solace is to drift on his yacht, loose on the ocean tides, which sets the stage for his final transformation and redemption. He only finds his final peace when he lets his perception evolve to greater aspects of nature, and so find a way to ‘fit’ with the world. Personally, I find a transcendent solace to watching trees, waves, and other facets of nature. It lends a humbling perspective when I feel the mess of life pushing into my head.
5. Is there such a thing as an Elastimer Vector Injection? And if not, is it based on something that is real?
The elastimer vector injection is something I created for the plot of “Appendage”, but its idea is rooted in actual medical technology. The idea in the story was to use retroviruses to transcribe DNA to ‘treat’ disease. There is already wide spread use of retroviruses to insert genes in bacteria to produce particular medications, which are then harvested. Retroviruses are incredible creations of nature. Whereas RNA viruses invade a cell and reproduce until the cell explodes, releasing the new virions, a retrovirus is built on DNA, and can thereby insert its own DNA into the DNA of the host cell. It is by this process that certain viruses can go dormant, and why DNA viruses are so difficult to treat. The most common case of this is the chicken pox virus – a DNA virus that after the pox infection goes dormant within the DNA of nerve cells, only to erupt as shingles decades later. Modern gene therapy is often based on engineered retroviruses, allowing a controlled ‘infection’ that results in the transcription of the therapeutic genes into the target host cells. It’s a fascinating, powerful modality but, as with all such things in nature, it needs to be treated with great respect. Meddling with DNA, the toolkit of life, can have disastrous, unforeseen ramifications. We need to understand and always remember that the organisms populating our earth not only evolved as individual species but in relation to each other. What we see as ‘life’ is the product of vast periods of time and the associated evolutionary refinement. Part of the idea with “Appendage” was to illustrate the subtleties of that refinement, and to gain some philosophical understanding of that process.
6. The last line of “Appendage” pleasantly haunts me when I think of the story. But I have another question about this story. Is there any significance or connection between the miracle drug and Jean-Paul Devalle and/or Napoleon III?
The back story of Devalle and Napoleon III is a construct to ground some of the stranger aspects of the story while, at the same, adding to the exotic flavor of the story. In actual history there was a rather pointed colonial interest by the French in the Caribbean and northern part of South America during the time of Napoleon III’s reign. On the surface the intent was to provide some factual support to fix a time frame for that portion of “Appendage”, but on a deeper level it was a nod to some symbolic considerations. Although Devalle is a fictional character, Napoleon III was not only an actual person, but quite a character in his own right. Wildly ambitious, enamored with and aspiring to the successes of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III was nevertheless an utter failure. His quest for territorial expansion led to a humiliating defeat at the hands of a newly united Germany under Bismark, his colonial ambitions to create a greater French Empire collapsed and, on a personal level, his physical state eroded from a tall, imposing physique to an overweight, pathetic mess of over-indulgence. Those factors of Napoleon III are paralleled in the misguided ambitions running through “Appendage”.
