An Interview by Andrew Liptak

“Ghostweight” by Yoon Ha Lee will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Pre-order here!

Many stories that we tell now are variations on old tales: why do we retread old ground over and over?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I imagine there are only so many basic ideas that people care to write about. I used to sweat the originality thing a lot and then I realized my life would be infinitely better if I stopped worrying about it and stuck to writing things that entertained me. For instance, as a reader, you can make me happy pretty much indefinitely by having people in spaceships shoot holes into each other, so it wouldn’t surprise me if people could make themselves happy writing such stories pretty much indefinitely. Wash, rinse, repeat for whatever story trope you want to name.

Do you think stories about an underworld or afterlife will be relevant in a scientific age?

I’m not sure relevance even occurs to me. I don’t believe in an afterlife of any sort and would in fact prefer not to end up in an afterlife of any sort anyway. When I write a story about an underworld or an afterlife, it isn’t out of concern for relevance, it’s because it’s narratively convenient or fun to play with. The same is true for any other story element I might use–supernatural guns, genocidal spaceships, you name it. I don’t expect readers to ascribe any particular meaning or lesson to the element. Besides, from observation, it seems clear that the scientific method hasn’t killed widespread religious belief.

You make a point about what people carry with them: what is most important to have for the end of one’s days?

I couldn’t presume to answer that question for anyone else, so I’ll answer for myself. “End of one’s days” isn’t even meaningful. It’s no secret that everyone eventually dies. So the question reduces (in a mathematical sort of way) to what’s most important to have in the moving now, because that moment could at any point be the last one.

There is, sadly, a difference between what I would like to tell you I believe, and what I really believe based on my actions. I would like to tell you about love or honor or honesty. But when I look at what I do–always knowing death might be about to knock–what I think is important is having something to do, and trying to excel at it; trying to create things that are beautiful. I don’t recommend this as a way of life. It doesn’t have much in common with happiness or kindness or any of the thousand things that make people worthwhile. But whenever I have to make choices about what to do with my life, that the priority that comes out.