Cécile Cristofari is joining us today to talk about her novella, Cities are Forests Waiting to Happen. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Decades after a catastrophic collapse caused by climate disasters and pandemics, Rossana, a professional urban explorer, discovers that a rogue artificial intelligence is threatening the communication system her world now depends on. Along with her niece, Catherine, an enthusiastic student of ancient technology, she heads to the former metropolis of Toronto (now a semi-rural settlement surviving under the ivy-covered ruins of skyscrapers), intent on isolating and destroying the AI. Rossana and Catherine join forces with Ishmael, a local official who views their involvement with extreme wariness.
In present-day Toronto, an idealistic young scholar, Sabrina, is working on cutting-edge technology aimed at deciphering human emotions from brainwaves. Attempting to force a breakthrough, she compromises her research protocol by confiding her own emotions to the AI she is developing. Her initiative results in unlikely success, but also turns the programme into an unpredictable entity that she begins to suspect could do far more harm than good…
What’s Cécile favorite bit?
All writing brings me joy, mostly because, as I am fond of saying, those stories are mine and I can put whatever I want in them. So let me talk about something else that brings me joy.
Ivy.
Yes, ivy. That dark green stuff that creeps up buildings, as high as it will take to touch the sun, and that landlords destroy in disgust and fear that it will ruin walls, is an ordinary miracles of resilience and hope. These days ivy flowers around my home, and it smells of honey and sweat, it teems with creepy-crawlies and when the wind blows, it billows as if it wanted to touch you. My daughter, to my chagrin, finds ivy repulsive. But I can’t get enough of it, and since this was my story, I knew exactly what I wanted to put in it this time.
Out-of-control, giant ivy, ivy that puts the world tree to shame.
I found the seed for that story on my very first visit to Toronto, two autumns ago. It was an emotional time, going back to Canada, a country where I once lived two years and left a little bit of my heart, after four years of absence due to Covid and new motherhood. I was stopping in Toronto on my way back from Québec City, and had not expected to be quite so charmed. I ended up wandering about the Royal Ontario Museum, suitcase in hand, strolling between casts of dimetrodon and geology exhibits and asking my jet-lagged brain to resist sleep just a little more, and in the jumble of emotions I felt at the conclusion of my trip, reflecting on reunions with friends I had not seen in years and past memories and geological times and what a climate-changed future might bring to us, I wondered when the world I had known would be destroyed for good, and what would be born out of it.
I thought that I’d like to write a love letter to that place. And that I would destroy it with ivy.
People blame ivy for breaking down walls, but the truth is, as often as not, its mighty limbs hold them together. I wondered what would happen if someone managed to harness that power, and engineer a strain of ivy strong enough to prevent skyscrapers from crumbling, even after the end of civilisation as we know it. Writing about ivy covering an entire skyline, creeping into museums and preserving a living fossil of a metropolis, was incredibly cathartic. All those tiny adventures you can imagine when lifting a leaf hanging from a wall, all those minute worlds unfolding in a spider’s web or the dance of the last pollinators of the year when the ivy blooms in autumn, I got to experience through my characters, for a little while. If the mazes of ivy are too small to explore in real life, I only needed to create a giant one, and populate it with as many fantasies, memories and private moments of wonder as I wanted.
It’s my novella, after all, and I can put whatever I want in it. But now it’s out in the world, and it can be yours, too, if you want.
I hope it will bring you as much joy as it brought me. And next time you pick up the pungent smell of ivy, or glimpse the wonderful mess it makes of a bland smooth wall, I hope it will make you smile.
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BIO:
Cécile Cristofari lives in South France, where she teaches English literature, writes stories when her children are asleep, and makes time for environmental and union work whenever she can. Her work often revolves around the relationship between humans and the Earth, and has appeared in Interzone, Clarkesworld, Podcastle, and other venues. Her debut short story collection, Elephants in Bloom, was nominated for a British Fantasy Award.