LAUREN BEUKES
AS HER FIRST NOVEL FOR SIX YEARS IS PUBLISHED, THE CLARKE AWARDWINNING AUTHOR TELLS US ABOUT WHAT INSPIRES HER WORK
The Clarke-winning novelist shares her career-shaping heroes and inspirations.
SOMETIMES LIFE IS JUST weird. As she got set for the publication of her new novel Afterland, a story set in the aftermath of “a man-killing plague” that takes out “99% of people with prostates”, Lauren Beukes realised that she was witnessing an actual pandemic catching fire around her. “It meant I was more paranoid than some in the beginning – early mask adopter, hardcore social distancing – because I’d already done the research, and all this seemed to line up,” she says. As is so often the case with Beukes’s work, Afterland – her first new novel since 2014’s Broken Monsters – is in part a way of exploring a theme that’s at the centre of the culture: in this case, gender. Rather than offering a The Handmaid’s Tale story of misogyny, by “flipping the narrative” it’s a 12-year-old boy, Miles, who faces being reduced to “a reproductive resource”. It’s also a book which explores the notion that a world without men would be kinder and gentler. “Surprise! Women are just as capable of all the evil in the world, vulnerable to being power-hungry, greedy, selfish and violent – especially if they feel they have more to prove,” says Beukes. Read on to discover some of the people, organisations, situations and artworks that have inspired one of the world’s finest writers of speculative fiction.
In many ways, apartheid was an easy enemy – a vividly evil and racist regime
GROWING UP IN APARTHEIDERA SOUTH AFRICA
I came of age at the height of the struggle against apartheid [she is 44], and it had a huge influence on who I am as a person and my writing and my interest in human rights. The system was designed to be a utopia for white people that came at a terrible cost, including inferior education, housing segregation, families destroyed or separated, people going into exile, ruthless repression, violence, assassination hit squads, police torture and a chemical weapons unit.
A lot of people simply didn’t know – censorship of the press was a major tool of the racist government of the time – but a lot of people also chose to look away. We can’t afford to look away, even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it hurts. In many ways, apartheid was an easy enemy – a vividly evil and racist regime – and it’s harder to fight injustice in the 21st century, because it’s more amorphous: a bleed of capitalism and cronyism, corruption, fascism, racism, misogyny, repression of gay and trans rights, driven by fear. There’s not a single enemy you can pinpoint and rise up against. It’s systemic and deeply entrenched.
The South African philosophy of Ubuntu is that people are people because of other people. We have to look, and more than that, we have to speak out, we have to fight proactively and meaningfully in our work, our art, our lives.
2000 AD AND THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES
One impact that growing up under apartheid had was that sanctions meant we had limited access to popular culture. American comics made it in randomly, and I had to fill in the gaps myself between Amethyst #29 and #41, but for whatever reason, 2000 AD was not on the imports blacklist. The stories of a totalitarian police state, and a system where mutants were treated as lesser citizens and not fully human, really resonated. Along with some