My Favorite Things with Matt Ruff

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Matt Ruff, who not only wrote our July Book Club Selection, Lovecraft Country, but he’s also released 88 Names, which came out back in March from Harper!

What does Matt love when he’s not challenging the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft? Spoiler alert: taking advantage of quarantine with learning what our world would be like depending on how many moons we have, a game that requires you to keep people alive, spec fic television from India, and immersive arts. Curious? Read on to learn more!

Favorite Non-Fiction Genre

Since childhood, I’ve been an avid collector of weird trivia and reference books. It’s where I get a lot of my story ideas. My personal library includes such classics as The Book of Lists, The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations, and William Poundstone’s Big Secrets series (which offers, among other goodies, a lab analysis of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s secret herb and spice mix).

Of the books I consider my favorites, two I’d recommend to speculative fiction fans are What if the Moon Didn’t Exist? and its sequel, What if the Earth Had Two Moons? Written by physics and astronomy professor Neil F. Comins, each volume examines ten alternate reality scenarios — Earths that might have been, if one element in the planet’s history were changed. In addition to answering the title questions, Comins explores what it would be like to live on an Earth that was itself a moon orbiting a planet the size of Neptune, and describes what would happen if the Earth were tilted 90 degrees on its axis to produce the most extreme variation in seasons (spoiler alert: you’d want to move to the equator before winter set in).

Favorite Quarantine Distraction

I also collect computer games, and the COVID-19 lockdown has been a good excuse to dig into some of the unplayed titles on my Steam account. The game I’ve been having the most fun with lately is Klei Entertainment’s Oxygen Not Included, a space colony simulator that puts you in charge of a group of cartoon “Duplicants” who’ve been teleported to the center of an asteroid. By setting tasks and priorities for them, you help your Dupes build a base and try to keep them alive. Besides making sure they have breathable air, you need to find them food and water, handle waste disposal (“build outhouses” is #1 on your to-do list at the start of a new game), prevent disease (you’ll want sinks, too, so your Dupes can wash their hands after going to the bathroom), and manage stress. One long-term issue is heat, which builds up in your base over time and can make it difficult or impossible to grow crops.

The gameplay is open-ended. As long as you keep some Dupes alive, you can choose your own goals: Create the perfect colony, hollow out the whole asteroid, or build elaborate machines to test the game’s physics and engineering rules. YouTube has plenty of tutorial videos to get you started and give you ideas for more advanced play.

Favorite Recent Binge-Watches

It was author Mat Johnson (Pym, Loving Day) who turned me on to Sacred Games, a Netflix original miniseries set in India. Saif Ali Khan stars as Sartaj Singh, a police officer in Mumbai who gets a call from a fugitive gangster, Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde claims that the city will be destroyed in 25 days unless Sartaj can find a way to save it. Before he can explain further, Gaitonde kills himself to avoid capture. From there, the narrative jumps back and forth in time between Sartaj’s present-day attempt to save Mumbai and the story of Gaitonde’s rise to power in the underworld. It’s a wild ride, and though technically a thriller, I think it will appeal to speculative fiction fans as well.

One of the supporting cast members of Sacred Games, Radhika Apte, has a starring role in Ghoul, a Netflix horror miniseries that I’d also recommend. Apte plays Nida Rahim, a trainee intelligence officer in a dystopian future India. A true believer in the system, Rahim reports her own father for subversive activity, naively trusting that he’ll be treated fairly. As a reward for her loyalty, she’s sent to work at a government black site where high-value prisoners are tortured and interrogated. On the day of her arrival, the site is awaiting delivery of a captured terrorist, Ali Saeed. But there’s a twist: Saeed is actually a supernatural being, summoned to punish the torturers for their sins.

Favorite New Artistic Medium

My latest novel, 88 Names, is set largely in virtual reality. To help promote the book, a friend and I recorded a limited series podcast in which we interviewed tech people, artists, and writers about the future of VR. One of our most interesting conversations was with Noah J. Nelson, the founder of No Proscenium, a website devoted to “everything immersive” — a category that encompasses virtual reality, interactive theater, escape rooms, haunts, and other experimental art forms. Nelson offered to show me around L.A.’s immersive scene when I came to town on book tour, but that plan — along with the book tour—got put on hold by the pandemic.

Fortunately my internet connection still works. Like the rest of us, the immersive arts community has been doing its best to adapt to our new socially distanced world. If you’ve got an Oculus Rift or Quest headset, the VR experience The Under Presents recently added a feature that lets you buy tickets to live immersive theater productions staged in virtual reality; the current show, Tempest, a 40-minute interactive based on the William Shakespeare play, is scheduled to run through the end of September. And the No Proscenium website has listings and reviews for other new online immersive experiences, so even as the COVID lockdown continues, I’ve got plenty to explore.

Matt Ruff is the author of seven novels, including Fool on the Hill, Bad Monkeys, Lovecraft Country, and 88 Names. An HBO series adaptation of Lovecraft Country, produced by Misha Green, Jordan Peele, and J.J. Abrams, will premiere on August 16. To learn more about Ruff and his novels, you can visit his website, www.bymattruff.com, follow him on Twitter or Facebook, or listen to the 88 Names podcast.

Ruff lives in Seattle with his wife, the researcher and rare book expert Lisa Gold.

Author Photo by Lisa Gold

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