Video transcript
2019 NSW PRC author interview – Neal Shusterman

TAMARA RODGERS: Hi. I'm Tamara Rodgers from the Premier's Reading Challenge. We're at Riverside Theatre Parramatta for the Sydney Writers Festival Secondary Schools Day. We're going to be joined by some students from Galston High School, who'll be having some conversations with the fantastic authors on the programme. We're really excited to be able to bring you these interviews.

Thank you to the Sydney Writers Festival for having us along. And we'd also like to thank the Premier's Reading Challenge programme sponsors, our media partner News Local, and our supporting partner Dymocks Children's Charities. Thank you so much for your support.

INTERVIEWER: Hi. I'm Caleb Jeremirez from Galston High School. And I'm here today with Neil Shusterman, a great author of many great books, such as the 'Scythe' series, 'Dry,' and the 'Unwind' series. How are you today, Neil?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: I am doing very well. Happy to be here, my first time in Australia.

INTERVIEWER: How are you liking it?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: I'm enjoying it. I wish I had more time.

INTERVIEWER: I'm a great fan of dystopian fiction, and I love to read that genre. But it can be pretty grim at times. What inspired you to write dystopian fiction?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: You know, I didn't set out to write dystopian fiction. I set out to write-- to tell good stories, to tell stories that were social commentary, that were addressing issues of our day, but doing it in such a way that we could sort of look at it objectively. And dystopian stories seemed to be a way to do that.

When I first wrote 'Unwind,' teen dystopia wasn't a genre. So it was one of the trailblazing books, along with the 'Hunger Games' and 'Divergent' and the major ones that sort of got that whole genre started. And I'm so glad to be a part of that. I think that they're stories that really address issues that go beyond just science fiction.

INTERVIEWER: What were some of your favourite books when you were growing up?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: When I was growing up, there were so many favourite books that I had. When I was little, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' was a favourite book. When I was in middle school-- I guess that would be seventh and eighth year here, it was 'Lord of the Rings.'

I remember, when I was reading those books, feeling like these aren't books. They feel like windows onto a world that is larger than the pages of those books. And when other people read books that they love, people would say, I want to read something else just like that. But that's not what I felt. I felt, I want to do that.

And so from pretty early on, I wanted to be able to do that too. When I was in high school, I read a lot of Stephen King. I remember when I read 'The Shining,' I had to sleep with the lights on for weeks. And to this day, I do a lot of travelling. And so whenever I get put in a hotel and they put me in Room 217, first thing that I do is I got to go into the shower in the bathroom and make sure there's nobody dead in the bathtub.

So I still have that in the back of my mind. But I love the way that Stephen King can keep you on the edge of your seat. And it could be like 3:00 in the morning, and you just have to turn that page. And I remember saying to myself, I want to do that.

When I was in college, I really got into 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and Douglas Adams' books. And I just absolutely loved his sense of humour and the sense of absurdity. And when I write humorous stuff-- because in addition to the dark dystopian stuff, I also write lighter books, as well-- and I think my sense of humour has really been influenced by that.

INTERVIEWER: That's awesome. I love the 'Scythe' and 'Thunderhead' because--

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Thank you.

INTERVIEWER: --it's a unique idea. How did you come up with the story?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Well, after finishing the 'Unwind' series, which, I mean, there were five books in the 'Unwind' series-- 'Unwind,' 'Unholy,' 'Unsold,' 'Undivided,' and then a short story collection called 'Unbound.' And after being done with that, and dystopian had been really popular for 10 years, I decided I didn't want to write dystopia anymore.

I wanted to do something different. I felt like dystopian stories had been kind of played out. But I still loved telling stories that were stories that were futuristic and socially relevant. So I thought, well, dystopian stories are about the world gone wrong. What happens when the world goes right? What happens when we get all the things that we want-- you know, a world without war, without poverty, a world where we've defeated all of these diseases that plague humanity?

There are consequences to getting the things that we want. What would those consequences be? And so I started to really do a lot of research as to what our real and true hopes are for the world and then tried to figure out how we might deal with the consequences of getting those things.

One of them was that if we have a world with no disease and a world where we can technically be immortal, we have a population problem. How can we deal with that problem? And so I eventually evolved into the whole idea of these characters, these Scythes, which are kind of like the Jedi of death, and they're the ones who choose who lives and who dies. And everybody trusts their decisions, because they're the wise ones. And so that's where the world started, and it sort of just expanded from there.

INTERVIEWER: Wow. That's awesome to finally know how that happened. I know you and your son are currently working on the sequel to 'Dry.' What's it like writing a book with someone else, especially a son?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: It's great working with collaborators, when you work well together. And I have worked with several collaborators. I collaborate with my best friend, Eric Elfman, as well. And we wrote a series called the 'Accelerati' trilogy, 'Tesla's Attic' being the first book in that series. And those are fun books. Those are the funny ones. And we just made each other laugh. And we just sort of goofed off together. And then when the book was done, it was like, wow, we were just playing and we have a book. So that was a great collaboration.

Working with Jared has been fantastic. He is incredibly talented. And to be able to work with your son on a project and not feel like you are leading the entire way, I mean, it's really an equal collaboration. And we never argued. We never fought over stuff. People always think that we're going to have fights over writing and choices.

But he's very professional, and I think he's learned from seeing how I rewrite things and how I edit things. And when he was growing up, he always read early draughts and gave me comments. And I would take the comments and I would use them. I mean, for those of you who read 'Unwind,' there's a scene in 'Unwind'-- the unwinding scene-- that I wasn't going to write because I was too scared to write it.

It's the scene where a character is taken apart, but it's all done psychologically. You don't see anything that's happening. And I wasn't going to write it because I felt it was just too creepy. It was Jared, who was 16 at the time, who said, dad, you have to write this scene. And so inspired by him, insisting that I write that scene, I did and it became the definitive scene of the entire series. So we've been working together long before we were actually working together.

Now, the book that we are working on now isn't actually a sequel to 'Dry.' It's a new story. It's a completely new standalone book, and we're very excited about it. Can't talk about it yet, because it's really in the early stages. But we think it's going to be even better than 'Dry.'

INTERVIEWER: That sounds great. Something I think everyone fears, in trouble with their parents, but you take this to the next level in your series, 'Unwind,' where parents can choose to have their teenage children 'Unwound.' How did you come up with this idea? And did you get in trouble a lot with your parents?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Well, I think everybody gets in trouble with their parents and everybody gets into fights with their parents. 'Unwind' really came about because of three completely different things that sort of came together. One was an article that I saw about teenagers in one community that were out of control. They were vandalising and they were out in the streets at night and people were afraid to go out into the streets, because for fear of the local teenagers.

And the article were interviews with-- it was about interviews with the teenagers and with adults in the neighbourhood. The interviews with the teenagers weren't what was scary, it was the interviews with the adults. Because there were actually adults who were saying, we need to pass a law that allows us to do away with the teenagers that nobody wants.

So I got that sort of caught in my head. What if a government did pass a law that said you could do that? When an authority figure tells you that something's OK, sometimes we abdicate our own ethical and moral responsibility, because we've been told by authority that it's OK. So that was in the back of my mind.

Then I saw a news report about voting in the United States. And it was a team of researchers that was researching the psychology of the American voter. And that particular year-- this was before the last presidential election. This was way back, like maybe 12, 13 years ago, when it was midterm elections. And so it was Congress people and senators that were up for election.

And what they determined was that there was one issue that was the emotional issue that was deciding everything, and you can predict every single race, every single senate race and Congress race by this one issue, and it was the issue of abortion. So basically, people were voting on that issue and not on anything else. It's as if that issue had taken over the entire political system.

And I thought, how crazy is that, that one issue just sort of basically usurped the whole system. And I thought, well, what-- many times, you have these issues where there's two sides. And many times, it becomes more about the battle than it is about the actual issue-- how angry each side is at each other.

And it made me think of the King Solomon story. You know, the two women who have a baby, both insisting that the baby was theirs. And so King Solomon says, we'll cut the baby in half-- you know, the worst possible compromise. So I thought, well, what would the worst possible compromise be in this particular situation? And I came up with this idea that-- a society that has made abortion illegal, but you could terminate teenagers that are out of control.

And so I thought about that idea but I couldn't write it, because I didn't feel it was connected enough to reality. If I'm going to write science fiction, there has to be enough of a truth to it that I can believe it could actually happen. This felt too far fetched. It was just this one-- it was this one science fiction premise that went too far.

It didn't feel real to me, until I saw an article on transplant technology and how we're able to use more and more of a human body in transplant. And they're saying that within our lifetimes, they'll be able to use an entire donated body. So imagine that 100% of you would be alive, but just part of somebody else.

But wait a second, if 100% percent of you is alive, could an argument be made to say that you were still alive? Then I connected it with this other idea. And I thought, what if that's what they do to the teenagers that nobody wants? They don't kill them. They put them through this process that becomes society's moral and ethical loophole.

So people can say, oh, we're not killing these poor kids. We would never do that. We're just putting them into 'a divided state.' You know, they're still alive, just in a different way. It's better for society and, ultimately, it's better for these poor troubled kids. I could see how a society could rationalise that just enough to look the other way and let it happen.

And once you do that, it starts to snowball out of control until, years later, you look back and you say, how did we get here? Civilised cultures have done some pretty horrific things to other human beings, because they found that way of just rationalising it and letting it happen. I wanted to show how a society slips into dystopia, and I thought 'Unwind' was a really interesting and unique way to show it.

INTERVIEWER: That's amazing. I can't believe you came up with that by just three completely different ideas.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Yeah. Just many times, ideas just sort of come together. It's got to be a story that feels unique, but at the same time really connects and really has a sense of meaning for us. People read 'Unwind' and they think about all of these issues in different ways.

And I mean, the whole point of the story is to point out that when we have very complicated issues and-- we become part of the problem if we just take opposite sides and treat it as if it's simply black or white, when really we're dealing with issues that are a whole lot of grey.

And if we were to just admit that we don't know the answer, we can't-- we don't always know what's right and wrong, I think that we'll be much better off in dealing with these issues. 'Unwind' was an attempt to take us away from the politics and look at the issues from a new perspective that didn't divide us.

INTERVIEWER: Sounds like it could help a lot of people if people read that then.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: I certainly hope so.

INTERVIEWER: And finally, your spoiler last night, your pranks spoiler, might I say, for the third book in the 'Scythe' series, 'The Toll.' I know a lot of fans want to know this, but can you give us any sure date when that will be released?

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: 'The Toll,' which is the third book in the 'Arc of a Scythe' trilogy, is coming out on November 5. I am actively working on the revision right now, and I'm going to be getting it in within the next two weeks. So I'm very excited. And what I did was, last week, I was actually at the Sharjah Book Festival in Dubai. And so I went to the top of the highest building in the world, which is the Burj Khalifa.

And on 148th floor--148 floors up, I just-- I'm amazed. I'm still amazed that that actually exists and it's not, like, science fiction. It's real. And so on 148th floor, I sat up there with my laptop and I worked, because I love writing in really interesting places. And so being that high up in the tallest building in the world, I sat there and I wrote.

And I took a picture of it, but I did something a little bit mean. I pulled a little bit of a prank. Because many times when I'm travelling, I'll take pictures of my computer screen that I'm working on and the view behind it. So you see this the computer screen and the view of-- and 148 floors of everything out there. And on the screen, you can see, in big letters, 'the end,' and then some writing above it. And so I knew.

I knew that everybody was going to look at that, and they're going to zoom in. They're going to zoom in to see what the last paragraph of the book is. And that last paragraph is, 'Do you really think that I would give away the ending of The Toll in a picture?' just repeated four times.

[laughing]

So it was my little prank for my fans.

INTERVIEWER: That sure certainly got me, I must say.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Well-- but to tell you a little bit about 'The Toll,' without giving any-- trying not to give any spoilers, I think you probably know that Rowan and Citra will be back. And we're going to meet some new characters that I'm really, really excited about. I mean, the characters-- I love all the characters in these books.

This book will be the conclusion to the series. And my editor, who's read the first draft, said that it's the best of the three, which is what I want. I always want each book to be better than the one before it. I never want somebody to say, eh, it wasn't as good as the first one. So I really want to have this story just really, really just be satisfying. And I think it will be.

It's going to be almost 600 pages. Because that's how long it took to really wrap up the story right. So that's why it's taken a little bit longer than I wanted it to take. But I'd rather have it good than rush it out.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for being here today.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Oh, you're very welcome.

INTERVIEWER: I definitely know I'll be getting that.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: All right.

INTERVIEWER: And I hope you enjoy your time in Australia.

NEIL SHUSTERMAN: Thank you very much.