Interview by David Kendall.

This is the full version of an interview conducted for Impact, a Brighton area listings magazine. The interview was done to tie in with the release by Simon & Schuster of The Prestige, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was published along with a reissue of The Affirmation and a totally reworked version of The Glamour, winner of the 1988 Kurd Lasswitz Best Novel Award. All three are priced at £6.99.

‘Everyone I know who’s piled up money has sold out and I think, ‘Christ, I wish I’d done that’.’

Hastings is deep beneath the remains of a thunderstorm. Appropriate, considering that strange uses of electricity are so important to The Prestige, a blend of magic, revenge and bi-location as two rival Victorian illusionists strive to perfect the ultimate conjuring trick, that of instantaneous transportation. Into this Gothic crucible is poured the weird electrical theories of scientific maverick Nicolai Tesla, producing a thriller which keeps you guessing (through clever misdirection) to the end.

The book begins with Andrew Westley, a young journalist, being assigned to investigate reports of a cult leader’s reappearance in Derbyshire, all the more mysterious as said cult leader was an inmate of the California State Penitentiary at the time of the sighting. What I wanted to know was how such an odd mixture of ideas came about.

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST: The whole idea was inspired by a stigmatic priest in Italy who could bi-locate. He was in his monastic cell all his life, but if someone in the village died he would appear at the bedside. People could touch him, talk to him, take tea with him. He would be there, but at the same time he would never leave the cell. It was one of those religious mysteries. What interested me was that this was in modern times. He died about ten years ago, it wasn’t medieval, which ties in with the rest of the book. A lot of people would say that magic was a miracle.

Although Chris had contacted some modern day magicians while researching the novel, he found them less help than he’d initially imagined.

PRIEST: Magicians are very defensive about their secrets. What they say is that the problem with their secrets is that they’re so silly that if anyone found out what they were they’d go out of business. What you can do, and what I eventually did, is get some old magic books from the nineteenth century. These are quite easy to get hold of, and things have changed only slightly in modern times. I did go down to Eastbourne to watch a gala evening of magic by the IBM (International Brotherhood of Magicians). Everyone in the audience was a magician except me. In many ways you’d think that was the worst possible audience: they’d all know how each trick was done. Yet, surprisingly, they didn’t, or if they did it didn’t seem to matter. The important thing is the skill of the performer and the level of entertainment; the prestige.

One of the things I like about magicians is their ability to make things disappear in front of you. David Copperfield is a great example of misdirection from modern times. He almost always starts his illusions with an audience there, and he’ll say, ‘These people are going to see everything that you see at home.’ Now, what you’re intended to believe from that is that they’re objective witnesses on your behalf. What he actually says is they will see everything you see at home. All they’re going to watch is a TV screen, just like you’re going to watch a TV screen. They’re not going to make it happen, and so you think, ‘Oh, there were witnesses, he couldn’t have done that.’ He doesn’t lie to you, he just misdirects you. Misdirection is probably the one quality to magic that’s actually original.

Though initially writing SF novels, such as Inverted World (1974), the genre nowadays holds less attraction.

PRIEST: I went through science fiction. In many ways I wanted to go back to before we had ‘science fiction’. In the nineteenth century people like HG Wells wrote about going to the moon and it wasn’t categorised as science fiction, it was part of fiction. The trouble is, if you create a genre and call it science fiction, western or whatever, it sets up genre expectations. A western has to be set in Arizona with a sheriff, gunfights and so on. Ok, you can subvert it a bit, but the minute you do that, it ceases to be a western. In the same way science fiction has developed rules, and I find all rules very pernicious to writing. The moment I hear a rule I want to break it. So what I’ve been doing over the last twenty years or so, is taking standard science fiction themes and subverting them.

The Glamour (1984) is about invisibility, but it’s a subversive type of invisibility. It’s about that man who’s been sat with us throughout this conversation reading a newspaper, smoking a cigarette, he’s completely real but we don’t notice him. We don’t see him because, to us, he’s boring; so we just look past him. It’s like being at the bar, trying to get a drink, and the barman just looks past you: it’s that kind of invisibilty. Another book of mine, The Affirmation (1981), takes on the theme of immortality. They’re not science fiction novels, they do take ideas current in science fiction and turn them upside down.

The Prestige certainly deserves a wide audience, but will it make him any money?

PRIEST: Everyone I know who’s piled up money has sold out and I think, ‘Christ, I wish I’d done that.’ It’s too late for me. I’m absolutely serious about this. If I could sell out I bloody would. A few years ago I tried to write some bestsellers. I bought a few and read them, found the formula and wrote synopses for three. As soon as publishers found out it was me they weren’t interested. They said, ‘You’re far too good a writer to write this crap.’ I know that sounds like inverted shame or something, but it’s true.

Back in 1983 Chris was nominated as one of the Best Young British Novelists. He now seems ‘doomed’ to write intelligent, unpretentious novels which explore a literary vein reminiscent of Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem, but with the thrills and imaginative scope of the best genre work.