James Bow
My ideas come from a number of sources. The oldest file I have in my directory containing all my "Icarus Down" drafts is entitled "World Kite" and it says:
"Last night I dreamed about a boy who built himself a kite to fly around the world. It wasn't a pleasant journey because the people around the world were in distress, fighting each other. But somehow his journey helped enough people to make a difference.
"The boy lived on an isolated village at the top of a huge cliff. His fellow children made fun of him and his wish to fly, until he shocks them all by jumping off the cliff and flying. (Note, even the bullies don't consider throwing him off the cliff. They just want him to go back to the village to be humiliated. They get a little scared when he proposes to jump)"
The boy is Simon, obviously -- a young man who isn't appreciated by the people around him, but finds something deep inside himself which surprises everyone. He doesn't end up flying away. Indeed, he falls. Subsequent drafts of "Icarus Down" wiped away the kite element, and suspended the city halfway down the chasm, rather than being at the edge of the cliff. Two more significant ideas came from other sources.
"Invisible Cities", by Italian author Italo Calvino, is an important book in my life. I read it during my university years and I keep coming back to it. It's a series of imaginary (or are they?) cities described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan in between Marco's many journeys. One of the cities he describes is Octavia, a city suspended from cables hung between two mountain peaks. Where everything in normal cities builds up, Octavia builds down, hanging from its precarious perch. That gave me the idea of cities suspended halfway down the chasm, and it's one reason why one of those cities on the planet is called Octavia. I only needed to ask the questions: "What are they hiding from if they have to suspend their cities off the ground? And why are they hiding from the sun at the top of the cliffs?"
Diane Wynne Jones "The Merlin Conspiracy" provides the answer to the latter question. I loved her stories of fascinating worlds that people can visit through magical portals, and one stuck in the mind from this book. In this book, Wynne Jones imagined a city that hugged the side of a deep chasm, keeping in the shade from a terrible sun. It was a rigid caste system, and the lower your caste, the higher you were on the chasm, closer to the sun. The "untouchables" lived on the roofs and in the plains above, where the sun produced horrible tumours on their skin.
Couple Octavia and Wynne Jones' world together, and you have the setting for "Icarus Down". Now, I just needed to ask questions: "why were they there? What were they hiding from? Why were they hiding from it?" From that, the story emerged.
"Last night I dreamed about a boy who built himself a kite to fly around the world. It wasn't a pleasant journey because the people around the world were in distress, fighting each other. But somehow his journey helped enough people to make a difference.
"The boy lived on an isolated village at the top of a huge cliff. His fellow children made fun of him and his wish to fly, until he shocks them all by jumping off the cliff and flying. (Note, even the bullies don't consider throwing him off the cliff. They just want him to go back to the village to be humiliated. They get a little scared when he proposes to jump)"
The boy is Simon, obviously -- a young man who isn't appreciated by the people around him, but finds something deep inside himself which surprises everyone. He doesn't end up flying away. Indeed, he falls. Subsequent drafts of "Icarus Down" wiped away the kite element, and suspended the city halfway down the chasm, rather than being at the edge of the cliff. Two more significant ideas came from other sources.
"Invisible Cities", by Italian author Italo Calvino, is an important book in my life. I read it during my university years and I keep coming back to it. It's a series of imaginary (or are they?) cities described by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan in between Marco's many journeys. One of the cities he describes is Octavia, a city suspended from cables hung between two mountain peaks. Where everything in normal cities builds up, Octavia builds down, hanging from its precarious perch. That gave me the idea of cities suspended halfway down the chasm, and it's one reason why one of those cities on the planet is called Octavia. I only needed to ask the questions: "What are they hiding from if they have to suspend their cities off the ground? And why are they hiding from the sun at the top of the cliffs?"
Diane Wynne Jones "The Merlin Conspiracy" provides the answer to the latter question. I loved her stories of fascinating worlds that people can visit through magical portals, and one stuck in the mind from this book. In this book, Wynne Jones imagined a city that hugged the side of a deep chasm, keeping in the shade from a terrible sun. It was a rigid caste system, and the lower your caste, the higher you were on the chasm, closer to the sun. The "untouchables" lived on the roofs and in the plains above, where the sun produced horrible tumours on their skin.
Couple Octavia and Wynne Jones' world together, and you have the setting for "Icarus Down". Now, I just needed to ask questions: "why were they there? What were they hiding from? Why were they hiding from it?" From that, the story emerged.
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