Catching Up with Emma Burnett

Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in Nature: Futures, Mythaxis, Northern Gravy, Apex, Radon, Utopia, MetaStellar, Milk Candy Review, Roi Fainéant, JAKE, and more. You can find her @slashnburnett, @slashnburnett.bsky.social, or emmaburnett.uk.

Emma is the author of “Softer Shades of Zap and Blue” from Radon Issue 8 and “10207” from Issue 5.

Emma’s first Radon interview can be found here.

Q: What changes have happened in your life since we last heard from you in 2023?

When I grow up, I think I might decide to have a calm and quiet life. Like a sheep in a bucolic countryside. Have someone come shave me once a year.

Since we last talked, and in no particular order, I finished a PhD (thank shit); got a new job (which is cool); did some whistleblowing (which was a mindfuck); written a bazillion flash fiction pieces (yaaaaay); went to WorldCon (which was epic); had my first viral twitter post (weird AF); did my first Judo competition since before Covid (did really well and then almost immediately decided to stop); learned how to make ice cream (yeah, baby!); started and stopped and started and stopped writing a novel (someday, maybe . . .).

This all sounds exhausting and makes me want to take a nap.

Q: As a self-proclaimed collector of future titles, do you often find yourself first creating interesting titles for stories you have not written, and then envisioning and writing a story that would fit the title?

I do! I do this! This is me!

I have a whole list of beautiful titles that deserve stories that I will almost definitely never give them. I think this probably means I should be on some sort of cruelty-to-stories list. I’m a bad person.

Stories and titles often appear in my head almost fully formed. Like, they just descend on me like a five-year-old after school, all knees and crusts of sandwiches and snot. I don’t really understand how this works, or why it happens at all, but it has the outcome that I’m often a very lazy writer. If the story is there, I write it. In fact, I feel like I owe the story my time, that I have to write it. But if it’s not, I often just flake out.

Very occasionally, I put the work in. Like, there was this piece in Nature: Futures, “Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3],” and I knew how I wanted that to function. I worked hard on that. But most of them, including “Softer Shades of Zap and Blue” in Issue 8 just appear fully formed. The work comes in for me during iterative edits that happen after the story has spilt out over the page.

So those titles in that beautiful, unloved list, if they didn’t come with a story ready to tell, they’ll probably never get used.

If anyone wants a title, though, gimme a shout. I gotchu, boo.

Q: Your Issue 8 story has a strong focus on the mechanics of battle and repair. How did you balance the technical aspects of worldbuilding with the emotional characterization in the robots?

I think you vastly overestimate my technical writing ability. I just make it up as I go!

That said, I really do love playing with different elements when I’m writing a story. In particular, I like weird POVs.

For “Softer Shades,” I started out by wanting to try writing something where the main character uses no personal pronouns—and if you go back and check it out, you’ll see that it doesn’t. It sort of skirts around them, and even when talking about others, the pronouns are awkward and distanced. So, developing emotions was complicated, because we need a self in order to feel. But this is an other-than-human being, who experiences the world entirely differently to us. I still wanted them to have curiosity, experience change, and make choices, and for that to resonate with us.

In broad terms, I think this is important because we make decisions on behalf of other-than-human things all the time. Animals, plants, water, the planet, they have no voice and no choice. We rely on non-human stuff for pretty much everything but devalue their lived experiences because they’re not the same as ours. This is hella stupid, both because the planet is vital for our survival, and (just like people who are different to you) they have as much of a right to a good life as you believe you do.

Q: Can you elaborate on the decision to erase prior memories of the cleaner-uppers? What thematic significance does memory have in this narrative?

In my head, I saw them being invented before a war. Maybe they were some sort of healthcare worker or first responder in emergencies. But if they remember their original purpose, they might struggle against their reconceptualised deployment.

I could dig deep and say that this reflects how unsettling I find certain technologies, especially those designed and released into the world without any view to second- and third-order effects. Someone designs a tool, and someone else turns it into a monster. And the legacy of those concerned with the rapid application of a new technology? We wilfully misremember their agenda, denigrate them, call them Luddites.

Q: The final line suggests a complex understanding of capture and choice. What message do you hope readers take away regarding autonomy and agency?

This actually came out a lot in my PhD research—if you don’t support people to make choices and take action, you know what happens? Generally speaking, sweet fuck all, that’s what.*

For the fixer-upper in “Softer Shades,” it was important that they get to that place even without institutional support. That’s a hard route to take, and I think it reflects just how difficult it is to break from entrenched power and normalised systems. You may hate your job (I hope you don’t, but you might), or you might want to go on a climate change protest march (I hope you do, and you can). But that’s going to be really hard to quit or do important life things when you have to pay the rent/mortgage, pick up the kid(s) from school, prep dinner, do that second (or third) job, call your mother, manage adulting.

The proliferation of pressure, it strips you of agency. You are captured, on a treadmill. Sometimes we’re able to break out. If it gets bad enough, we’ll make a hard choice, we’ll go apeshit on the system. We see this in big ways and in small ones. It mostly makes you wonder at the bravery of others. But for most of us, when we’re not at a critical tipping point, when it’s not about revolt or revolution, we need support in order to make new choices. Often, that support isn’t there, and it makes me sad.

But, yo, go call your mother.

*If you were super keen and wanted to read a bit more about it, you can do that here.

Q: Are there any particular works of literature or art that most influenced your storytelling approach?

Omg everyone. Everything. Read everything. Watch everything. Talk to people about all the media, all the art. That’s putting work into the craft (I say, as I binge watch crap on Netflix, I’m working, shhh).

The thing is, I’m a terrible storyteller. If we ever meet, and we talk, you’ll probably come away from the encounter massively confused about how I ever put words on paper. Chaos reigns supreme when I talk. I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time, and until a few years ago all I did was consume other people’s work. A lot of that must have influenced me, though, because I find myself going back to certain authors’ works, as if I’m looking for guidance. Maybe that helps, like having role models? Except then I get super awkward when I meet them, even more than I normally am. It’s a whole vibe. Zero recommends.

Q: How do you feel about the state of the market for speculative micro fiction and drabbles, compared to short fiction?

This is a weird and interesting question and I’m into it. I have thoughts . . .

Ok, so in my day job, I work at a whisky company as a sustainability researcher. And there’s this thing I learnt recently:

In the UK, whisk(e)y can’t be sold as whisk(e)y until it’s been in a cask for three years and a day. Which means that the soonest you could possibly sell your product is three years and two days, but of course you can’t, because there’s all the processing, and bottling, and labelling, and all that. So, call it four to five years before you have a product. In that time, you basically have no income. So what do you do? You make vodka and gin. Niche little local brands, sell into localised markets, make some money off your sunk costs, build a bit of a following. You get loads of little distilleries that make specialty gins that help keep the business ticking over until the more profitable liquid starts rolling out onto the shelves. Then you slow down or stop the gin. It means that there’s constant turnover in the gin market—it’s always saturated but also always has space.

The same sort of feels true for markets. Not that there’s a good departure, a lot of markets just crash and burn. But new ones spring up, and there’s always some sort of space for stories to go. I hear a lot of people using panicky language around the loss of markets, and it does suck. I hate when a beautiful market shuts down because of a lack of support, it sucks hairy donkey balls. But it doesn’t seem to stop optimistic newcomers from giving it a shot. There don’t seem to be fewer markets, really.* Just different ones. The existential dread language that gets flung about, I’m not sure that’s helping anything.**

* I might be wrong. I don’t have long-term trend data, just anecdotal experience. We can fact check me.

** Of course, what would actually just increase the amount of markets for human-made art is good, consistent resourcing. Do I mean Robin Hood policies? Hell yeah, I do.

Q: How are you progressing in your novella writing?

Oh, no, don’t look at me. Look, a cute cat!

I mean . . . it’s progressing?

No, actually, it is. But it’s a funky project. I’m co-writing it, which is cool because it means we can both lean into our skill sets. One of us is a natural Dungeon Master, and can do the sword and sorcery. One of us is a pedant and can do punctuation. But both of us have day jobs. So, it is progressing, but it’s also a whole lot of yelling at each other in various versions of: ‘Did you do the thing yet?!’

Also, I’m not gonna lie, I feel like a kid in school, complaining about homework. Like, OMG, 30-40,000 words is a shit tonne of words. It’s soooooo many words. My playground is 100-1000, so I’m doing a lot of melting and stressing.

I respond well to guilt, though. So, thanks for that.