I'm Meg Elison, science fiction author and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. My debut was published twice. AMA!

[u/paganmeghan]

Hi Reddit! I'm Meg Elison, the author of THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE, a post-apocalyptic feminist speculative novel, Tiptree recommendation, current Audie Award nominee and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. My sequel, THE BOOK OF ETTA, was published in February 2017. I've also been published in McSweeney’s, Tor.com, Compelling Science Fiction, Motherboard's Terraform, and many other places. I'm a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. My debut was published twice and it's been a wild ride. This is my dream job! AMA.

megelison.com

Proof: /img/day1xd2ln9oy.jpg

EDIT: I am headed out to dinner for a few hours, but I'll pop back on tonight. You guys are great!

[u/mattwb72]

How were things in the Elison household after your husband gave your first book only 4 stars on Goodreads?

[u/paganmeghan → u/mattwb72]

Hahahahaha John is a very tough critic. He reserves his 5 star reviews for utter masterpieces. I felt it was fair.

[u/Chtorrr]

What books really made you love reading as a kid?

[u/paganmeghan → u/Chtorrr]

Hoo boy, so many. Brain-dump list:

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, because I wanted that adventure so bad. The Hobbit, because I wanted that adventure, too. The Neverending Story, because it was so different from the film and I wanted to know how that happened. Also because it's printed in two different colored inks, to separate one world from the other, and that enhanced the experience SO MUCH. The Hundred Dresses, because I was a poor kid who dreamed of revenge. Blubber, because I was a fat kid who dreamed of revenge. The Chocolate War, because I dreamed of revenge... there's a theme here.

I was obsessed with Poe from the time I was about ten. He did things with language that were like stuffing my mouth with diamonds every time I read it out loud. His vocab sent me running to learn what words meant, but his imagery was so clear I had no trouble with it whatsoever.

Dick and Heinlein and Herbert turned me on to the idea that you could write space battles and aliens and magic and it would be just as good (sometimes better) than the special effects on Star Trek and in Star Wars could deliver. They showed me how to make people see things, before I knew what that meant.

Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca is a GREAT book for a preteen who lives for drama-- it taught me how to tighten dialog toward a reveal like a master.

Also Stephen King. I could talk for days about how important his books were to me. Yeah, they're full of weird sex and fairytale gore, but they're perfect for weird kids like I was. He had such an approachable, blue-collar way about him. I felt like my cool dad was showing me his workshop. I'd read once for the story, and they're always good. Then I'd read again, asking him to show me how he did that. That's love of reading, at least two ways. Stephen King raised me, no other way to say it.

[u/Duke_Paul]

Hey Meg,

I'm curious what constitutes "feminist post-apocalyptic"? It's just not a term I'm especially familiar with.

Thanks and congratulations!

[u/paganmeghan → u/Duke_Paul]

Hey! So, I tried to read ALL the post-apocalyptic SF books written in English over last five years or so. It's a big job, and I'm planning a long blog about the experience. One of the things that stood out to me was that almost all of them have a male POV character. The ones that include female characters (especially the ones from the 40s 50s and 60s) make no mention of the needs that women would experience after the fall, or the specific asymmetry of the way the world falls apart. They never needed birth control, they never discussed where to find tampons or what they would do when they ran out. A lot of the movies and TV shows in this genre make the same mistake, and then compound it with shiny hair, perfect eyebrows, and shaved armpits (looking at you, Walking Dead). I wanted to write a book that stood out by offering a different perspective on the end of the world. Margaret Atwood and P.D. James were very influential in this regard, but really the story I wanted to read just wasn't on the shelf. My book works with a feminist viewpoint because the women in it are whole people, with their own needs and views and choices. That's all it means.

[u/nagabridge]

If you were appointed Secretary of Education & had the ability to add a handful of sci-fi / fantasy books to the required reading lists of American high school students, no questions asked, which would they be? As in, their English teachers would HAVE to include this books in their curriculum?

[u/nagabridge → u/nagabridge]

Oh and by the way I loved your book. Does that not go without saying? Will read Etta soon!! Very ding-dang excited <3

[u/paganmeghan → u/nagabridge]

Required SF/F for American High Schoolers:

Kindred by Octavia Butler

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

1984 by George Orwell

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

Her Smoke Rises Up Forever, by James Tiptree Jr.

the collected short stories of Isaac Asimov, with a required final paper on Nightfall

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Neuromancer by Neal Stephenson

Orlando by Virginia Woolf (will argue to the ground that this is SF/F)

The Martian by Andy Weir

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

... I don't have a good sense of how many books high schoolers have to read. See above re: dropout. But these ones are important, and I would teach them to kids if I were in charge.

EDIT: spacing

[u/ahkreets]

Hi Meg,

First of all, I have to say I loved The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. I don't think I've finished a book so quickly in years, and I loved the follow-up with The Book of Etta. I appreciate the way you beautifully wrote about the purpose for each of your characters and the challenges that come with understanding their purpose or lack thereof. I can't wait to read more from you!

1. What kind of soundtrack would you place with your books? The sounds of a post-apocalyptic world have always been intriguing to me, and I'm curious to know your thoughts on how it would sound.

2. Which of your characters would you choose as a companion in a post-apocalyptic world? Or would you go solo?

Thanks again for doing this AMA!

PS- I'm currently in nursing school and some of the material we learn is cryptic, but suddenly I feel like I might have a purpose if the fever comes....

[u/paganmeghan → u/ahkreets]

Hi! Thank you so much! I love hearing from health care professionals who like my books especially!

1. Each book I write has a theme song. I knew Midwife's song immediately, but Etta's was harder to track down. The soundtrack to both needs to be melancholy and a little edgy. In the case of my first book, the song was I Will Possess Your Heart by Death Cab for Cutie. The album cut is 8 minutes long, with a devastating yet draggy intro. I'm not a huge fan of the band, but that song is perfect.

Etta's song was hard because I needed something that sounded like the echoes of a lost world... that's a tall order. Then, by chance, someone shared a link with me to a video of a group called Orkestra Obsolete playing Blue Monday on century-old instruments and that did it. The sound of a dead world, and a sullen song about being shut out of love, and about revelation from your lover on who they really are... that song is a gift. Find it if you can.

2. I have two choices of companions. First, I'd pick Roxanne, if she'd have me. She's tough and decisive and I've been around women like her my whole life. I'll put up with her biker boyfriend; she's fun and forthright and built to last. After her, I'd choose Flora from Etta. I'm writing more about her now for book three, and I'm kinda in love with her. She has the gift of a broader experience than most, and that's going to help her understand the world better.

EDIT: a word, for clarity

[u/hohmeisw]

Hi, thanks for doing this AMA. I have not read the book yet (though I'll fix that soon), so I have more general questions, and questions about you.

"I'm a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley" How did this happen, and did it coincide with you becoming a writer? How did you become a writer?

I'm new to Heinlein, only read Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and Friday. What do you recommend next? Also, what do you think of Heinlein critically?

As a fellow kid raised on Stephen King, I want to know your favorite book. I'm not sure any of us agree.

Thanks again.

[u/paganmeghan → u/hohmeisw]

I dropped out of high school because I was living on my own and couldn't do school and work a job anymore. My parents left me to fend for myself at about 14, so I worked as an au pair and washed dishes at night in a pizza parlor. It took me a long time to return to school, but when I did, the California community college system was there for me in a real way. I got grants and scholarships, had teachers who gave a shit and saw talent and work ethic in me, and I worked hard to get to Berkeley, which was my dream school. There again, I had grants and scholarships (thanks, taxpayers! I'll get you back soon) and good teachers and a lot of help. I started writing for the paper there, the Daily Californian. I had always been a writer, but I gained an understanding and a lot of discipline through school and my early swings at publication. I was ready to write Midwife when I graduated in 2014. I sat down to write it after my last final and churned out 13k words on that day. There's a lot of a life story, but that's a big chunk of mine.

Heinlein is a difficult author to defend critically. He doesn't create durable structure and his dialog is often stilted. But damn can he write a story and build a world that you can believe in. You've read the big hits already, but I'd recommend Citizen of the Galaxy. It's always been my favorite.

A favorite King book is tough. I love The Stand but I hate the ending. I love The Gunslinger, but it was never as good as the first book. Misery is a damned near perfect novel, with a villain who gets more and more scary and never gets chumped. Also, much of his best advice to writers is woven into it, so let's say that one today. I think you're right that none of us agree, but it's really one big universe and we're just numbering the stars. :)

[u/VillainousInc]

Hi, thanks for doing this AMA.

I had a lot of questions, but I'm going to try and keep this to just a few.

1.) The Midwife is not a particularly sympathetic or likable character, quickly becoming hardened to the world around her. Would you say this is totally a response to the nightmare world she lives in now, or is it an extension of who she always was? In either case, what qualities do you find admirable in the character of the midwife, or if not necessarily admirable, important?

2.) The books have been criticized as being a kind of feminist propaganda. (I don't necessarily agree with this assessment but bear with me.) With this in mind, what would you ideally want specifically men who read The Book of The Unnamed Midwife to take away from it?

3.) Yours is the first novel I've read published by an Amazon imprint. How would you describe your experience working with them, and how do you feel, both as writer and consumer, about Jeff Bezos's severely anti-traditional vision of publishing?

Thank you for your time, and sorry if this is too much.

[u/paganmeghan → u/VillainousInc]

1. You're right, the Midwife isn't likeable. There's a real pressure to make female characters likable above all other things, whereas male protagonists can be openly cruel and still beloved, female ones have a harder path. I wanted to make her tough enough to survive the world that was born all around her. I wanted her to evaluate situations pragmatically, not choose anything based on the need to nurture or be accepted. I admire her when she is able to temper that hardness with kindness, when she is careful with her trust but still gives it. That's a fine line, and it's hard to make a protagonist walk it.

2. There's no denying that both Midwife and Etta are books with a message. As much as any work can be feminist, they are. As much as any small time novel can be propaganda, sure I can accept that. Feminism, it is important to note, is not meant to offend men. It is only meant to remind them of their equality with women. I would hope that men who read my book might have a momentary widening of their own point of view, similar to what happens when women explain their experience of walking to their car with their keys between their fingers, or having a plan in place for a date that might get violent. I hope that they see something they never saw before. Hopefully, readers of any gender see something new, though.

3. So, Amazon's SF imprint 47North is my second publisher. I was unsure about accepting their offer at first for some of the reasons you've mentioned. I love and support local indie bookstores and I hope I always can. I have to say that my experience with my publisher has been excellent and exceeded my expectations dozens of times. I got input on my cover design, got to speak with the Audible narrators of my books, have almost daily contact with someone in marketing, PR, bookkeeping, and publishing. I get paid on time and they've never tried to push me into anything. I feel that my work is whole, edited without agenda, and presented correctly. After all the horror stories I've heard, I have been very pleasantly surprised.

I don't know what the future of publishing and bookselling will look like. Someone like Bezos comes along once in a generation to do this kind of thing and the world wobbles but books just keep coming. Bookstores have gotten smart and scrappy, and many of them now partner with Amazon. I'm not saying it's not sometimes adversarial; I used to work at both Borders and B. Dalton. I guess what I'm saying is I'm hopeful, and I'm privileged to benefit from this system.

[u/I_like_PnutButter]

Has Margaret Atwood had any influence in your writing ?

[u/paganmeghan → u/I_like_PnutButter]

Yes, a great deal! The Handmaid's Tale was hugely inspirational to me, since it was the first book I read in the post-apocalypse genre from a woman's POV. I'm so glad Atwood is having another heyday now, with the book back on the bestseller list and people seeing how relevant it still is.

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the replies, by the way. I went and picked up your book after work. Going to start it Saturday morning. :)

[u/Chtorrr]

I see that your book is a Tiptree award recommendation. Have you ever read Her Smoke Rose Up Forever? It is one of my favorite short story collections and I feel like you would enjoy it.

[u/paganmeghan → u/Chtorrr]

I love that book! Especially Houston, Houston Do You Read? and The Women that Men don't see. Tiptree is a huge influence of mine, so I've tried to read everything. I was very honored by the Tiptree committee and honestly the winner of that award every year is almost always mind-blowingly awesome. Read The New Mother by Eugene Fischer, which won in 2015. I think about that story all the time.

[u/JerseyKeebs]

What made you decide to do a post-apocalyptic book without any zombies in it?

I wish the concept of a successful hive was explored earlier in the book, how did you come up with the idea? Were you worried about the audience reaction to treating sex so freely?

[u/paganmeghan → u/JerseyKeebs]

I like zombie stories! I didn't write one for a couple of reasons:

1. There are so many. So, so many. There's so little room to do anything new.

2. I often find that zombies (the Infected, et al) are often used as a shorthand way to dehumanize a lot of humans so that killing them can be guiltless and fun. I like god mode + chainsaw in Doom after a shitty day as much as the next soulless millennial, but it gets tiresome and desensitizing when I've seen it over and over and over again.

3. One of the things I love about zombie stories is that the people you really have to watch out for are the living. That's where the drama is. After a while, zombies are just another force of nature like flooding or bears. Meanwhile, live people want to rape, enslave, torture, or just rob you. More story lives there, IMO.

[u/JerseyKeebs → u/paganmeghan]

I really like that point about mass zombie killing sprees dehumanizing people. It is fun to have an antagonist you can entirely root against, and having a human bad guy without any shades of grey is no fun to read (or write, I bet).

Unlike others in the discussion thread, I personally liked the world-wide "check ins" inserted throughout the book. The bit about people being stranded on cruise ships or in foreign countries and being easy targets was something I'd never heard about before. And one of the saddest vignettes for me was the story of Jack. I legit had hope there would be a reunion for those two for about a page.

[u/paganmeghan → u/JerseyKeebs]

Haha, I just did the JoCo Cruise (which is amazing, btw) and gave a reading from both of my books on board... Somehow I managed to choose the section that mentioned cruise ships without realizing it until I read it out loud. A few people laughed, and a few pairs of eyes got really really big all of a sudden. I'm glad you liked those sections; they're some of my favorites but a lot of people dislike the sudden shift in POV.

[u/paganmeghan → u/JerseyKeebs]

sex

Forgot this bit! I wasn't worried about the reception on sex, oddly enough. I studied a lot of anthropology in college and was fascinated by the different types of polygamy that exist the world over. I thought about the things that make us believe one arrangement is more 'natural' than another, and how my world facilitated polyandry so neatly. It's the least common arrangement; SF/F is full of gleeful polygyny and I wanted to flip that on its head. I've also read A LOT of sex and solo-sex scenes written from a male POV and wanted to have my own go at it. It was of particular importance that my main character have a sensible and frank relationship with her own sexuality, and that she get off in a way that makes anatomical sense. That felt like a small victory.

[u/leowr]

Hi Meg,

Why was your debut published twice?

Also, what kind of books do you like reading? Anything in particular you would like to recommend to us?

Thanks for doing this AMA!

[u/paganmeghan → u/leowr]

Hi! So, my debut was published twice. Here's the story:

I first sold The Book of the Unnamed Midwife to a micropress called Sybaritic Press. They're in LA and they typically publish poetry. I was content to have a very indie debut, because I just wanted to get published. Querying agents was so hard and so thankless that their offer sounded great.

The book did as most indie books do: a few sales and a lot of grind. I was very lucky to be nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and luckier still to be shortlisted. I won (against fantastic odds and very talented writers, I'm still amazed) and my copyright reverted to me. I got an agent on the strength of winning an award with my debut, and she shopped the book around for an audio contract. She came back with a new deal that included republication in all forms: paper, audio, ebook. The works.

So the book exists in two forms: the extremely limited edition first version, and the new one from 47North. The added help from a major publisher (marketing, distribution, PR) has bumped my career in so many ways. I'm very lucky that my work paid off like this; most writers struggle like hell to get published once.

I read all the time, so I'll give you some recent ones: I loved The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi, just polished it off. Also currently reading the Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. I read I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas twice because it was so damned clever and funny and full of Lovecraft/Hatecraft nods. And I've got The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley queued up next.

[u/coryrenton]

What is your writing workflow like (also which software do you use, and what features do you wish it had)?

[u/paganmeghan → u/coryrenton]

Ooooh, a process question! I prefer to think about my work while in motion. I take long walks or long drives and let my mind wander. My best ideas come under those circumstances. Then, I outline in a method I call tent poles: just enough structure to get the canvas off the ground. I write from start to finish, one fast first draft in (usually) shite shape, to be followed by rewrites to define character better.

I write on a laptop almost always, using MS Word and Google Docs. I tried out Scrivener and found that it was a lot of work; unintuitive and somewhat clumsy as well as foreign to my experience. MS Word has updated to most of what I need in the last few years: margin notes, the ability to track changes, etc. It even helps format citations now, which I would have murdered for in college. They only thing I wish it did was put my short stories into Standard Manuscript Format for me, which is not that hard but still tiresome to do.

I used to just write in Google Docs, because of paranoia that I'd lose my work. I then found out that opening a novel-length work through Docs is a hellish experience.

[u/eqleriq]

I've heard that all of the Philip K. Dick awards for the next 137 years have been determined via pink laser transmissions to the organic antennae that congregate at Norwescon. You'll win another in 2026, based on your service due to infection via Roko's Basilisk.

Just stopping in to this time node to say congrats.

[u/paganmeghan → u/eqleriq]

Thanks! I look forward to 2026, but hope I have a Hugo by then. ;)

[u/[deleted]]

What makes the book a "feminist" book? I don't get it. Are you trying to use that as a form of marketing?

[u/paganmeghan → u/[deleted]]

So, this is an interesting question. Many people will tell you (including me) that a work cannot be feminist in itself; only the actions of a person can really be said to espouse an idea. My work is easily described as feminist in nature because of a few things. First: because it was written by a woman, with a female protagonist and is specifically about a woman's point of view, with emphasis on her gender identity, expression, sexuality, and biological existence. Second, because the world I created is one where gender is of greater import because of an asymmetrical plague that wiped out most women and girls.

Saying that a work is feminist is a form of marketing, I suppose. Any time you put a work of art into a category, then people who like that category are more likely to find it. However, it also dissuades some people from wanting to read it, either because they disagree with feminism or because they dislike fiction with a message. I don't know whether it has made the book sell better or worse than it would have otherwise; it was my first.

[u/[deleted]]

Hey,

What's your favorite Philip K Dick book?

(Mine is Clans of the Alphane Moon)

[u/paganmeghan → u/[deleted]]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep was my first, and it's really hard to top it. I wasn't familiar with pulp writers of any genre, and I got my hands on it when I was about 12. It knocked my socks off! In a way, Dick introduced me to dystopia, to cyberpunk, to transhumanism, and to the specific relationship between SciFi and San Francisco (SF and SF! HA!) He's like my literary godfather. It's tough to choose any one of his books, and Clans of the Alphane Moon is a rare example of a short story adapted to novel length that doesn't suck butt. It's a good one, too.

[u/bitterred]

Hi, I've read both The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and The Book of Etta (glorious coincidence that as I finished the first, the second was being published).

One thing that has stuck with me from The Book of Etta was this small passage where the main character talks about two women who were slightly shunned from the community because they didn't have hives and weren't midwives or mothers, they were in a relationship together. The two were more fully accepted into the community after they decided to have hives, and within a few years had both died in childbirth. It seems so futile and such a waste to pressure women into something that may very well kill them. Have you thought about what you would do if you were in your novel?

And in The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, I like the character of Jodi a lot, almost because you don't expect a character like Jodi to survive an apocalypse. What was it like to write her?

[u/paganmeghan → u/bitterred]

Thanks for reading!

I struggled with the drift within that civilization over time. As much as I knew that the Midwife herself was queer and would have wanted an open society, it's really tough to place so much importance on reproduction and fertility without discouraging same-sex relationships or really any nonprocreative sex acts. Yes, motherhood is dangerous. But it's dangerous in the real world, too, and we still treat it as a foregone conclusion in the lives of almost all women. In my book, it's more so but it's certainly not futile. Just fraught. And the control of female sexuality is a hell of a drug.

Jodi is written from life. I know a lot of people like her: not book-smart but stubborn and deeply embedded in the life of her community. When I think about people like her, or like myself, it seems like there is an immediate trough in your survival odds. If you make with through the catastrophe itself and the ensuing chaos, if you use your skills wisely and connect yourself to the right people, you might make it. I don't give myself good odds in the immediate; I live in a highly dense urban area where there are a lot of guns and a good chance of fire. But if I were as lucky as Jodi (I was born as stubborn as a stone) I could make it.