Saci Lloyd

Saci Lloyd

About Author

Before becoming an internationally-acclaimed author and activist, Saci Lloyd has held down a bewildering variety of non-jobs, including being a storyboard artist, a cartoonist, a singer in a band, an animator and a script editor for Camouflage Films.

She recently stepped down as Head of Media at Newham Sixth Form College, but continues her association with the East London college.

Saci's first novel, THE CARBON DIARIES 2015, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and is in development with the BBC, and her third novel MOMENTUM was longlisted for The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.

Saci is very aware of the market she writes for. She understands their day to day lives and that translates over in the voice of her novels. She is a very strong and vocal advocate within the education sector.

Her many years experience working with teenagers in East London gives her a very real and valid insight into how education policies affect the next generation. Her many blogs often criticise the status quo.

Author link

www.sacilloyd.com; www.quantumdrop.co.uk

Interview

QUANTUM DROP

HODDER CHILDREN'S BOOKS

FEBRUARY 2013


In QUANTUM DROP, Anthony vows to avenge a fatal attack on his girlfriend, but first he has to enter the underground world of the Drop to discover her killer. Author Saci Lloyd talked to ReadingZone about her new book.


Q: Quantum Drop is set in the near future and your earlier novels (Carbon Diaries, Momentum) also explore future dystopian worlds. What attracts you about writing futuristic novels?


A: Usually I write about some kind of undetermined near future, I suppose I call it 'future fiction' as Margaret Atwood described it. I think the reason I like it is because it takes reality and nudges it one degree, so you don't have to make up completely different worlds; it's very close to what you know but with a twist or change.

I think that the best dystopian fiction acts like a lens to look at society, for example Orwell's 1984. That is set in a future world but first it is about communism, fascism and contemporary issues of the day. At its best, dystopia takes one future of the world and follows that one path so the rest of the world remains recognisable.


Q: Is that how you have used the internet in Quantum Drop?


A: Yes, the internet is great in developing 'other' worlds you can step into while keeping one foot in the real world.

It can also be a bit more of an unknown, like The Drop in Quantum Drop. This is a future market place that is corporate and mainstream, and people are driven to it for work. Kids from the poor areas, the Debtbelt, outsource themselves through the Drop to make some money, but their work is often more underground.


Q: Why is the novel called Quantum Drop?


A: The title came about because our scientists are discovering that the normal rules of the universe apply until you get to the macro level and the quantum level and then it operates by entirely different rules.

In Quantum Drop, you have this one percent of one percent of the wealthiest people operating at a quantum level, operating at a completely different level from everyone around us.


Q: Where does the world of Quantum Drop and today's world meet?


A: Quantum Drop is deliberately set in an unnamed place, it could be London, Baltimore or Athens, in Greece or Madrid where youth unemployment is 47%, it could be any country and that's the idea. I wanted it to be global.

The Debt Belt in Quantum Drop could be any place where an industry has left a place and stays in the doldrums, it never recovers.

Like the real world, there is a global shift going on and the new economies like Russia, San Paolo and Hong Kong are where the new wealth is. When the US banks crashed In 08/09, everything went down because it is all so entwined and virtual; machines are running half the market. It is a spiral of madness and the Debt Belt in Quantum Drop is the result of it.

I work in East London and there are many first generation and immigration children who want to continue their studies but the EMA [Education Maintenance Allowance] has been cut and that has had an enormous effect on these young people who have had to drop out from school.

Applications to universities are 20 to 30% down in this area because of the introduction of tuition fees. So in just a few years, 99% of the fallout from the crash has been on those who didn't cause it. You can see Canary Wharf from the school I teach at and it is such a contrast; banking continues as it did before but there's been a slow, downward effect where I live.

Quantum Drop was born out of my sense of rage for young people having their future taken away from them because of this insane system and no one is standing up for them. And the other motivation was humans; maybe as a species we need to be more humble and thoughtful.


Q: Do you think that we are facing a bleak environmental future?


A: My personal view for the future is to hope against hope that it will be okay but it's not looking great. It now looks like we are on track for a four degree rise in global temperatures with the scrabble for resources that that will entail. It's not looking good - but we are a very adaptable species.

Where I put my hope is in a growing movement of people who realise that we can't continue this attitude of 'buy buy buy' and survival of the fittest. You can't keep a culture going on those principles and I think there's a movement in that direction. I put my faith and hope in that.

My passion is that we should stop separating ourselves from other minds and states; we are all interconnected. Intelligence is not a human thing, love is not a human thing, and we are not the only species worldwide to experience these.

It would be a lot better if we would all become shape shifters and become birds and dogs and monkeys. The Aboriginals, for example, have a real father but also a spirit father who is drawn from creatures in their environment. It's a lovely example of how to be connected in the world.

In Quantum Drop, not only do the kids go after a corrupt financier - and succeed - but Anthony is reconnected with the world. He decides he is not going to live the kind of life that is set up for him any more. So it is a hopeful novel.


Q: What was it like writing from a boy's perspective?


A: I like writing from a boy's perspective. Anthony, the lead character, is an 'every boy' and it's a boy's story written from my sense of rage at how we let young people live like this and because of the crash.

I interviewed lots of young people before I started writing Quantum Drop. I have not done that before but this time I did because it was a boy and because I didn't want to write my version of a boy, I wanted to get the parameters right.

Anthony, is a composite of a few people. In the book he tells you his feelings although he is not displaying them to his world, so all this stuff is going on but he doesn't express it.

I also talked to a lot of people about gangs. It's not a world I have direct experience of so I tried to talk to a lot of people about it.

Near me, there is one area that is 'red', so that's the colour you wear and if you step into a green area in Canning Town wearing red, a group of teenagers will come along to check you out.

It is ongoing warfare and kids who come to college have to cross boundaries where one street ends and another begins. People haven't got a clue what is going on under their noses!

So Quantum Drop is a story of a lot of people but it could be an everyday story of someone living in a rundown area in any part of the world.


Q: What would your virtual persona or avatar be in The Drop?

A: I would be like the character, Lola, she is very cool. I was working on the Lola character when I saw this girl sitting on a train on the Bakerloo line at Baker St Station and thought, that's Lola. Her hair was in a quiff, she wore a yellow jacket, black drainpipe trousers and yellow winkle pickers, there was a general rockability feel about her with futuristic edges.


Q: Are you planning a sequel to Quantum Drop?

A: I don't have one planned, but you never know.... I would like to revisit Momentum, which is about a global revolution. My plan is to turn every young person in this world where nobody is safe - into an outsider, to organise an army of disaffected young people.

Just now I'm writing a comedy called 50% Banana set in a parallel Earth called Deva, for anyone who likes Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Big Bang Theory.

It's a crazy mash-up of characters and its title comes from when they decoded the human genome and found out that we shared half our make-up with a banana, 70 percent with a fruit fly and 98 percent with a chimp - the scientists all thought we were going to have something fabulous but what they found was much more mundane.


Q: What's your working week like?


A: I write and also teach animation and graphics a few days a week, I enjoy the teaching and it keeps me closer to young people although the ones I teach don't really read much - they keep asking me when am I going to make a film!

I've been teaching for about ten years and it's really changed me. I am interested in and passionate about the future and what happens to young people, especially young people on the wrong side of the track. I want to champion them. They are sitting the same exams at the same time as people from a prosperous background and it's not a level playing field. I want everyone to have the same opportunities.

Author's Titles