Hey folks,
I have gotten a chance to talk with author SC Jensen. She’s willingly decided to discuss her book, Undercity: Rebellion and its sequel, Undercity: Resistance.
1. What separates Undercity: Rebellion from other dystopian and post-apocalypse books?
To be honest, I never really thought of it as a dystopian or post-apocalyptic book as I was writing it. This is probably a major failing as an author, to not think about genre and the market when writing, but it was my first book, and I didn’t know any better. So, I suppose what makes it different is that it doesn’t know that it’s supposed to follow genre conventions. It’s a bit Science Fiction a bit Science Fantasy a bit Horror, and its very much driven by the characters themselves more so than genre, and they can be surprising.
2. Can you tell us about the protagonist(s)?
Ghost is a young woman who has learned to survive on the fringes of society, living on scraps—of sustenance and information. She’s tough, like cockroach level survival skills, because she’s so driven by her purpose that she refuses to die. And she’s so obsessed with her search for her sister that she has allowed it to become her identity. But her search forces her to confront who she really is, beyond this obsession, and what will happen to her when that search is over. She thinks the absolute worst outcome is that she’ll discover her sister is dead, and her life has been pointless. But that’s not the worst thing that happen, and she discovers how vulnerable she really is under that shell of “purpose” once the shit hits the fan.
Lynch is a man similarly driven by purpose, but in many ways he represents the rejection and subversion of expectation/purpose. He’s a big tough bastard, larger than life, beyond human in a lot of ways. He’s a dark character, ideologically driven, and villain-like in his pursuit of justice (as he sees it). But that’s just what we see on the outside. His inner workings are a lot more complex. I explore the dichotomy between the Man vs the Myth through the alternating POVs, and also through Lynch’s own journey of discovery as he examines the difference between the purpose he was born into and the purpose he’s chosen for himself.
They are both tough in their own ways, both very cut off from intimacy and human connection, and both feeling their way through what it means to be totally vulnerable in a world that is essentially trying to kill them.
3. Who is your favorite character aside from the two leads?
Ephram “Big Ugly” Mediara has always been my favorite. He’s another character whose inner landscape is vastly different from what people see on the outside.
4. Can you describe the City versus Elysia?
The City is the skeletal remains of an ancient civilization. It was once technologically advanced and prosperous, but now… It’s a carcass. Just bones. Nothing left to nourish those who live in it anymore. The people in it are scavengers, living on the scraps. It explores human beings’ ability to survive with very little modern conveniences, and what happens to people who are essentially stripped of the technologies that were once taken for granted.
Elysium is the opposite, a kind of rot that grew from the carcass of the City. It’s a parasite, really, a technologically abundant world that lives in excess of its needs, hedonistic in the extreme, which has slowly drained the life from the City. Power is the absolute currency here, and that power corrupts, turning almost every citizen of this “paradise” into something… monstrous.
5. Who is the antagonist(s) of the novel?
The set up implies that the Ursaar is the main antagonist of the story—the cruel leader of Elysium, and the one responsible for the horrors that persist on the surface.
However, I feel like human nature is the real antagonist. The Ursaar is symbolic of our base urges made flesh, and the danger of allowing any human to become powerful enough that they no longer have to answer to the moral/ethical expectations of the society they are a part of. There are reflections of the Ursaar in every character in the City and Elysium. Anyone could become him, in a way. He is too big, too gross to be real (or I thought so at the time of writing). And yet he looks more and more like the product of modern oligarchy today. He is Greed incarnate. I sometimes think I didn’t make him awful enough.
The Timekeepers are a reflection of this as well. They have power through knowledge, rather than wealth/politics, and they wield it by deciding who is or isn’t allowed to know the truth. Many of the problems in the City would not be problems if the Timekeepers shared their knowledge, but they withhold truth in order to remain in power (even if they can only enjoy it in isolation). In many ways, they are as repulsive as the Ursaar—ancient beings clinging to life at the expense of those who come after them, refusing to pass down the generational knowledge that would save the people of the City.
6. What inspired you to do a post-apocalypse story?
If I had to choose one thing, I’d say Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. I’ve always admired her ability to envision the future in a realistic and meaningful way. Compared to that series Undercity is a caricature. But the bleakness of her vision always struck me as painfully real and honest, and I just could never let it go. I think I’ve kept pushing that vision in my own mind to its extremes, wondering “what if?” And that’s how the seed was planted.
7. What do you think the appeal of post-apocalypse fiction is?
In some ways, I think post-apocalyptic fiction is about hope. It’s about rebirth from the ashes. Even the bleakest stories are still about human survival. Without that, there would be no story. And I think that’s the appeal. It’s born out of the deep seated belief that no matter how badly we screw things up, there will be some who survive, and maybe just maybe, they will figure out a better way.
8. Ghost is a bisexual heroine with both a male and female lover in the book. What made you decide on her being LGBTA?
Honestly, it seemed weird to me to assume that modern concepts of gender and sexuality would survive this far into the future. When people are pushed to the brink, as they are in the City, it seemed much more natural to me that people would seek human connection in any way they could. Especially in a world where people were less driven to procreate. While they might have preferences, in ideal situations, I didn’t see those as being set in stone. The characters in this series are fluid in many ways—with gender and sexuality only being one aspect of that—they are mutable, molded by the world and their experiences and constantly in flux. This is, to me, what humans are at their core.
9. When can we expect the third and final book in the trilogy?
I sadly lost the nearly-completed first draft of the third book due to a computer failure and for a long time was too distraught to attempt to finish it. However, I think enough time has passed now that I can pick it up again. I would like to say this year, but I admit I’m still a bit nervous about it.
10. What can we expect from you in the future?
The next big project I have planned is a cyberpunk/LitRPG thriller. It will be dark and dystopian with more action than my previous series. But, of course, with deep character exploration at its heart. Exploring characters is what drives me as a writer, examining humans pushed to their extremes, even if the situations are somewhat fantastical. Themes that continue to interest me, and which you’ll also see explored in my Bubbles in Space series, are income/technological disparity, propaganda, wealth, power, consumerism, and corporate greed.
Available here (Undercity: Rebellion)
Available here (Undercity: Resistance)
