Marve and the Firstborn of the Sun: Mining Your Culture for New Fantasy Ideas

00:05 - Julia Golding (Host) Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm delighted that I have been joined today to talk with now I'm going to get this right. She has the most marvelous name and I mean that literally Marvellous Michael Anson, who is known to everybody as Marve, and she is about to produce this fantastic novel called the Firstborn of the Sun. We are going to talk more about. That has a wonderful cover as well. I just want to put that out there. Well done, the cover designer. 00:45 But before we get to that, let's get to know Marve a little and find out what was the path to writing this novel. So I think a lot of us who like writing fantasy are often inspired to do so by having read other fantasy writers, like our gateway drugs to the genre. Who, would you say, was the major creative influences on you deciding that fantasy was how you wanted to express yourself? 01:15 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I think it would be a group of influences as opposed to one person. I remember reading a lot of stories when I was much younger, and the things that took you out of this world, which I think we call portal fantasy in today's kind of genre segmentation, was just so fascinating to me. I absolutely wanted to find another world in my wardrobe. I wanted to go into a garden and find that there was more to it. I would quite usually search for it. I would, I remember, um, of course not telling anyone in case it wasn't there, but sometimes I would tell my siblings, like in case I don't come back, it's because I went wandering into this place. So you know where I am, um, and I, I just remember being pulled into the fantastical um, but on the on, the other half of that is that I come from a culture that very much values oral storytelling, and the stories that we tell are always fantastical as well. 02:15 So I would grow up hearing stories about. You know, there was a man once, and then he knew how to fly, and I would never question that. It was just that he knew how to, and I don't know how to, as opposed to, it's not realistic that he could, and so there was always a blurb between reality and fantasy for me growing up, and so by the time I became a teenager and I started reading things like, you know, cs Lewis's work and Lord of the Rings and the more kind of foundational fantasy, I thought, oh yeah, yeah, this is where these are. My people like. This is people who think about the fantastical in the same way I'm looking for magic in, like the real world. 02:56 - Julia Golding (Host) Uh, and I just kind of stuck with it since then so you mentioned you have a particular cultural inheritance which I'm guessing is the underpinning as well of thinking about your own world, your own fantasy world. How would you describe that, how would you call that, so people can understand where you're coming from? 03:15 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Oh yes, so I'm Yoruba and Yoruba people mostly live in modern day Nigeria. 03:24 That spreads across some parts of the Caribbean, some parts of West Africa, but the Yoruba culture is one that is very heavily centered on oral storytelling, like I've said, because that's how the history is preserved, the culture is preserved. 03:39 There's always someone within each family unit that's responsible for kind of passing across not just the family's history but the culture's history, and so when I meet another Yoruba person, regardless of where they are, I expect them to know the basic histories of Yoruba people, and they usually do. 03:57 It's unlikely that they don't, and that's just because, you know it's very much believed that we are like the living vessels and so carrying these almost live stories. And it's very much believed that we are like living vessels and so carrying these almost live stories, and it's really important that you not be the link that it stops at. You know you don't want to have heard myths and histories and all of this and be the last person who knows about it. So it's about kind of keeping on that flow of information because it's it's a privilege to hear about it now because Yoruba people have existed since 1 BC and so the story obviously has mutated over the years, um, and we just consider it really, really reverent to be a part of it, to know it and then to pass it on, but you yourself are London-based I am, In fact you're reading Narnia and things and stuff, Right? 04:49 - Julia Golding (Host) So let's go to your novel, which I think is absolutely fascinating to see a new kind of mythos, a new set of oral stories being given a treatment. So just to sort of help listeners think about this that it's famous that Tolkien, for example, reached into Northern myths, the sort of Icelandic and Nordic stories, and used as a sort of mutated version of those to underpin Middle Earth and CS Lewis. He was a sort of catch-all writer, but there was Greek myths underpinning it and in some cases Arthurian myths, so he sort of mixed all of those up together. But you've reached deep inside your other stories and produced your own version stories and produce your own version. So I guess what I'm reading is isn't something anyone else has ever read. 05:53 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) It's not a retelling. No, you're right there, it's not a retelling, it's more. Um. So we have myths and we have folklores, and folklores are stories that grills and people make up in order to help you remember the myths. And so, within foreclose, you will have myths that have branches from either Yoruba religion or different. People believe them to varying degrees, but the foreclose are the stories that help you remember them, because there's a lot of them, but the folklores are the stories that help you remember them, because there's a lot of them. So what I'm trying to do with this trilogy and with this story is almost weaving in a folklore around some of the myths that we have, and so the gods that I mentioned in Firstborn of the Sun are gods from the Yoruba pantheon. So all of those are within the myths, and now I'm just crafting a story around how people interact with them in a way that I'm hoping is new to readers. 06:49 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, so one of the big dividing lines in society that and I'm going to get this right because we practiced Lore. 06:58 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yes, lore. 07:00 - Julia Golding (Host) Who's the main female character is a world where power is drawn from different elemental forces. Yeah, but she is secretly different from everybody else and is having to pretend. It's like she's having to pretend to be. Imagine you're in a Welsh village. You're having to pretend you're Welsh but you're actually English. You know it's that sort of you're in a different, you're undercover. Yeah, you know it's that sort of you're in a different, you're undercover. But what's worse is that if she's outed there's a death sentence and we should say the book is meant for an older reader. It's not a narnia, it's sort of young adult going into adult, I would say. So tell me a little bit about the, because obviously it's a great story. So tell me about the story of Lorraine, her predicament and her love story. 07:56 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) In fact, yeah, so when I had the idea for the world really, which I think came first, for the world really, which I think came first, I was trying to, um, assign people elemental powers and seeing if they can find a balance. So if I had people who had this extreme heat energy and I had people who had this extreme cold energy, um would would almost the fact that their, their powers on opposing sides influence the relationships that they have with each other. And one of the things that I kind of saw and talk about often is how you have snow-capped mountains in the Sahara, and so obviously it's a really hot place and there's hot sands, but sometimes you would have like a snowstorm, because it gets really cold at night and you have snow just laying on top of the sand and obviously the top layers of the sand need to be cold enough to hold it, but it will be much warmer underneath. And I was just thinking, you know, if elements that cannot change, you know, in physics, can I find a way to like balance, um, with each other? Can humans do the same? And so I thought to assign these elemental powers to people and seeing how they would operate. And so I had this wall that had this heat energy and I needed to put in this character that did not have that and she was different and she needed to hide this. But because it was, because everyone had it, and it's something that was visible in that when they're using their powers, their hands would glow. So if someone did not have it, it would be really obvious. 09:29 But I needed her to have survived up until the age where the story starts, and, and so I then introduced what I refer to in the book as old magic, and this is where I then pulled in the myths we have around Yoruba gods and summoning them, and each Yoruba god has their own kind of elemental part of living or that they're responsible for. 09:51 So we would have Shango, who is, if you think about Thor, with fire and lightning. That's kind of what Shango does as well, and so we have quite a lot in that pantheon, and so I introduced old magic into this world to give her a way to almost mimic or create an illusion of the powers that everyone else has, and that worked brilliantly, because it became also illegal within the story to use that power if you already have the power that everyone else has, which is the magic of the sun, the power that everyone else has, which is the magic of the sun. Uh, and so this? She's kind of walking around every day, um, at risk of either being found out for not having the powers of the sun and being killed, or found out that she's using old magic to pretend like she has the powers of the sun and also being killed. Um, and and so that made her character interesting enough to hold as the central theme for the book and in terms of her love story. 10:48 - Julia Golding (Host) Oh, sorry, before we move on to the love story, I think there's also the fact that her father is a problem. 10:53 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yes, her father is a problem as well. 10:55 - Julia Golding (Host) Her family status is another problem for her. So the poor girl. 11:01 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) It sounds like she's been a bit down. She did not have it easy and I'm writing book two now and she's not having it easy either. 11:10 - Julia Golding (Host) You have to make your main characters suffer. I mean, I remember being asked early on in my career why did I put my children in my books? And I said no, because I then go and torture them, tell us about her love story. Because that obviously, I think, is. I imagine this is going to be a big thread going across your trilogy. 11:33 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yes, it will be, and obviously she gets to because the world expands. She gets to meet other people and kind of family aspect of that also expands. So the point of the story is that her world that was just so small and involved two people the person she was in love with, her best friend and her father expands so much more by the end of the series that she becomes a completely different person. Her love story is her lifeline in book one for many reasons, because she's falling in love with this prince and he's unlike other princes in other kingdoms where, as a prince, he has no inheritance and he is not the heir to the throne. He is at the mercy of the person who's ruling. He just happens to have a father that was a king and this is not unique to him in his kingdom. So there is a rule that the heirs of sovereigns are not allowed to take the throne and so he is kind of just a rich boy with a prince title and nothing else attached to it. And so he also was in this place, in his own world, where he was struggling to find his identity and find people who value him for him, because he really didn't have much to offer anyone else in the kingdom. And so by the time he met Laura and they became quick friends in her own world she also didn't have anyone. 12:59 You know, her father's status had put her as an outcast within the community and people wouldn't really talk to her. Status had put her as an outcast within the community and people wouldn't really talk to her. And so they formed a really strong bond where he felt like he had something to offer her which was like protection, and she felt like someone else was coming into her very little world which was just her and her father. And so, um, a bit of trauma bonding there. That turned into a friend's, lover's um theme where they kind of started to then hold on really strongly to each other, regardless of anything else. And that was what. That is what prompts our inciting incidents. When the gods call him and she decides nah, I have two people, you can't take one of them yeah, so Alawani is his name. 13:39 - Julia Golding (Host) Um, I think he might be my favorite character. Please don't kill him off, right, anyway, he's not going to die. So just before we move on to talking more about sort of romance in fantasy, but I thought before we leave behind the Yoruba theme, as you've been writing this, living inside the folk stories and the myths, have you found? Your own understanding of your cultural inheritance has gone in interesting directions, because you probably never spent quite so long with it as you now absolutely, um. 14:13 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) So I grew up with my grandma uh, she lived with us, and so a lot of the stories that I know about my culture and our histories I learned from her. Um, but also, as I kind of grew up and became a teenager, I was just like, like, I'd rather talk to boys, so the time I spent with her reduced the older I got. And so now, coming back to writing a story that is so deeply rooted in Yoruba culture, I have to do so much research. She's still alive, thank God. So I would call her, send her voice notes and be like oh, I found this and we've almost reconnected in that because I need her knowledge, um, as well as the things that I find on the internet, and I'm not a fluent speaker I wish I was, but I'm not Uh, and so this has forced me to learn, and because I'm having to read it and study it and I have a friend who's a translator that helps me because there's a lot of Yoruba in the book. 15:04 All the names are Yoruba, there's lots of proverbs and things that just make a Yoruba person read it. I feel like this is home. This is a true representation of our culture. So, yeah, it's been like going back to school, because I've had to study just so much about things that I've either forgotten or didn't get to learn. And luckily we get to record things and reach in form more and more these days, and so that has really helped. 15:35 - Julia Golding (Host) Well, if you get set on a book tour, you should take Granny with you. 15:39 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) She is coming over for book launch in October, so that will be. That's wonderful. 15:44 - Julia Golding (Host) Is coming over for book launch in October. So, um, that will be. That's wonderful. I'm, I think, um, it's one of the parts of writing that authors don't often share, but very often it's a communal experience in your family culture. I mean, that's certainly how I started Um, so it's lovely to hear Not that I involved my granny, I did involve my great aunt, um, but, yeah, so, equally a sort of superior generation person. So that's great. 16:10 And if anyone out there is interested in the use of a sort of different kind of wealth mythology than perhaps you've ever considered this is a great book for you to look at because it's so original from that point of view. And, of course, if you're listening and you've got your own book background, you're ever considered this is a great book for you to look at because it's so original from that point of view. And, of course, if you're listening and you've got your own background, you're going to be out there ordering it right now. Okay, so, um, thinking about romance, you can't move without people saying romanticism. Are you being forced down that path to your book is romantic? 16:43 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) because it doesn't seem to me as though it needs it as a hook no, um, I'm very lucky that my editor is obsessed with this book and, um, she's one of I don't want to say one of the few people, but one of perhaps the first people, who really understood what the story was was going for. 17:02 And I remember speaking to her and thinking I can't believe she gets it. 17:07 And so we have this understanding that it's an epic fantasy story that has a really strong romantic line, and that's because our main character is very much in love. If she was not, if something else had been her focus, that would have been kind of the secondary line towards it. It just happens to be that she's just head over heels in love with this boy, but again, because the story she's forced to expand within the story, her worldview is forced to expand, so many things come into play and shift her parity from just I'm in love with this boy to oh, you know, there's more to me than I realized, and you know the journey she goes on in book one is finding out a lot about her true identity, why she doesn't have, you know, the powers of the sun, why she has powers that are different, why she can even summon the old gods to start with, and so all of that starts to take not replace, but take a bit more space in her mind than I'm in love with this boy and I must do anything to save him. 18:13 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah Well, I'm pleased to hear that, because there is that pressure out there at the moment for everything to be described by whatever is the new hot, you know, ticket item, and it felt to me as though that would be misdescribing your story, so I'm pleased that that's happened. So, Marve, I'm interested talking to you, coming from a sort of Nigerian cultural inheritance, and you will no doubt be much more aware than I of the pressure for publishers to diversify and actually get new voices out in fantasy, and also the fact that possibly I don't know, but possibly when you're growing up you were reading old white guys, you know. 19:02 - Speaker 2 (None) Yes. 19:04 - Julia Golding (Host) Who I also read, you know. Have you got any sort of anything to tell us? You know? Report back to where publishing has reached in terms of its attitude to writers of colour, writers coming from different backgrounds. Is it a good story? Is it only superficial? How have you found it? 19:23 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I think there's more awareness as to why it's needed. Um, I think the follow-through could be a lot better. Yeah, um. So, in terms of the awareness, this you know, in the past, say five years, especially post 2020, and when we had almost this reawakening of the fact that things needed to change in so many industries and publishing was one of them and there was a huge online discourse about you need voices that are different from yours, you need stories that are you know, you've been running these stories for thousands of years. 20:00 It's time to kind of create space for others. It's time to kind of create space for others, and that started a little bit, but it almost felt like it was trendy. And the moment it stopped being trendy, the real impact and seeing how many, for example, black voices you would see in publishing started to reduce. So someone did some research earlier this year and posted the results last month, and it was saying that 2025 has the lowest rates of diverse voices published since 2020. And there was an uptick in 2020 because everyone was saying, oh, we really need more diverse voices. 20:41 And then, as and at times of change and it has fallen out of trend, only very few people have stuck to that, and so it definitely is their front of mind that it needs to happen. I think we come down to pushing against capitalism, for lack of a better word. Take on the capitalist. Yeah, I know, because it's this belief or this idea that diverse voices are like a charity case and they will not make money, which is false when you look at the data, and so it's just getting publishers to kind of put their money where their mouth is really. 21:19 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, and I think it's also the well. You mentioned politics and that's inescapable, I think. But another part of it is what you've trained the audience to expect and sometimes it's hard to get people to shift. So if they are people who only read a certain kind of book, led by some grizzled white detective with a drink problem and a funny habit, you know which sort of is like half of yeah, and you actually say here's a very different take on that. Yeah, take a. Well, I guess what you've got is people buying that tend to be like that, you know, sort of white affluent people, and other people are opting out because they can't find stories they want. So it's a punt. You've got to believe that there is a new audience out there who might say I'm going to join this market because you're now finally noticing I'm here. 22:22 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) And a good story is a good story. And what you say about the characters that readers expect, you know. Even if I was writing you know a book following all the usual tropes. You know, even if it was a romance book, which tends to have its own kind of set lines where you know this is going to happen, this is going to happen, but you still want to read it for the experience of it. 22:46 If I was writing a Eurobar character, the way they would interact with each other within the family, the way they would interact with their friends, has to be culturally relevant. And so in the early days with firstborn, I would have people say I don't really connect to character. I don't know why she would do that. I'm like, because I don't know why a white character would do that in that scenario either. But I read it and I think you know what this is, what she's doing. But it's almost like any time something is different. It's almost. It puts up this barrier where it's like, oh, I don't connect with it. 23:20 And if the whole world did not want her to read only what they connected with, no one would be reading whatever the you know the west kind of puts out. And that's because it's when you, you know, the global majority in numbers alone, is larger than kind of the western community. And so growing up, like you said, I read old white men. I didn't necessarily connect with token, I didn't see him and think, oh, I think that's me. But I read his fantasy books and I thought that that is so creative, like I would love to visit that, I would love to see an elf. And that's because there is just this open-mindedness to new stories and trying to connect and making the effort to reach across the page to understand what the author is trying to say. And I do think some of that is on publishers to say we believe in this book because we think it's a good story. If you keep pushing, you will see what we see too. 24:13 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and I do think there is something happening culturally. So, even though there is, as you say, a bit of backtracking, partly because of world politics, but things I've noticed that have been unexpected are things like the growth of anime suddenly becoming massive, which obviously is from a uh, you know, asian sort of sensibility japan predominantly, but korea and places like that and it's become mainstream and the, the classic gatekeepers of western culture. So the hollywood of on the streamers are waking up and changing. I guess the danger is they try and then do it in their way their version yeah, but that that we'll see if that what happens there. 25:05 But I think it is interesting. Something big can happen, uh, and because it is capitalism, they'll think, oh my goodness, there's some money there. 25:13 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Um, young people are consuming that, so let's go there what I love about anime is that they don't change their story structure. Um, they don't change even when you look at movies, for example, or chinese stories, or Korean or K-drama. It's not a three-act structure. Even in the romance novels it doesn't exactly follow what you would see in a regular Hollywood story. They expect you to meet them where they are. They expect you to enjoy the story they're telling. They don't kind of conform to anything else except the story they're trying to tell. And you find a lot of people who love K-dramas like, oh, they're not going to kiss until season three. I can't imagine that flying with a series or movie you have from Hollywood because people think, oh, it's too slow, what's happening? Why am I still here? And it feels like it's not moving. But people who love K? Kdrama will tell you, just wait until season five. And you're thinking how much longer? 26:10 - Julia Golding (Host) and they're like diehard fans, and so I think it's it's definitely worth just sticking to those stories and eventually people will will see what you're trying to do yeah, I think that's actually a good corrective for me, because when I'm teaching writing which I do often, because you're trying to convey what has worked as a successful formula you often go back to Aristotle's Poetics, which is like the you know the beginning of this three-act structure, which is also pretty much the same as the five-act structure. 26:41 when you look at it it's just broken up slightly differently. But, as you're saying, that is only inevitable because the Greeks decided it was. So I'm not Greek, you're not Greek. So that's really interesting to actually look at it like that. And when you look at something like the novel structure, it isn't three acts. So someone like Dickens because he was writing in periodical episodic he's much more like a sort of a soap keeping on going. So we perhaps forget that we are not quite so linear as we thought. 27:22 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I agree. 27:23 - Julia Golding (Host) So I'm interested that your editor has been very instrumental in recognizing the difference in what you're doing. So is it a she or a he? Yeah, she, Rebecca, he was. Then, as Rebecca was giving you feedback, were there times when she was saying, Marve, you haven't done. I want a climax on page 300, because that fits the two-act structure. Or did she just say it's your baby? 27:53 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) No, we weren't edited for months. We weren't edited for months, and I think a lot of it was trying to fix the pacing to make sure that it worked. And I love the collaborative way that she works, in that she gives me the room to kind of defend what I have done. And if we find that her argument is better, I'm like you know what, fine, you win this one. But the other times, where I would be, she would say oh, is it necessary to mention this little thing? I'm like, if you meet my mother, she's going to do exactly that. And you know, I'm describing'm describing, say, an old woman or an older woman, and she does something and she's like, oh, I just want to move to the dialogue. I'm like, but that little thing that she does, a Yoruba person will see it. I think my mom does that, so we need to keep it. 28:38 And so there were different times within the editing process where I would write like two paragraphs of the history of this one gesture or this one myth or this one belief, um, and she'd be like, okay, fine, it's interesting enough to keep it in. And so what we tried to do was more fit in the pace, to make sure that there was a balance between world building and storytelling. But with with Rebecca, I never had a point where I felt like I had to compromise the cultural aspects of what I was trying to do, because she's really inquisitive. I felt like I had to compromise the cultural aspects of what I was trying to do because she's really inquisitive as well, and I think that's the mindset you need to have. Um, it's almost like why have you done this, as opposed to change this or remove this? Um, yeah, I absolutely loved working with her on it. 29:21 - Julia Golding (Host) That sounds a very happy relationship indeed. Um, so we haven't actually talked much about the writing you've done beforehand, but also reading your brief bio in the book. You're also a filmmaker. Do you bring a similar approach to telling stories in film as you do in the novel form, or are you aware of being a different kind of creative? 29:41 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yeah, I was gonna go full filmmaker when I was much younger and out for filmmaker when I was much younger and right out of uni I went for a training course and we had to make a couple of short films and I feel like I would have gone on to do that. I'm maybe not even written novels for a really long time, but at some point my path kind of shifted a little, where I was like I think I need to go to school and because I was away from kind of that creativity of being behind the camera for a while, I sorted in something else which then happened to be kind of novel writing and it just really helped to merge it. Sorry, remind me second half of your question. 30:28 - Julia Golding (Host) I was asking if you find yourself as a different storyteller, different structure. 30:33 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) No, not really, Not really. I think when I write my novels, in my mind they're movies, in my mind they're series, they're on a screen that I'm almost transcribing. Um, I don't always see like all the details with um, like what the character is wearing or what the um, what color of the wall looks like. You know, I could go through the entire book, which I did the first draft and you'd not know what anyone looks like, because it just I could sit in my mind and I just move on. But what I'm trying, what I do try to capture, is the feeling and the kind of aura around each character, such that, even if you didn't know what they looked like, you identified with their personalities and you can tell when they were on the page and when they are not. And that's because I'm quite literally directing them in my mind behind a camera and watching what they're doing. But I think I always see stories um, oh, that, actually. 31:32 - Julia Golding (Host) That reminds me of a question I wanted to ask you on the craft level, uh, about the novel, which is, um, I'm really making a conscious effort in what I write to not write from a white bias. I mean, obviously I'm. So there's some things I don't notice that I do, but when it comes to descriptions of people that I don't say, don't assume someone's white and then point out everybody else is Asian or black or whatever. 31:59 Everybody is either not described by their ethnicity or everybody is, depending on what the context is. How did you handle that in your world um? 32:14 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) that's interesting because they're in in firstborn. There are no white people, so everyone's the same. Everyone's like, um, an offshoot of the Yoruba empire, um, so everyone would be quite strictly African, even though it's kind of like a secondary world. So when I talk about the motivation of where I've set it, so even the map looks like the top half of the African continent and my reasoning for that is I pulled out this secondary world where the Yoruba Empire would have continued to expand without the influence of colonization and just kind of gone. 32:54 That way I tend to describe things through two ways. One, I use other characters to describe whoever I want to. So I would use Alawani to describe Laura and I use Laura to describe Alawani and I try not to focus on their facial features too much more, their attitude or their marks. So one thing Yoruba people have a lot of is like tattoos and tribal marks and just things that identify you, make you identifiable not just to your community but down to your family. So with the tribal marks that we have, if I saw someone from like my village or my hometown with a certain kind of mark on their face, I would immediately know where they're from and that's kind of the purpose of that. 33:42 And so the scenes where Laura is looking at Alwani and she's looking at the tattoos he got because of his position as a prince and the ones he got because of their bond together. She's talking about his skin, but that's because the fire is against it. So I use actual action and there's a reason why we're looking at them through this lens and why we're getting to know their features through someone else's eyes. Um, I hardly ever do the mirror thing, where it's like I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I have, like a, you know, wide eyes. 34:15 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, no, that's such a classic. Once you notice it as an author, you, yeah, notice it that obviously, when someone's getting ready to go out for an evening or something which is relevant you know how have I looked this evening as opposed to how I looked yesterday? You know, have I got something in my teeth? That's fine. But it's the moment where the author's thinking, oh, I haven't told the reader what this person looks like, so they're going to go to a mirror. 34:41 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yeah, I'm sure there's still characters in Firstborn that don't have descriptions of their faces. Faces are the last things that I think about. However, interestingly, I'm writing another novel now that I haven't quite announced, but when I was writing that everyone it's kind of in the future and everyone has it's a bit dystopian, in that there's a small subset of humanity left and so obviously everyone's kind of like intermarried and had children and everyone's kind of like a mix of everything, and so there isn't one distinct, it's not as distinct as it is today. And as I was writing and trying to describe it, I realized that if I never mentioned skin color, it is really difficult to know what ethnicity I'm describing, because even if I said, oh, you had large set eyes, that could be anyone. Or if you had thin lips, or if you had large lips again, it really could be anyone. 35:44 And so I found it so interesting, within that particular novel, having to describe people where I wanted to hint at their ethnicity, because the world has kind of crumbled and people are trying to trace back where they were from before pre-collapse, and I just it was a real moment for me where I thought if I never mentioned skin color, you would never know. You would know what the person I'm describing looks like, but it's unlikely for you to be able to actually pinpoint the ethnicity I'm trying to refer to. And yeah, that was a light bulb moment for me that I think I will use going forward in understanding how to describe people in a way that they feel real, as opposed to just stereotypical. 36:32 - Julia Golding (Host) This person is from this place, and so they must look this way it is tricky because there is a minefield out there and my guess I suppose it's the all or nothing you, everybody, and it's also the answer is what would your character, if you're in a POV of a character, what do they notice? Yeah, exactly. 36:51 So, if they're a flaming racist, from whatever description that is, they notice and that will be like the, whereas if they're not, they won't probably focus on something else. So in a way, it also keys you into the character. But good luck. I I'm always sort of trying to improve and consider this, because I think it's important to get it right and respect your readers really. Uh, that's what it's about, isn't it? 37:22 So one of the things I said I thought about before coming to talk to you was you can't escape at the moment the sort of idea that AI is going to sweep in and basically put us all out of a job, going to take over, and one of the things I was thinking about that is because we are in a world where it's basically a kind of Western canon that's been fed into the AI machine. I was thinking that something like your book is not something that's going to be popping out of chat GPT anytime soon. Hopefully not. What do you think about the future for writers and writing, and perhaps in the film industry, which you know a little bit about as well as um, as a novelist yourself, have you got any concerns or places where you actually use ai yourself, for example? 38:15 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) um, no, not creatively. Um, I think the thing with ai is, and and with writing specifically, is that I don't believe that. I believe that if you want to be a writer, you have to kind of go through the process of being a writer. Some of that involves staying up late at night doing some research, maybe crying a little bit, you know, going through sorting out your own thoughts, because what you're trying to do is I want you to read this and I want you to understand what I see in my mind, or what I understand in my mind. I'm trying to communicate to you on a human to human, on a soul to soul level. There's formulas that you can use to do so many things, but I don't know that. And I think again, for me, because storytelling is coming from a tradition where it's oral and you're telling it, you're almost forming a connection, a real connection, with the person who's hearing this story. I don't think that's something that can be replicated with AI, because sometimes you read it, just it doesn't quite understand nuance and context in the way that humans do, and when something feels a bit too structured, we can tell like you wouldn't even be able to know why. It just feels a bit stilted, it feels a bit off, and that's because I think humans are just a bit too scatterbrained, while AI just has to be numbers. You know ones and zeros and, like you said, ai, all AI is hugely skewed towards the West and Western things and can be slightly racist, and that's just because of you know the data that it's being fed. It's very much garbage in garbage art, because I work in tech when I'm not writing and so AI is a huge part of the tech world and there is a lot is a very good understanding that from an ethical perspective, if they think to use AI for writing, it needs to be monitored. You can't allow AI make final decisions without a human intervention at the very last end because someone's going to get in trouble, someone's going to get hurt. And there's this argument online where people are like oh, I have different things about myself where I can't focus, I can't commit the time to writing a book, and I think then maybe you're not a writer and that's fine. It's the same way I'm not a gymnast because I do not like going to the gym and I can't go and I do not have it in me to invest that kind of time or discipline to that, even though I would love to win an Olympic medal, it's just not in the cards for me and I'm okay with that. And I think more people need to be okay with the fact that writing outside of you know as a hobby, but choosing it as a profession. You do need those 10 000 hours. It's like playing the piano or joining the orchestra or being an actor. Um, you didn't. You do need to put in the time and it is grueling, it's painful, but doing that research. 41:23 I talked about doing research for my own culture. I've read so many articles on people who, because I grew up in Nigeria, even though I live in the diaspora now in my mind I'm very much still in Nigeria, and so I'm reading versions of stories of descendants of slaves that were taken from West African coast and Yoruba lands and seeing how they reference the gods that I grew up knowing. Sometimes the name changes, sometimes the spelling changes, sometimes the attributes or the elements that they attribute to these gods slightly changes or tweaks, and so I'm putting all of that research together and forming my own thoughts. Again, it's filtered through my personality. You know, when you read it, when you read my book, you know the things that are important to me or the things I'm trying to pass across. 42:13 Ai has this amalgamation of the thoughts of everyone that has coded into it and so cannot have this distinct thought or steer you in any one direction without you being your own filter, and so the over-reliance on that. It just um, yeah, there is that risk, um, and I know a lot of authors are very terrified of the pace at which people who are writing with AI would release books as well, at work as well, because I need at least six to eight months to write like a first draft. Some people are faster, but we can't keep up with AI. But I feel a bit less threatened just because I don't know that it's comparable. 42:54 - Julia Golding (Host) Yeah, and also I think it's a bit like your gymnast, yeah, and also I think it's a bit like your gymnast example that there is an experiential thing of learning how to do your handspring or whatever it is. I'm not a gymnast, but I feel things as I write. I laugh, I cry, I'm with the characters, experiencing it. And if you're thinking that you can be an author and not experience it but just go to the product at the end, I really don't see the point. 43:30 - Speaker 2 (None) Yeah. 43:31 - Julia Golding (Host) Other than making money, which I guess is the point Right, that's been fascinating. Thank you, Marve, for restoring my faith a bit that maybe we're not going to be replaced by AI anytime soon. So I said to you that we would land with my final question, which is always where in all the worlds is the best place, or the fantasy world's best place for something? World best place for something? 44:03 And I was thinking about this real major fracture in your society, in your book Firstborn of the Sun, where she has a gift which sets her apart from everybody else. So she's got like a magic power shall we call it superpower? That makes her different. And I was maybe think about where is the best place in fantasy to turn up with a very different kind of power? So if everybody in that world is a wizard, you are a witch or whatever. That particular difference would be and that I think would reveal about the fantasy world, its prejudices and whether it's tolerant or not. So I don't know if you had a chance to think where would be a good place to be different, that is a good question. 44:50 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I feel like most fantasy worlds have something being different. I'm a huge fan of Mer Merlin. That's one of my favorite magical shows and I really love that world. Um, and I would like to be the one who can do everything that merlin can't just to show him up, but um, in that world so he. It's very much soft magic in that you can do anything. Um, I would like to be the one where people, um I said I watched another show recently where this woman who had powers, um she, there was a role where anyone who asked her for anything she had to do it. Um, I would like to be one of those people where, like, hmm, and then be creative, and then be creative about it like a genie, like a genie in a Merlin world Genie. 45:44 - Julia Golding (Host) That's a really good example of this and I think it'd fit really well. I was thinking about the Marvel Universe because they've cheated in a way, because someone like Doctor Strange is basically a wizard. 45:56 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) Yeah, he's basically Merlin in a suit. 45:59 - Julia Golding (Host) And you've got Thor and Odin, who've got like godlike powers, which is a different kind of magic. So they have really chucked everything into one world so you could turn up and think of something different and be and go, just be absorbed into the Marvel universe and just be yet another. Um, yeah, but I think probably the easiest place to turn up with a different kind of power is somewhere which is chaotic, like Wonderland or Terry Pratchett's world. 46:27 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I would be terrified in Wonderland, that's for sure. I don't think I would survive. I would be losing my mind. 46:34 - Julia Golding (Host) Keep away from the Queen of Hearts and you'll be okay. 46:38 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) I know. No, that terrified me as a kid and I loved it and I read it, but I would always like read it under the covers because I was so sure that my mind would conjure up something and I would just become Alice. Because sometimes I used to think, if I thought about it really hard, I would become the characters, or the world would not know that I'm not the character and they would try to get me. Obviously I'm a bit too creative, my mind wanders and this is why I don't watch anything that's horror, because afterwards my mind just continues the story and it just gets too scary. So yeah, I would definitely skip Alice in Wonderland. 47:17 - Julia Golding (Host) Right, so you're a genie in Merlin's world. 47:21 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) In Merlin's world and. 47:22 - Julia Golding (Host) I'm somebody with a very different kind of magical power, romping around in Wonderland, keeping ahead of the Queen of Hearts. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Marve, and we hope that you have a really good book launch of your granny and we look forward to reading further installments. And does the trilogy have a name? I'm calling it Firstborn of the Sun, but do you have a name? 47:45 - Marvellous Michael Anson (Guest) That's what we're calling it too. Firstborn of the Sun. 47:47 - Julia Golding (Host) Okay, Firstborn of the Sun, top one. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much. 47:58 - Speaker 2 (None) Thanks for listening to Mythmakers Podcast Brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCentreForFantasy.org to join in the fun. Find out about our online courses, in-person stays in Oxford, plus visit our shop for great gifts. Tell a friend and subscribe wherever you find your favorite podcasts worldwide.