D.J.
Solomon
D.J. Solomon is a Stanford M.D., Brandeis
Phi Beta
Kappa, and Westinghouse Science Talent
Search Scholarship winner. He has a private
practice in rural North Carolina. Xen
is his first novel, second book, the first
published in 1979 by W.B. Saunders. He
lives with two dogs and has three children.
He has other works in various stages of
development, both fiction & non-fiction.
Visit the author online at
www.xenbook.com
PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was
reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your
earliest influences and why?
D.J.
Solomon: I grew up in the large cities of Texas. My brothers and I
always had access to books at home and some of my fondest memories from
that time relate to spending hours in the libraries of Dallas. I have
always had trepidation about writing and avoided classes in college that
required any papers. My teachers and professors were always my main
source of inspiration.
PageOneLit.com: Why do you write?
D.J.
Solomon: I write to entertain first and foremost. An ideal book is
one which elicits emotional responses at the extremes, love & hate,
laughter and sadness, approval and disgust, for example, but ends with
the reader having a gut feeling of wonder, with lots of questions both
for the author perhaps, but more importantly, about their own lives and
what they can do to become a better person.
PageOneLit.com: When readers ask you to personally
explain/define "XEN - A Novel From the Future" - What do you say? How do
you describe this book and where did it's inspiration come from to write
it?
D.J. Solomon: Xen is a wake up call to examine one’s own life, to
try and put in perspective what is really important in this world, not
the massive consumption nor the brainwashing we receive from the
relentless propagandists of business, the media, and government.
Rather, to realize individual or collective Armageddon could strike
tomorrow, so we must cultivate the innate kindness in our hearts and
treat each other as we would all like to be treated. I have been asked
many times, “what is Xen really about?” So I put together a list of 18
distinct issues that Xen covers. Hence, Xen is:
-
The story of a misanthropic scientist who rids
the world of evil.
-
A whimsical myth about a bet between Wind and
Water over the fate of mankind and Earth herself.
-
A eugenics program that breeds out our
xenophobia, ridding the world of hate & prejudice.
-
A catalog of all the atrocities and depravity of
Mankind.
-
An allegory where the battle of the sexes is
settled once and for all.
-
A proof that mankind is innately flawed and
cannot be fixed; he must be scrapped for a superior species that
is dominated by women.
-
The last testament of Mankind.
-
A tribute to the robustness but persistent
vagaries of the English language.
-
An acceptance of the difficulty in pinning
anything down, since (most) everything is relative.
-
How fire got banned from Earth.
-
How vegetarianism triumphed and animals came no
longer to be exploited for food and raw materials, or in any
other fashion.
-
An exercise in absurdly esoteric language, laid
low by strong language and outright vulgarity.
-
About the power of first thoughts and the
difficulty in suppressing them.
-
A first contact with extraterrestrial life
capable of interstellar travel, but in reverse.
-
A story about good versus evil.
-
A future perfect Utopia on Earth.
-
A personal call to action to cultivate kindness
in our hearts and treat others as we would like to be treated.
-
A question, do the ends justify the means?
Xen evolved from my original grappling with the question of, “would a
mother or father be willing to sacrifice their child, in a completely
painless fashion, in order to wipe out disease and infirmity?”
PageOneLit.com: Who is
Dr. Seneschal?
D.J.
Solomon: Dr.
Seneschal is a lonely man in search of love and affection. He is a life
scientist whose first thoughts require censoring, just like everyone
else’s. He is a man who is a victim of fate (via Water), destined to
change the face of life on Earth and wipe out Mankind as we know him.
He is a pragmatist. One way of understanding him is to look at his
name: a “seneschal” is the grounds or estate keeper, the guy in charge;
while “pawkey” was chosen from the word “pawky” which means clever or
shrewd. (I might also say that his name, like all the names in Xen, was
very carefully selected and has additional meaning.) He is a
misanthrope; he isn’t a misanthrope. He is a composite of some of the
most vicious people I have ever known. He is the Messiah, a creator of
life and deliverer of death, who single handedly ushers in peace on
Earth, which would then be the Messianic era.
PageOneLit.com: In
XEN - A Novel From the Future - Wind bets Water that mankind will
annihilate itself. Water believes that humanity will continue without
destroying itself - Please Explain.
D.J. Solomon:
One has only to look
around at the current disarray of our world and read any news report. I
grew up with the “communist threat” and mutual self destruction, where
our best defense was getting by our lockers with our heads between our
legs and kissing our asses good-bye. Now there are ongoing wars,
persistent slavery and abuse at all levels of people and animals,
global warming, and resistant diseases. Pretty much everyone but the
pollyannas would say we are doomed as a species. In Xen, the bet can
only occur if each of the parties takes an opposing viewpoint. And
Water is savvy enough to know that she will find the place and time to
ensure that SHE wins the bet, Mankind being her favorite offspring.
PageOneLit.com:
XEN - A Novel From the Future is such a great book in many different
ways -- It is a book that will raise a few eyebrows and create lots of
thought and discussion. Was this your intention?
D.J. Solomon:
My intention was to
entertain first, to make people laugh and then turn away in horror, and
then to think. It was designed to get a strong reaction and so far in
that I have been successful. Readers either love or hate it, a
realization that I addressed in advance in the foreward, the “Note from
the translator,” telling the disgruntled what they could do with their
displeasure with the book. You have to understand, the original and
still working subtitle for Xen is “complete & unexpurgated.” I hope the
book will shock people out of their complacency with the status quo and
allow for extensive thought and discussion.
PageOneLit.com: What
did you learn from writing "XEN - A Novel From the Future"? Was there
any research done for this story?
D.J.
Solomon:
How much fun writing fiction can be. I have never written anything
“made up” before. All of my writing has been “factual,” and the one
thing I have learned over the years is that no matter what opinion one
has, there is always someone who will disagree. There will never be
universal agreement about anything perhaps, unless we realize that each
of us is just another person, with the same hopes and dreams and fears.
With non-fiction there is always someone waiting to tear a hole in your
hypothesis or conclusion and nit pick. With fiction, one can just make
stuff up, so long as the details are tight and I endeavored long and
hard to make Xen as tight as possible.
As far as research is
concerned, I used a number of sources for the information about war and
torture and acknowledge heavy use of two books in this regard. I knew
much of this stuff already, but here again the “details” were important
for completeness in the context of a novel.
PageOneLit.com: What's
next?
D.J. Solomon:
I have at least two books
that I am currently working on. One, another novel, will be far more
imaginative that Xen, with tremendous social and environmental
implications; the idea is complete, I am doing a bit of research, but I
haven’t yet decided exactly how to tell the story. Once I figure this
out, I don’t think it will take long since Xen was written in 3 months,
at night and on the weekends and the editor’s issues were addressed in
an additional 6 weeks; I believe in outlines but I will admit that my
muse was working overtime.
The other is a nonfiction
work about medical care in America; that will need lots of research
since both barrels will be aimed at me over the details of the
analysis. I have other projects as well, perhaps some short stories. I
am a “bad” writer currently, since I don’t write every day, week or even
month. I do have a full time private practice and am working with the
publisher, to get the word out about Xen as much as I can, too.
PageOneLit.com:
What was the last book you read?
D.J. Solomon:
I am currently reading the
“Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living,” by the Dalai Lama and Howard
Cutler.
PageOneLit.com:
Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your
writing?
D.J.
Solomon: My
hobbies include the financial markets, photography, my dogs. But I live
for my children and those closest to me. My writing is really affected
only by my own inner demons.
