Q&A: Sarah Lahey, Author of ‘Gravity Is Heartless’

Sarah Lahey is an Australian author, designer and educator. She has a background based in interior design, communication and visual culture and when not writing is working as a senior lecturer teaching design, technology and sustainability in Sydney, Australia. With her career based around sustainable design and by extension climate change, it is no wonder her debut novel, Gravity is Heartless, has its base firmly in climate science.

Hi Sarah! Thank you for taking the time to sit down today to talk about your upcoming book, Gravity is Heartless. Can you start by telling us a little about the book?

The book is set in 2050. In a world where automated cities, vehicles, and homes are now standard, and artificial intelligence (AI), CRISPR gene editing, and quantum computing have become a reality. Climate change is also in full swing―sea levels are rising, clouds have disappeared, and the planet is heating up. The main character, Quinn Buyers, is a climate scientist, who knows a lot about science but not much about herself. When a climate catastrophe happens, she embarks on a quest for answers that takes her across the globe and she ends up in some foreign places, which force her to confront herself, what’s missing in her life, and who she is.  The novel also asks some fundamental questions about what makes us human, and it takes a light-hearted look at our relationship with technology and machines. The genre is described as science fiction meets speculative fiction with a bit of adventure and romance thrown in.

What inspired you to write a book set in the 2050s? Were you inspired by your own life at all?

I have three adult children and I wanted to consider what the lives of their children, my potential grandchildren, would be like. So, I set the novel one generation ahead, and asked myself, what would it be like if I went to sleep tonight and woke up in 30 years’ time?

I’d recently read William Morris’ novel News from Nowhere, and HG Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes, which were both written in the 1890s. Both books explore the same idea; suppose you were to go to sleep and wake up in the future. What would the world be like? In Morris’s novel the sleeper is transported to 21^st Century in England, a utopic future society where there is no common ownership and no private property. In Wells’ story the sleeper wakes in 2100, in a futuristic society filled with wonderous technologies, and due to compound interest, he becomes the richest man in the world. Of course, both scenarios have problems.

2050 posed a lot of questions; I asked myself, how will humanity survive the oncoming effects of climate change? What do we need for survival in the 21^st Century? Would we still be living in a democracy? What technologies and communication platforms would we be using?

Your world building and concepts are very well described within the book. What research did you do for this book?

I studied, and now teach, art, architecture and design, so urbanisation, the growth of our cities and how we live in the 21^st century are fundamentally important to me. Today good design is affordable, and it’s accessible—maybe not to everyone, but it’s certainly available to most people living in the 1^st world. What we design and construct is not limitless, but it’s pretty amazing, and we need to harness these technologies for human comfort and advancement. So, my research coincided with my knowledge and love of houses and architecture, and that spilled over into the book. Most of the new technologies and world building ideas are based on real world scenarios. Many of the ideas are already in place, or not that far away, and it will be interesting to see what gets adapted into mainstream culture.

There is a focus on climate change throughout. Was this a way to explore and express your own opinions on this global issue?

Yes, definitely. The first drafts of the novel were finished in late 2016, long before the wonderful Greta Thunberg inspired a whole generation of youth culture, and much of the world, to get on board with climate change. Teaching sustainable design, I was a climate change advocate often surrounded by sceptics. So, I thought if people read my novel, they might understand more fully what life would be like in a world affected by massive consumption and the impact of burning fossil fuels for energy. But I also wanted the novel to be accessible to the youth culture of today, so it needed to be fun, an adventure, and above all optimistic.

Can you tell us a bit about your writing process? Are you a planner or a “pantser”?

Often the story will come by itself in a true “pantser” style, and sometimes I feel I have no control over this—as if it were a pre-existing thing revealing itself. But saying that I spend a lot of time mapping out scenarios and story arcs with a black Artline on heavy white paper. But mostly what I aim for is to get up every day and try and find some time to write. That might be at 5 am writing reams of self-indulgent nonsense in a journal, or a morning of productive editing on a new draft. I wish the process was more organised, and maybe that will come, but at the moment it’s a consuming juggle between working and spending time with the people I love (including my 2-year-old working dog).

Are there any creators that influence your work?

I think everything I do, see, hear and read influences me and my work. My ideas come from music, art, literature, film, nature and everyday—so everything. Ideas are everywhere—the universe if filled with them. But you need to put yourself in a good place to find them, so they come to you and you don’t have to search too hard to find them. You need to have a proper look at the world around you. Everything is interesting. A bus trip can be full of character ideas. An early morning walk can be exciting, and it doesn’t matter if it’s along the beach or through the city streets.

Do you have a favourite genre to read yourself?

I read everything, all genres, but I do love disturbing tales. I’m a big fan of Ian McEwan, and I loved The Cement Garden, and his early series of short stories, First Love, Last Rites. Some of my other my favourite unsettling novels include Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and The Metamorphosis, by Kafka.

You have a background in education and design. Did you always want to be a writer or is it something that developed overtime?

Writing and journalism were strong career paths in my family. But I didn’t have a great education, and my childhood was a bit unsettling, and these things can take a while to overcome. I also married young and had children, so there never seemed to be the time or the opportunity to pursue writing as a career. But I did write a few small (not very good) romance novels. In my early 50s I completed my second degree in communication, and I knew writing was what I wanted to do. I could write all day, every day.

Gravity is Heartless is the first book in a series. Are you currently working on the sequel?

The second book Nostalgia Is Heartless is due out in Fall 2021, and I’m close to finishing it. After that there will be at least one more novel in the Heartless Series. Then I think I might write a book about my dog Desmo.

What are you currently reading? Do you have any books, besides your own of course, that you would recommend to readers?

I’ve had a busy few months working on the second book of the Heartless Series, Nostalgia Is Heartless, so I’m catching up on the recent best sellers.  I’ve just finished Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. Normal People, by Sally Rooney, Boy Swallows Universe by fellow Aussie Trent Dalton, and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. All are amazing and fabulous.

You can find Sarah on Instagram and Twitter, along with her author website and her design blog.

Will you be picking up Gravity Is Heartless? Tell us in the comments below!