Christy Climenhage is joining us today to talk about her novel, The Midnight Project. Here’s the publisher’s description:
When enigmatic billionaire Burton Sykes walks into Re-Gene-eration, a bespoke reproduction assistance clinic run by Raina and Cedric, two disgraced genetic engineers struggling to get by, they know they have a very unusual client. When Sykes asks them to genetically engineer a way for humanity to survive the coming ecological apocalypse, Raina is tempted. Bees are dying, crops are failing, and she knows her research is partly to blame. Could she help in some way? Though troubled, Cedric agrees to take part when it becomes clear their benefactor will do this with or without them. How else can he be sure their work won’t fall into the wrong hands? But can they really trust Mr. Sykes?
In this near-future science fiction thriller, Christy Climenhage has created a frighteningly real world on the verge of collapse. As disaster strikes, the two friends need to decide whether to cling to their old life or to let go and embrace a new path for humanity.
What’s Christy’s favorite bit?
I’ll start with a little confession: I’m a news junkie. Local news, national news, global news. Weather, oh especially weather! Market and economy news. All of it. I need a daily dose. During the inward-looking part of the covid-19 pandemic, watching TV news for thirty minutes in the morning with at least two cups of coffee was a requirement for dealing with a world in freefall, when each day, the news felt worse and worse. It was also a big part of my writing practice –coffee, news, write, in that order. It anchored all my routines. This is probably why my favourite bit of The Midnight Project is the Holo-News headlines that whizz around the lab’s intake room where my scientist main characters, Raina and Cedric, drink their morning coffee.
I can see them in my mind’s eye: headlines that bring all the heavy things of the world right into their comfortable lounge. Headlines that hang in the air, fifteen centimetres high in Helvetica script, and march around the room, coming to rest randomly against the backdrop of furniture or even someone’s face. Raina and Cedric can turn them off, they can pause them, they can “flick” up news items of interest and watch 3D video or reports. And then, when they’re finished their coffee, they can shut it off and turn to their day, to their work, their news consumed. And in this way, they can keep track of billionaires’ bad behaviour, regular species extinction alerts, and the collapse of global agriculture and still get on with their jobs.
The headlines are invasive: they stab, they irritate, they hang ominously in the background, but they are the means through which Raina and Cedric mediate all the tragic and terrifying current events of their near-future world. The two scientists stay informed, they know what’s happening, but they can also compartmentalize the horrors of the day and banish them when it’s time to go to work just by turning them off. It’s a quiet metaphor for how they struggle
with the bigger calamities of the world and manage their own lives. The headlines also gently point to how isolated Raina and Cedric are. The scientists cling to their routines, cling to their little comforts and try to keep the big bad world out of their safe little lab, even while keeping tabs on the alarming decline around the globe.
But also: I love the Holo-News headlines for themselves.
They’re personal to me, and each one tells a little world-building story about the setting of The Midnight Project. The first headline, “Coup in France threatens EU Unity” is a little in joke for myself tied to the twelve months I spent doing a Masters degree on the European Union in Bruges, Belgium. And only I know that “Head of UN declares that world is at the edge of the abyss” was ripped from real headlines in 2021 after the near collapse of talks at an international climate conference.
What you see in the book is a fraction of the headlines I originally invented. The entertainment headlines were lost in the editing process, but I share one here with you for my own amusement: “In Arts News, the Ryan Reynolds Retrospective draws crowds at the Vancouver Planetarium after he wins post-humous Lifetime Achievement Award” (Okay, maybe it was good that one didn’t make the cut – thank you, editor!)
On a more serious note, the headline, “Charcuterie platters for dogs,” is a reference to a George Monbiot article in the Guardian in which he talked about people’s inability to concentrate on the climate crisis and how everyone is willing to be distracted by the inconsequential.
Finally, it tears at my heart how a “Species Termination Notice” is the bland euphemism for an extinction announcement. In the world of The Midnight Project, individual extinctions are tracked on a daily basis and considered “breaking news.” I thought it was important to include these in the headlines, but I found them so profoundly sad that I did zero research, picked
animals at random and even invented some species, so no one would be able to call me “prescient” if some of these sad things come to pass. For me, the Holo-headlines in The Midnight Project are a personal reflection on a dystopian near-future, as well as a world-building tool, and a metaphor for my characters’ coping strategies. It may be a reflection on my own news consumption, but I love each and every one.
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BIO:
Christy Climenhage was born in southern Ontario, Canada, and currently lives in a forest north of Ottawa. In between, she has lived on four continents. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University in Political and Social Sciences, and Masters’ degrees from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (International Political Economy) and the College of Europe (European Politics and Administration). She loves writing science fiction that pushes the boundaries of our current society, politics and technology. When she is not writing, you can find her walking her dogs, hiking or cross-country skiing.
