‘I love thinking about the future, about threats and trends we can prevent’

BoelBermann_MG_TheNewChildren_Dystopia
Boel Bermann (1979) is a born storyteller. She used to work as a reporter for several large newspapers and is a member of the Swedish collective, Fear. Besides writing world-famous video games, she has also written her debut novel, The New Children: a fast-paced, gripping and heartbreaking dystopian tale, published by Swedish publisher Kalla Kulor Förlag in 2013. The New Children received rave reviews and appeals to readers of all ages. We are delighted to introduce this all-round debutant. We talked with her about what dystopian novels can teach us and how to make the unbelievable believable.

BNA: You are working in the games industry. What do you exactly do?
I work for the Paradox Development Studio games company and I have the amazing job of being a game writer for a role-playing game based on Norse mythology. I create characters, quests and events and try to challenge the player with the adventures they face and provide them with enough choices to create their own story.
The strangest part is that being a game writer and being an author is completely separate in my mind. I go to work and delve deep into Norse mythology and write fantasy in English about gods, trolls and rune stones. Then I come home and keep writing – but then I write science fiction in Swedish and explore the future. I think I separate the two by writing in different languages and different genres, so one is my work and the other is my creative hobby.

BNA: How does that experience help you with your writing?
It makes me think out of the box. When writing a novel, you choose what your characters do. But in a game, the person playing your game is deciding and you need to be prepared for the gamer to choose anything. I think it helps me to think of all the possible ways in which my stories could go and not just stay attached to one path.

BNA: We are told you love horror and sci-fi. Where does that fascination come from?
From reading the news, actually. Every time I read the news, I feel the urge to change the world and the future. Sometimes it´s really hard to relate to news that is very close to your reality, so I actually think it´s easier to relate to the things we face every day if we place them in a fictional setting in the future. I love thinking about the future, about things that may come and threats and trends we can prevent.

BNA: The New Children is your debut. Could you briefly explain what the novel is about?
In the novel, no children are being born and the world is in shock. After a few years, women begin to get pregnant again, but the new children are not like children used to be. They don’t play games or show emotions, they only watch silently. Against her will, the main character, Rakel, becomes involved when she accidentally kills one of the new children. She is among the first to realize that the new generation is a threat to humanity’s very existence.

BNA: Why did you choose to write this story?
I wanted to make people think about how they would react to the fact that humanity is dying. About what we humans are prepared to do for our own survival. I don´t believe humanity is evil, but I´m convinced that, to preserve what we have, we would go far beyond what we believe ourselves capable of. To protect the persons we love and to avoid seeing things that hurt.

BNA: The book is also about a new generation that develops faster than ‘normal’ people. How did you come up with such a brilliant but terrifying idea?
I wanted humanity to be certain that they are the last generation of their kind. But with the new children growing up, they would still be distant, they would always be younger than us. So I decided that if they developed faster, they would be a more real threat because they might even take over before humanity has died out.

BNA: The main text is interspersed with news articles and interviews. Why did you use this structure?
My main character Rakel is quite introvert and views the world with a distant gaze. So I wanted the novel to give something more than her point of view, due to the fact that she is so focused on her own life. I wanted a larger perspective, but I only wanted one main story – the one Rakel lives through. Therefore, in parallel to the story, I decided to use fictional in-depth interviews from research articles to get short freeze frames of different people’s views of the world.
The newspaper articles were a result of my own frustration with how much I fail to grasp of what is going on in the world. Even though I follow the news every day, I still feel that I only get bits and pieces that rarely come together to create a bigger picture. What I hope is that the articles add to the sense of realism of the story and make it more believable as well as giving a brief overview of how someone would perceive everything that is happening.

BNA: The story is a real page turner. How did you manage to keep up the pace?
I never wanted the reader to feel safe or relaxed. I usually cut the scenes down and left them unfinished, because I wanted the reader to create them in their own minds. Strangely enough, I didn’t think of the novel as a page-turner when I wrote it, probably because I actually knew most of what would happen. But I realized that it’s nearly impossible to put down once you start reading, which of course is marvelous.

BNA: The main character Rakel is an anti-hero who lives a dissolute life: she sleeps with different men, is often hung over and, on top of that, she kills a child. Why did you choose her as the main character?
I wanted the main character to feel like a real person, and I don´t really believe that there are people that are all good. Even good people can do bad things and have destructive personality features. But I have to admit that I also love to write in the first person when the main character is hard to identify with, because then I´m actually forcing you as a reader to see the world from her point of view.
Of course Rakel is a very broken person. I wanted her to evolve so, in the first part of the novel, she is quite passive. She doesn’t care about the end of mankind, she mostly cares about her everyday life. Then, without giving any of the story away, she changes in the latter part – finding something that actually makes her act rather than react. But she did drive me insane sometimes: I’d sit there and curse at the computer. Oh come on, do something and stop looking at the world as if it were pitch black all the time. Rakel and I are very different people, and I doubt we’d be friends if she were real.

BNA: Was it difficult to write about the future?
The future portrayed in The New Children is extremely close in time and occurs in a society that largely resembles our own. I wanted to explore how the human race would react when ordinary people realize that they are probably the last generation of their kind. What is the private, political and social? One reviewer wrote something that meant the world to me: “I think that the dystopian lies as much in the present as in the future as depicted, for the unacceptable is already happening, and the monsters already exist.’’

BNA: We know that dystopian novels are one of your favorite genres. Why is that?
I’ve always loved dystopias because they are in between everyday life and the end of the world as we know it. You still have a society where people try to live their everyday life, but the structure of society is withering away. The strength of dystopias is that they make the reader ask: What would I do? Would I strive to change anything or just look the other way? Since I stay so close to today’s reality, I didn´t have to invent a completely new world, I only had to twist and bend the world we live in and then see what would happen…

BNA: How did the writing process go? Did you face any difficulties?
With a full time job and a social life, the writing did take time. I mostly wrote during vacations, evenings and in meetings of my writing collective, Fear. I didn’t have many problems writing the novel; it came very naturally. My real challenge was in the later part when I had to edit it. I’m critical, so I just kept cutting out pieces I felt were dead meat. That probably helped the novel’s pacing as well – since I removed a lot of the breathing space for the reader.

BNA: Which books or writers inspired you?
It seems that dystopias usually surface when the world is going through a crisis and right now we are in the middle of a wave of dystopias in literature. I personally adore Margaret Atwood’s novels, especially her Maddaddam trilogy, and I feel that her strength lies in how she explores current social trends and pushes them right to the edge of what we can believe.

BNA: The New Children is beautiful but also heartbreaking. Didn’t you find it hard to write such an incredibly sad story?
I needed to believe in my main character Rakel, to believe she was real. Because if I didn’t believe in her, then nobody else would. I felt that if I could make the reader believe in Rakel, they would believe anything I told them in The New Children – even that the children being born were different. I wanted to make the unbelievable believable.

Interview first published at Brandt New Agency.

Represented by Brandt New Agency

Brandt New Agency 2014

Watch the New Children Book Trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujzDBv5Eaf8

The New Children review – Verdict: Highly recommended

Books read in February 2014: Boel Bermann: Den nya människan. (The New Children.)

”Another nice surprise – a well-written, thrilling and thought-provoking sf novel, of course with no mention of being sf other than a note that the author is a member of a blog collective that is focused on fantasy, sci-fi and horror. In the very near future (2014!) no more babies are born. After some years births start again, but the new babies are strange, they develop rapidly and it is increasingly obvious that they are a threat to humanity. The threat from small babies reminds me of “The Little Assassin” by Bradbury, and the rise of a new race of humans was used by Van Vogt in Slan. This story was more frightening, partly due to the fact that it was set in the here and now. The language was elegant and the use of interspersed scientific or newspaper articles was effective. Highly recommended.”

Read more reviews at BEM’s Blog:
http://bugeyedmonsters.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/books-read-in-february-2014/

BEM is a science fiction fanzine, i e an amateur publication on sf and fandom.

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The New Children – novel description at Brandt New Agency

The New Children dystopian novel spring 2014 Brandt New Agency

 

Original Swedish title: Den nya människan
Published by: Kalla Kulor Förlag, Fall 2013
Genre: Dystopian Fiction

Synopsis

What happens when all the new children being born aren’t normal?

I’ve killed a child.

That’s what they tell me in the police station interrogation room. Inside my head, I’m screaming.

– It wasn’t a child I killed. It was something completely different. Can’t you see that?’

No children are being born and the world is in shock. After a few years, women begin to get pregnant again, but the new children are not like children used to be. They don’t play games or show emotions, they only watch silently. Against her will, Rakel becomes involved when she kills one of the new children. She is among the first to realize that the new generation is a threat to humanity’s very existence.

More children are born and they develop faster than normal humans. After a brutal incident at work, Rakel escapes: From anxiety and betrayed love, seeking solace in drink and the company of strangers. Until she discovers something …

Press

The New Children by Boel Bermann is a discomforting vision of our future. Rakel, a computer games developer, realizes that the new children born after a period of worldwide infertility are different. But what do they really want? Are they a threat to humanity? Thrilling and ominous vision of the future with both hope and chaos within reach.’
Metro, Sweden

‘The child stops being loyal to the society that is not loyal towards the child and stares right through them. The apartment with the abandoned child could be taken from Boel Bermann’s sharp debut novel published this Fall. Bermann writes in the dystopian sci-fi tradition where humanity eats their own children. Such heart-stopping stories of the end of childhood and the collapse of civilization reflect the novels by Brian Aldiss (Greybeard, 1964) and P D James (Children of Men, 1992). They depict the merciless dictatorships that arise when there is no ideological hope for the future. The last generation of children in P D James’ novel live in a society of strong, healthy independent adults.’
Dagens Nyheter, Sweden

‘Great to see the Swedish dystopia take a step forward. Interesting, with parallels to be drawn with our own society.’
Dagensbok.com, Sweden

‘This is a dystopia that sends shivers down your spine from the first page. The story is told through newspaper articles, research interviews and the main narrative told by Rakel. That the future portrayed is so close in time and that the society largely resembles our current society makes it all the more frightening. The story is well written and the characters believable. The reader soon begins to wonder if this nightmare could come true: how should we relate to it? A very captivating debut.’
Bibliotek i Fokus, Sweden

Read more reviews here:
http://boelbermann.se/the-new-children-reviews/

Den döda zonen: Boktrailers – vad tycker ni?

”En bra boktrailer kan vara ett verktyg att sprida budskapet om en ny bok till intresserade, om det görs på rätt sätt. En dålig boktrailer, däremot, skadar förmodligen inte lika mycket som en bra bidrar, därför är det ganska riskfritt. Det enda som är tråkigt är de gånger man gör en trailer som är fullständigt intetsägande; jag har sett många sådana också. Tråkigt främst för förlagen själva, som lagt tid och pengar på skapandet.

Förresten, ni kanske undrar. Det är klart att jag har en favorittrailer. En trailer som fastnade på grund av att den använder ett kreativt och suggestivt grepp som sätter en stämning. Jag pratar om trailern för Den nya människan av Boel Bermann.”

Läs hela inlägget här:
http://dodazonen.com/2014/03/13/boktrailers-vad-tycker-ni/

Author presentation at Brandt New Agency

Boel Bermann author page at Brandt New Agency for The New Children

”Praised, dystopian debutant author who combines her interest for fantasy, science-fiction and horror, developing world famous video games.

Boel Bermann’s debut novel The New Children, set in the near future, was published in Sweden in Fall 2013. The author has a background as a reporter at several large newspapers in Sweden and she’s also a member of the Swedish writers collective Fear, which blogs and produces a podcast of science-fiction, fantasy and horror short stories. Besides writing Boel also works at the games company Paradox Development Studio.

She previously studied journalism, criminology, social science, film science and social anthropology at Stockholm University.”

Den nya människan recension/Funderskan – Betyg: 5/5

”Boken är uppdelad i två delar, ett före och ett efter. En typisk uppdelning, kanske lite förutsägbar, men tydlig och avgörande i bokens värld. Den psykiska process Rakel går genom är oehört fascinerande, verklighetstroget och igenkännande. Många gånger ser jag det som att det är JAG som är Rakel, delvis för att hennes uppfattningar och levnadssätt påminner mig mycket om mig själv (vilket troligen många fler upplever, Bermann vet nämligen var stötarna för att känna igen sig skall sättas in) och det är sällan som man läser Rakels namn.”
” …. nu är jag förlorad. Boken är välskriven, rolig, skrämmande, spännande, intressant och underbar! ”

Läs hela recensionen här:
http://funderskan.blogg.se/2014/april/recension-den-nya-manniskan-2.html

TheNewChildren__Boel_Bermann_dystopian_novel_E-card4-StockholmKöp boken här:
http://boelbermann.se/den-nya-manniskan/kop-boken/

 

The New Children represented by Brandt New Agency

I´m happy to reveal that my debut novel ”The New Children” is represented by Brandt New Agency.

Read more in Brandt New Agency´s Spring 2014 Catalogue here:
http://www.brandtnewagency.com/Spring2014/Spring_2014_BrandtNewAgency.pdf

About the novel ”The New Children”
What happens when all the new children being born aren’t normal?

‘I’ve killed a child.
That’s what they tell me in the police station interrogation room. Inside my head, I’m screaming.
It wasn’t a child I killed. It was something completely different. Can’t you see that?’

No children are being born and the world is in shock. After a few years, women begin to get pregnant again, but the new children are not like children used to be. They don’t play games or show emotions, they only watch silently. Against her will, Rakel becomes involved when she kills one of the new children. She is among the first to realize that the new generation is a threat to humanity’s very existence.
More children are born and they develop faster than normal humans. After a brutal incident at work, Rakel escapes: From anxiety and betrayed love, seeking solace in drink and the company of strangers. Until she discovers something …

Reviews for “The New Children”:  (Translated from Swedish)
http://boelbermann.se/the-new-children-reviews/

The New Children by Boel Bermann (Brandt New Agency) New new

 

About Boel Bermann
Praised, dystopian debutant author who combines her interest for fantasy, science-fiction and horror, developing world famous video games.

Kalla Kulor Förlag, Sweden, 2013, 205 pages
Original Swedish title: Den nya människan
Genre: Dystopian Fiction

Book trailer for “The New Children” (Swedish trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmAOgCP9IRI

About the author: Boel Bermann
http://boelbermann.se/about-boel-bermann/

Press material & contact information:
http://boelbermann.se/press/