Running with the Dogs: Nancy Kress interviewed
01/07/2008 . Source: Mike Brotherton 
Science fiction author Nancy Kress is interviewed by fellow SF writer Mike Brotherton about why she is fascinated by the way viruses and bacteria can mutate, loving the works of Ursula LeGuin, and waking up early and usually spending the whole morning writing. Buy Nancy Kress Dogs in the USA - or Buy Nancy Kress Dogs in the UK  Nancy Kress is one of the best writers in science fiction today, and one of our best teachers as well (she was one of my instructors at Clarion West back in 1994). She has a new book coming out, and I'm quite pleased to be interviewing her today.
About Dogs:
An unknown virus has turned up in dogs in Tyler, a small town on the Maryland-West Virginia border. Like rabies, the virus crosses the blood-brain barrier, turning formerly calm pets into aggressive killers. The government throws a quarantine around Tyler and brings in the CDC. Law enforcement begins rounding up dogs, including those that may have been infected but aren't yet showing signs of the disease.
It's one thing to kill a billion chickens in Asia to try to contain avian flu; it's another to ask Americans to surrender pets. Many people in Tyler want their dogs left alone. Many people want the dogs all euthanized. Many on both sides are armed.
The action in Dogs is seen from varied viewpoints: the local Animal Control Offcer. A boy trying to hide his pet. A widowed ex-FBI agent who becomes more involved than she ever thought she would be. And a man who knows what's really going on.
Publisher's Weekly gave Dogs a glowing review, calling it "spine-chilling….Kress brings her thorough knowledge of genetics and biology to bear in this nicely creepy thriller."
The Interview
What was your inspiration for writing DOGS?
I'm fascinated by the way viruses and bacteria, including pathogens, can both mutate naturally and be genetically engineered. I've read everything I can find, for instance, on the outbreaks of Ebola in Congo and Sudan. Genetically engineered pathogens turn up in my books OATHS AND MIRACLES and STINGER. In fiction, the pathogens are usually transmitted by humans. But, I mused, it doesn't have to be that way …and just about that time I happened to get a dog.
What attracts you to science fiction?
It's a canvas large enough to paint just about anything on it. You can use the past, the present, the future - or all of them at once. You can deliberately distort some aspect of humanity - as, for instance, LeGuin does with gender in The Left Hand of Darkness - to examine it more closely. You can invent whatever you need to tell your story. Much of mainstream fiction has shrunk itself down to the examination of a few people in a very constrained situation, such as (for example) a family disintegrating. That's interesting, but so is the larger-scale take on society that very few mainstream writers do any more.
What sort of research did you do to write this book?
I researched both dog breeds and government agencies. Since I'd already written two previous books with FBI protagonists, I'd read a lot of books on the FBI, but now I read more. This isn't hard since it seems that every other retired agent wrote a book. The science in DOGS is not as detailed as in, say, STINGER, where a point-of-view character was a CDC epidemiologist, so I didn't need to do as much research on that aspect.
Do you feel it's important to get the science right in your work?
Yes. Whether it's detailed or merely sketched in, I try hard to get the science right. This isn't always easy for me, since I have no scientific training. One of my proudest moments was a call from the Whitehead Institute for Biological Research in Boston. The scientists there had been passing around OATHS AND MIRACLES, part of which is set at Whitehead, and they wanted to know whom I knew up there that was working on envelope proteins.
Does this book have a theme or message you're trying to impart? How does that interact with events in the world at large today?
If there's a theme, it's both simple and important: Watch out. Pathogens as weapons could easily happen.
Who are your favourite authors and books now and when you were growing up?
Growing up, I read everything I could find: good books, bad books, the backs of catsup bottles, the confession magazines my mother his in the linen closet. I had no discrimination whatsoever. I liked Zane Grey, Little Women, Gone With the Wind. At 14 I discovered SF, and immediately liked that. Now, I still read a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction. A favourite is Ursula LeGuin.
What are you writing now?
Another novella. That's my favorite length. It's long enough to create a world, but short enough that the plot can shoot along like a bullet, without subplots to slow it down. Three of my four Nebulas have been for novellas or novelettes.
Did you always want to write? Or did you stumble into it? How did you get where you are now?
Nothing was planned. I started writing when I was pregnant with my second child, stuck out in the country without a car, and going nuts. I didn't take writing very seriously for a long time. I had been a fourth-grade teacher, and I thought that would be my career.
What does a typical writing day look like for you? How long do you write, that sort of thing?
I'm a morning person. I wake up early, and usually spend the morning writing. If it doesn't get written by 1:00 p.m. or so, it doesn't get written. This means that I go to bed fairly early, which makes me a dud at parties.
Is there anything you especially like to work on in a book? Anything you hate?
I like rewriting better than writing. The first draft is more anxiety producing because I can't outline and never know the ending until I get there, so every story risks having no ending. Some of them just peter out. But once I have a first draft, there's something concrete to work with, and I can relax a little. My least favourite thing is interrupting work on something to go over the copy-edited ms. or galleys of a book I finished with a year earlier. Once it's out of my mind, it's out. On to the next challenge!
Mike Brotherton
(c) Mike Brotherton 2008
Mike Brotherton is a hard science fiction author (check out Spider Star and Star Dragon from Tor) and assistant professor in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming - specialising in quasars. You can find out more about his excellent novels over at http://www.mikebrotherton.com
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