ISSUE #9 | An Interview with Elena Sichrovsky
Elena Sichrovsky is at the Shanghai University of Engineering Science and is also a longtime member of The Shanghai Writing Workshop. Her short stories have been published in SciPhi Journal and Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, among others. Through her work, she seeks to find the beauty in the terrifying and the terror in the beautiful. She is also currently working on her first novel. You can follow her on Instagram @elenitasich for updates on her latest writing projects.
PLANET SCUMM: Do you look at your issue 9 story differently now than when you first wrote it?
ELENA SICHROVSKY: Definitely. It's been about two years since I wrote the very first draft of this story and I've grown a lot as writer since then so the perfectionist in me can't help but think maybe I could write it better now! Maybe I could change this or add that or describe this better. But then I still love this story and the world it’s in and the voice of the character. I actually find it even more relevant and eerie now because of the current pandemic.
PS: Which science-fiction apocalypse scenario would you root for?
ES: I've always been partial to the "aliens take over the world" scenario. I never really understood why literature and media often portray that as a frightening or threatening situation when I would totally welcome it. As a third culture kid I've struggled with feeling like an outsider all my life, so I would definitely be on the side of the aliens. I'd complain to them about all the complexities of culture and integration, the social norms that are so frustrating, and all the ways we have to conform to be accepted into social circles. And they would show me their multiple eyes, or flaunt their purple scales, or shape-shift into a napkin dispenser, and it would be the coolest thing ever. I've always wished I was secretly an alien. If aliens wanted to take over the world I would fly their flag proudly.
PS: What comes to mind when you think of “science fiction” and “winter”?
ES: For some reason the first thing that came to mind is a quote from the supernatural drama show Dominion where one of the characters says "In winter, when blood spills on snow, it steams." So blood on snow is the aesthetic I'm thinking of now. Also the sound of heavy boots crunching down on snow and ice--think Storm Troopers marching through a snow-covered wasteland, leaving a litany of black footprints staining the pristine white. The collective sound of snowflakes being crushed would be amazing.
PS: Improve the cliche: “Writing is like pulling teeth."
ES: Pulling teeth is too quick and clinical to describe writing. It's a much more drawn-out kind of torment. To me writing is waging a constant war between your own self-doubt and the doubt of your characters. And especially when writing fantasy or sci-fi I'm always hovering between creation and destruction and the aftermath of either of those choices. So to improve on the cliche, I would say that writing is cutting your own skin off with a butter knife, but halfway through deciding you want to keep it on and trying to make the blood stick the flaps of flesh back on and when that doesn't work just plunging the butter knife in anyways and sawing those dull serrated edges back and forth until the skin finally falls off. And then you pick it up and look at it and think "Well that's not the right size. Let me cut a piece off from the other arm."
