I was affected by the social evolution of fertility technology and plastic surgery, the way these technologies were seen as shocking, controversial, then commonplace and in some cases almost expected.Ī reader drew a link for me recently between the glass paperweight in Orwell's 1984 and the glass paperweight my character Peri gives to her employer, architect Peter Chesshyre. I'm more inspired by the incredible advances happening in the real world - authors could get all the inspiration they need from reading New Scientist every week. Atwood and Piercy write across many genres and styles and they are interested in the social consequences of the changes they describe. I love great women speculative fiction writers such as Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy and Ursula Le Guin. I've read a fair bit of classic sci-fi and love the great films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Terminator but I wasn't consciously aware of any influences. The idea of enhancing the human body is a classic sci-fi concept, did you look to any of the classic authors and stories when writing your book? It seems all of us know what it feels like to fly from our dreams and for many people these dreams are among the most important experiences of their lives. Where did the inspiration for the book come from?įrom many sources a great deal of it from living near the Rocky Mountains and envying eagles and hawks soaring off cliffs. It seemed like an original idea and yet somehow a story that had always been there, like the sculpture waiting in the stone for the sculptor to release it. When We Have Wings has been getting some serious praise when you were writing it did you know it was something special? The book explores the exhilaration and terror of flight as well as the dilemmas around such a radical modification of the human.

He doesn't have wings but is facing the dilemma over whether to pay for his son to have the surgery, much as parents agonise over private schools now. When Peri kidnaps the baby of her rich employers and flees, a private investigator is hired to track her down. My main character Peri, a poor girl from the regions, will sacrifice anything to get her wings and join this elite but the price is higher than she could have imagined. Only the rich can afford the surgery, drugs, and gene manipulation to get their own wings, however. The book is set in a very recognisable near future where the dream of being able to fly is now physical reality. What a great portrait of Sydney and Sydney types. I'm also reading Seven-tenths: The Sea and Its Thresholds by James Hamilton-Paterson for research and I've just finished Animal People by Charlotte Wood, which I loved. It took me a while to get into it because there are so many characters but now the humour is really beginning to work on me.

What are you reading at the moment?Ĭatch-22, which I've never read before. Hi Claire, thanks for taking the time to talk with us, let's start with an easy one.

When we have wings by claire corbett