SouthWest Writers’ member Robert Churchill and writer/director Steven Lisberger (well-known for Tron, 1982) relied on a forty-year friendship and a shared love of story in their collaborative effort to create a novel based on one of Steven’s screenplays. Their debut release, Topeka (October 5, 2023), has been called “a sexy, fast-paced and exciting adventure drawing upon sci-fi, anime, and steam punk genre sensibilities in a hard-boiled noir mystery presentation.” You’ll find Steven at StevenLisberger.com and IMDb. Contact Bob through his dedicated Topeka email address bc@topekanovel.com, and look for Topeka at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major booksellers.
What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in Topeka?
RC: Ultimately, Topeka is a story about values — how some have been cast aside to society’s detriment, and how some have eternal redemptive value. As every story recounts a journey, Topeka is about how our choices on our individual journeys bestow or deny redemption.
SL: The novel is in part inspired by Japanese anime. It’s a story about how in a world of advanced AI we need our bodies more than ever.
What part did each of you play in putting the book together?
RC: Steven wrote a slightly different version of Topeka — a screenplay — a few years ago. I was blown away by the originality and power of the story, and by the maturity and timeliness of its themes, and just never forgot about it. For one reason and another, it wasn’t made into a movie, and when Steven was casting about for his next project (the man simply can’t NOT be writing something), I lobbied him hard to re-write it as a novel — that it was a story that needed to be told. He was reluctant, having never before written a novel, but the end result of somewhat comical negotiations between us, was that we agreed to proceed as co-authors, with him very much in the lead. After having a front-row seat to his prodigious and powerful creative output for most of my adult life, it was like being asked by John Lennon to re-write a song he’d never finished. An opportunity only the insane would pass up.
SL: Bob has a great deal of patience and is an excellent finisher, he enjoys completion. I prefer getting a project roughed out. It’s conception and rough excitation that gives me the greatest thrill. By the time I complete the mountain of ideas required, and figure out what the hell they mean, I find I have used up a considerable amount of my patience. I guess my imagination has already filled it in, finished it, and my body resents that my mind got so far ahead. My practical mind sulks over the cleanup and organization work still required. I must confess I do enjoy going over Bob’s finished material and looking for edits, additions or things I feel would benefit from more polishing. That part of finish work is fun for me; I enjoy how the smallest change can feel so important. I love drilling down on theme and structure at the end when one knows exactly what the characters are thinking.
Did what-if questions help shape this work?
RC: Steven’s answer to this question couldn’t be more complete or accurate, so I’ll leave it to stand on its own, but one of the great things about our friendship is that I’ve been one of his go-to sounding boards for decades (we’re each the brother the other never had), and even though his ideas are amazing, he’s always been willing to hear my take on them — as I often see what he sees just a little differently. He’s always been generous in his consideration of my perspective, and having these discussions with him for so many years has enriched my life tremendously. Moving into the realm of me actually making creative contributions to Topeka’s world and story upped that experience dramatically; it was very gratifying.
SL: I would say that what-if questions were the basis: What if the mind of my super professional, experienced, and wise attorney-wife was in the body of a young babe? My wife, Peggy, freely admits that 50 years ago when she was my hot babe, she didn’t know a tenth of what she does now. Of course I didn’t either, so that worked out. What if there was an accomplished enlightened and heroic doctor/surgeon who learned about the body, the secrets of life and death, by being a trained killer? What if an AI could merge with and assume the identity of a dead human? What if our leads could hack human minds? What if you fell in love with the ultimate woman in spite of knowing she was too good to be true? What if technology allows us to never grow up?
Tell us about your main protagonists and why readers will connect with them.
RC: Topeka is a near-future sci-fi action/adventure story, but largely follows the genre conventions of hard-boiled noir detective novels and films, so the cast of characters, although moving fluidly in a setting of cutting-edge high tech, AI, climate change, and the pressures these exert on society, remain somewhat familiar. Nora Osborne is the heiress to a high-tech fortune and CEO of the mega-corporation her eccentric genius father founded. Bode, a former military cyber-surgeon, is her employee but finds himself, in the course of being her protector, conflicted between oppositional oaths — to do no harm and to be ready to take a life to save one. These two navigate a lethal landscape among good guys who aren’t as good as they seem, bad guys who are worse than they seem, and assorted henchmen and double-crossers with their own sinister agendas, all while falling in love. In toto, they all keep the noir pot boiling non-stop. It’s a lot of fun laid over some very thoughtful thematic material.
SL: The protagonists are their own characters. Nora has an extreme experimental fantasy adventure. She is a mature successful woman who through a twist of fate and cutting-edge cyber tech, manages to have a young body again. With that young body she joins forces with her young doctor who falls in love with her. Together they accomplish the impossible, including having a love affair and breaking every law in the books, but when it’s all over she gets to return to her original body and rejoin her family and her adventure remains her dark secret. Kind of the perfect midlife crisis. Bode gets to be the ultimate healer for those who need his unique skills, but to save his patient he must also rely on what he knows about how to best destroy some extremely dangerous minds and bodies. Sometimes the cure is a whole lot worse than the disease. Bode is a Shiva, creator and destroyer.
How difficult was switching gears from your past type of writing projects to that of writing a novel?
RC: I’ve always written, but have never called myself a writer. I have a fairly substantial following online, though not under my own name, and have published a few pieces for a local newspaper, like an interview with David Crosby. So that Steven and I could better speak the language of screenwriting between us, I wrote a full-length screenplay — and that may yet find itself re-written as a novel.
SL: I primarily wrote screenplays, lots of screenplays; this is my first novel. Looking back at my scripts they feel like poetry compared to a novel. Screenplays, it is often said, rely on three things, structure, structure, and structure. It was a lot of fun in writing a novel to embellish in ways one could never do in a script. For starters, what the inner life of a character was, backstory, and filling in the world. And my favorite, writing tons more dialogue.
According to Topeka’s acknowledgment page, you two are lifelong friends. When did you meet, and how have you managed to remain friends for so long?
RC: Steven and I were introduced to one another by a third party who told him he should meet me — that we’d get along. That person was right, and we’ve been pretty much best friends since the day we met, through all of life’s ups and downs. I think it’s helped a lot that I’m not in any aspect of the film business, because that world is very much its own thing and almost impossible to stay grounded in, let alone maintain friendships. All my working years I was a building contractor, and when we’d get together at his place, we always went to the hardware store instead of anywhere “glamorous” even though our second-tier hangouts tend to be art galleries and museums.
SL: We met through Animalympics, a project I did for NBC’s coverage of the 1980 Olympics. Bob and I are children of the sixties, and share a belief that some aspects of the 60s philosophy have never lost their power and are sorely needed now more than ever. We both still believe in the power of the mysterious and believe that not all confusion is to be avoided. Sometimes the only way to get to where you need to go is through seemingly impenetrable confusion. We have always relied on each other for help in taking on the unknown. Bob is my sounding board and the fact that he is an excellent wordsmith was just a bonus. Over the years we have talked enough to fill shelves of books.
What was your favorite part of putting this project together?
RC: The best part of this project for me has been to make real and valued creative contributions to the work of someone I know to be a genius — and I don’t use that word lightly. In Tron Steven pretty much invented the look the whole world has adopted as “the look of the future.” Not silver-lame body suits with bubble helmets and not the beat up and dented Star Wars look. That neon-highlighted look may never die, and Tron sequels will keep being made long after we’ve all passed. Now it’s also the world’s most popular amusement ride. And there’s SO much more to Steven’s stream of creative output and insight than just Tron. In Japan he’d be revered as a living treasure. And hey, he’s my best friend! As a co-author he was tough — believe it — but I always knew and accepted that we were writing his story, not mine, and that all he wanted was to help me be a better writer. And he damn sure made me one.
SL: The plot is complex as are the characters. And there are a lot of characters. Because of the complexity there were worries about how all this would resolve. To feel all the gears mesh perfectly for the first time at the climax was the big payoff, and made all the work worth it. I have to say the years of preliminary work made all the difference.
Why did you choose Topeka for the title of the book?
SL: After Tron world, I liked the idea of focusing a cutting-edge sci-fi story in America’s heartland. And I always enjoyed that the name Topeka sounded a bit like a combo of Japanese anime titles.
How do your other passions (such as woodworking) intersect with your writing?
RC: Being a builder, I learned long ago that every ounce of every structure has to be transferred one way or another to the earth for the structure to be sound — and the same applies to a work of fiction. It’s all about premise as foundation, and themes as framing. The satisfaction in standing back and seeing how doing it right makes a thing of beauty is the same for either.
SL: Again, I enjoy hunting for the perfect piece of wood, chain sawing it out of the log, mulling and turning it to its shape, but would be happy to have another woodworker sand, finish, and polish the piece. And to my amazement I have heard some woodworkers enjoy that second phase the most because they get to see the beauty of the wood emerge. I have learned to be content with seeing that beauty in my mind’s eye. I should mention I never did find a partner in wood turning.
What do your mature selves bring to the writing table that your younger selves never could have?
RC: Steven’s and my situation is not at all common, but we were fortunate to have decades of solid friendship to get us through the creative process — but that seems to translate to “check your ego at the door” and just do the work. Doing the work with a pro’s pro wasn’t easy, but I never forgot that any number of aspiring writers would have killed to be in my place — tutored by the guy who wrote Tron. It was easily a not-easy graduate course in writing and drama.
SL: I have been writing for over fifty years. I am finally getting to the point where I feel I know what I enjoy the most, and am confident that I have the skills to execute. In the past when I picked the right story and characters and pulled it off there was a certain amount of happenstance and luck involved. I also now enjoy the confidence of knowing I have the tools and weapons to get myself out of any traps I may set for myself. It’s a cliché to say it but now holes are really more opportunities.
What do many beginning writers misunderstand about telling a story?
RC: Thinking a story will write itself from an interesting premise and engaging characters is a fool’s errand. Only a genius doesn’t need to know how a story ends when he or she sits down to write it. Beginning, middle, end — or don’t bother.
SL: I find young writers today are very good at knowing a genre’s conventions. But perhaps are too cautious about breaking those conventions and going off formula. One way to gain that confidence is to think thematically. Early on a hint of theme can be a North Star — and by the end it can make sense of the impossible.
Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
RC: Owing to the genre template we were working in (noir fiction), Steven had me read a ton of Hammet and Chandler to get a feel for the word flow and (hopefully) develop in me some discipline in saying more with fewer words — I stray too easily into the florid and verbose. He did me (and himself) a great favor.
SL: Shakespeare because he had no prejudices. He never picks sides but finds a way to ridicule and elevate all comers. He treats kings like fools and fools like kings. The beautiful as hideous and the wretched as beautiful.
What are the hardest kinds of scenes for you to write?
RC: With Topeka, I got to be the set decorator — so not really hard. Shakespeare’s settings are brutally austere — “a castle” or “an apartment” — and that’s it. I’m a very visual guy. I see the blank page as a movie screen. I describe what I’d like to see on the screen, so I moved Steven’s characters across my sets. Steven gave me a lot of leeway, and I sprung things on him that weren’t in the original version. The first time or two there were some tense moments between us. “You could have asked,” he’d say, but as we went on, it started to flow, and frankly, by me feeling free to throw stuff against the wall, I think he was inspired to go even further in his imagination than he had (which was already breathtaking) and we wound up really stoked by the process. We love what we got.
SL: Everyday stuff.
What writing projects are you working on now? Do you have plans for future collaborations?
RC: Well, Steven is still my best friend, and the man simply has no idea how to slow down his imagination. So, who knows?
SL: Still basking in the afterglow of completing Topeka. My story file is a few hundred pages of concepts and characters, I have a love hate relationship with it.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
RC: In my view, there are few popular entertainments that are both just plain fun and edifying. Topeka delivers both in spades.
KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.
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