The Big Idea: Curtis C. Chen
Posted on June 21, 2016 Posted by John Scalzi 7 Comments
Hey! Curtis C. Chen is a former student of mine! And now he has his debut novel, Waypoint Kangaroo! Naturally I take all credit for his success. Now, pay attention while Curtis tells you about his book.
CURTIS C. CHEN:
My debut novel Waypoint Kangaroo exists because of a robot cat from the future. Lemme ‘splain.
Though I grew up in the United States, I was born in Taiwan, and my late paternal grandfather owned a bookshop, so as a young child I had access to a variety of reading materials. One of the book series I discovered and fell in love with as a child was Doraemon, a popular Japanese manga that had been translated into Chinese. It was probably also my first contact with science fiction in book form, and it influenced me pretty deeply.
Oddly enough, Doraemon is still virtually unknown in the Western hemisphere, despite enjoying immense popularity all across Asia since his introduction in 1969–he’s even been called “the Mickey Mouse of Japan.” The good news is, US residents can now watch episodes of the 2005 Doraemon anime on the cable channel Disney XD, where he’s billed as a “Gadget Cat from the Future.”
I won’t get into Doraemon’s backstory here (you can read about that at doraemon.com). The important thing is that Doraemon keeps all his futuristic gadgets in a “4th Dimensional Secret Gadget Pocket,” a pouch built into his belly–and that was the inspiration for my character Kangaroo’s superpower, which he simply calls “the pocket.”
However, since my goal was to write a spy novel for grown-ups, not a comic strip targeted at pre-teen children, I wanted to be more rigorous in terms of how Kangaroo’s pocket works and what its limitations are. I wanted his superpower to be internally consistent and to generally adhere to the laws of physics as we understand them today.
I also didn’t want the pocket to be useful in every situation, which meant coming up with very clear rules for when and how Kangaroo could use it. My friends and fellow writers helped me think through those issues by asking many questions of the “Can he do X? What if he does Y? Why wouldn’t he do Z?” variety.
Here are the basics of what I came up with:
- Kangaroo can open portals to an empty “pocket universe” which is apparently infinite, making it the perfect place to hide just about anything.
- But that other universe looks like deep space–no air, no light, no heat–so Kangaroo usually opens the pocket with an optional force-field barrier over the portal, to keep the atmosphere from our universe from escaping into the other one. (The barrier is permeable enough that he can push his arm through to deposit or withdraw items.)
- Kangaroo can only open the pocket in midair, not inside solid objects or liquids, and therefore the portal can only ever be as large as the empty space around him.
- The portal must always face toward Kangaroo. He can rotate the portal around the object inside, but only by exactly 180 degrees. (This one is a bit tricky to describe; there’s a longer explanation of “Project Backdoor” early in the novel.)
- Once a portal is open, it’s locked to Kangaroo’s position in space–i.e., if he turns his head, it moves with him.
- Last but not least, using the pocket gives Kangaroo a “pocket hangover” roughly proportional to how many portals he’s pulled recently and how large each one has been.
Once I had a general idea of what Kangaroo could and couldn’t do with the pocket, I started thinking about “edge cases.” How do I set up situations where the pocket is the only or best way to solve a certain problem, but it’s going to be a challenge for Kangaro to use it in that particular way? And given that he’s not so great at all the other spy stuff–his bosses really only want to use him as a courier–what does he do when things go sideways in the field, and he can’t use the pocket at all for some reason?
I hope you have as much fun reading about Kangaroo’s adventures as I did making them up. And if you don’t see your favorite “stupid pocket trick” in Waypoint Kangaroo, don’t panic–book two is coming soon!
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Waypoint Kangaroo: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s blog. Follow him on Twitter.
>Taiwan
>小叮噹
Ohey!
A 4th dimensional Waypoint Kangaroo pocket? Like the one seen in the Disney Clooney movie “Tomorrowland” where Athena, from what I remember, opens a built in Kangaroo-like interdimensional pouch for a badassed grenade?
One hell of a good movie esp if you’ve been unfortunately introduced to zero point gestalt monitor type entities as depicted in the movie. Making me either one of the increasingly few left-behind non-members or just another delusional loon. Always room for one more.
The comprehensiveness of the movie probably means this was a reference to the Doraemon manga which I had never heard of before reading this intro. The scene in the movie went passed me at the time of seeing it as did the near emptyness of the Tommorland city at the end with Gov. Nix and his bad guys being the only occupants. The implications go far beyond “it’s only a movie.”
The movie came out to coincide with the arrival of the “New Horizon” Pluto probe. Nix or Nyx just happens to be a moon of Pluto with Nix being the god of shadow and darkness.
A movable Phantom Zone! Cool!
Curtis is the best and everyone should buy this book in multiples.
sojournerstrange: Got it in one. :)
lawduck: Thank you very much for the support! :D
I recently saw a video on YouTube of anime voice artists from a con panel in the last couple of years. One was Asian (I missed his name, not Todd Haberkorn). He mentioned a manga that was a favorite of his when he was a kid. It may have been Doraemon. Now I’m curious. I’ll look for the video again.
Follow-up: It was Kaiji Tang, and yes, about Doraemon. Here’s the link to the panel: https://youtu.be/togCxdvqEeY — There’s a lot of good advice for aspiring voice actors in there too, and plenty of fun fan stuff.