E. Catherine Tobler Explains the Mythology of The Kraken Sea and the Terrifying Comfort of Freak Shows
In E. Catherine Tobler’s The Kraken Sea, an orphan named Jackson learns to embrace his inner monster when he’s adopted into a strange new family. In 1890s San Francisco, Jackson finds a world brimming with magic and mythology, plus a strange romance and a supernatural turf war. This tightly paced novel carries hints of American Gods, or even Lee/Kirby era Uncanny X-Men (we all feel like strange mutant creatures when we’re that age, right?). Recently, we chatted with the author, who gave us a look behind the canvas of the carnival tent.
The Kraken Sea
Paperback $12.95
The Kraken Sea
In Stock Online
Paperback $12.95
The Kraken Sea is set in the late 19th century, as are your Folley & Mallory books. What makes that time period feel so open to fantastic stories for you?
Discovery and exploration. The world was smaller then and we didn’t know everything. Certainly we don’t know everything now, but in this time in history, Bonaparte had his campaign in Egypt, but King Tut’s tomb had not been discovered. Messier had published his book of objects, but Pluto and its moons were unknown. Einstein had not yet proposed his theories of relativity. Nellie Bly was flying around the world. The Eiffel Tower stood, but the Golden Gate Bridge did not. Typewriters and telephones were new and exciting! In many ways, this growing world feels more accessible for exploration than the modern does. It also contrasts nicely–no century is without its woes, and perhaps there is a relationship between their growing pains and our present pains. How did they survive all the changes—and how will we?
Jackson is constantly fighting his own sense of isolation and alienation. What do you think makes fantasy and science-fiction so well-suited to dealing with those kinds of issues?
I recently returned from the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop and the first thing we learned was: space is big—really big. (Thank you, Douglas Adams.) I think that size, and how very tiny we are in the overall scheme of things, naturally lends itself to isolation and alienation. We wonder if we’re alone in the universe (terrifying). We wonder if we’re not alone in the universe (terrifying!). It’s hard enough fitting in where we’re born; what happens when the world gets bigger, how do we fit into new places with new people? What if we don’t? We deal with these challenges every day, but fantasy and science-fiction allow us to look at these in new ways. How do we fit on other worlds? How is that really big space exactly like our own home? How are other races like or unlike us—in both comforting and terrifying ways!
One of the ideas you explore in The Kraken Sea is the duality of freak shows—that they can be exploitative prisons, but also places where outcasts can feel a sense of belonging and safety.
Throughout history, there is the awful notion of human “zoos.” Even at the world fairs/exhibitions where people could see amazing new inventions of the time, people from other cultures were displayed as curiosities. But these are still people, so what happens when they aren’t on exhibit? They don’t stop existing. What happens after the stage lights go down? They have wants and needs, likes and dislikes. Maybe some are not bound to these shows, but choose to be there, even though they are on display, because the benefits–being with people they consider their own kind–outweigh the rest. From my research, this often happens in smaller groups of people: shelters, prisons, schools. A hierarchy is formed, so these groups become examples of the larger world as a whole. And while there can be danger in that, there can also be a sense of family. The smaller world is easier for some to navigate.
Your writing has an intensity to it—The Kraken Sea isn’t a long novel, but it packs a lot of action and emotional fire into its pages. Is that a conscious aspect of your writing style, or something particular to this novel?
I’ve been writing short stories about Jackson and his circus since 2004, so I know it well. While I’ve never written a story from Jackson’s POV, each has been peppered with hints about his past. He has always been a strange and controlling influence. I always knew where he came from, even if I hadn’t fully explored it, so when I took the opportunity to finally delve into that story, the story was ready to go. The emotional fire, as you say, had built up over the course of the twelve stories I wrote before The Kraken Sea and easily filled up those pages. Finally writing the story I knew was a delight.
Can you help me unpack some of the mystery of Cressida a bit? That name is usually associated with betrayal, but there are clear suggestions that this Cressida is something more. What might she have transformed into had events not played out as they did?
I am certain that Cressida has her own story to tell–who was she before Jackson came into her life? She had an entire life before their paths crossed. The Kraken Sea reveals some of her past, but definitely not all. I think this Cressida does reach beyond simple “betrayal,” though of course that is layered in.
Cressida knows what Jackson is beneath his human skin long before he comes to live with her. She encourages him to embrace his nature, to be who he is. When he is that very thing, Cressida discovers she cannot control him, and betrays the love and support she offered him. When Jackson makes choices Cressida does not foresee (and maybe cannot understand), their relationship changes.
It’s hard to talk about Cressida without revealing too much about The Kraken Sea itself, but I love her as a character because she is multi-faceted; she’s not simply the big bad, she’s not simply a betrayer. Cressida is doing something awful, and placing the world at large in great peril, but from her point of view, that world improves if her methods succeed. What would she have become in that new world? That’s probably a story all on its own!
The Kraken Sea is available now.
The Kraken Sea is set in the late 19th century, as are your Folley & Mallory books. What makes that time period feel so open to fantastic stories for you?
Discovery and exploration. The world was smaller then and we didn’t know everything. Certainly we don’t know everything now, but in this time in history, Bonaparte had his campaign in Egypt, but King Tut’s tomb had not been discovered. Messier had published his book of objects, but Pluto and its moons were unknown. Einstein had not yet proposed his theories of relativity. Nellie Bly was flying around the world. The Eiffel Tower stood, but the Golden Gate Bridge did not. Typewriters and telephones were new and exciting! In many ways, this growing world feels more accessible for exploration than the modern does. It also contrasts nicely–no century is without its woes, and perhaps there is a relationship between their growing pains and our present pains. How did they survive all the changes—and how will we?
Jackson is constantly fighting his own sense of isolation and alienation. What do you think makes fantasy and science-fiction so well-suited to dealing with those kinds of issues?
I recently returned from the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop and the first thing we learned was: space is big—really big. (Thank you, Douglas Adams.) I think that size, and how very tiny we are in the overall scheme of things, naturally lends itself to isolation and alienation. We wonder if we’re alone in the universe (terrifying). We wonder if we’re not alone in the universe (terrifying!). It’s hard enough fitting in where we’re born; what happens when the world gets bigger, how do we fit into new places with new people? What if we don’t? We deal with these challenges every day, but fantasy and science-fiction allow us to look at these in new ways. How do we fit on other worlds? How is that really big space exactly like our own home? How are other races like or unlike us—in both comforting and terrifying ways!
One of the ideas you explore in The Kraken Sea is the duality of freak shows—that they can be exploitative prisons, but also places where outcasts can feel a sense of belonging and safety.
Throughout history, there is the awful notion of human “zoos.” Even at the world fairs/exhibitions where people could see amazing new inventions of the time, people from other cultures were displayed as curiosities. But these are still people, so what happens when they aren’t on exhibit? They don’t stop existing. What happens after the stage lights go down? They have wants and needs, likes and dislikes. Maybe some are not bound to these shows, but choose to be there, even though they are on display, because the benefits–being with people they consider their own kind–outweigh the rest. From my research, this often happens in smaller groups of people: shelters, prisons, schools. A hierarchy is formed, so these groups become examples of the larger world as a whole. And while there can be danger in that, there can also be a sense of family. The smaller world is easier for some to navigate.
Your writing has an intensity to it—The Kraken Sea isn’t a long novel, but it packs a lot of action and emotional fire into its pages. Is that a conscious aspect of your writing style, or something particular to this novel?
I’ve been writing short stories about Jackson and his circus since 2004, so I know it well. While I’ve never written a story from Jackson’s POV, each has been peppered with hints about his past. He has always been a strange and controlling influence. I always knew where he came from, even if I hadn’t fully explored it, so when I took the opportunity to finally delve into that story, the story was ready to go. The emotional fire, as you say, had built up over the course of the twelve stories I wrote before The Kraken Sea and easily filled up those pages. Finally writing the story I knew was a delight.
Can you help me unpack some of the mystery of Cressida a bit? That name is usually associated with betrayal, but there are clear suggestions that this Cressida is something more. What might she have transformed into had events not played out as they did?
I am certain that Cressida has her own story to tell–who was she before Jackson came into her life? She had an entire life before their paths crossed. The Kraken Sea reveals some of her past, but definitely not all. I think this Cressida does reach beyond simple “betrayal,” though of course that is layered in.
Cressida knows what Jackson is beneath his human skin long before he comes to live with her. She encourages him to embrace his nature, to be who he is. When he is that very thing, Cressida discovers she cannot control him, and betrays the love and support she offered him. When Jackson makes choices Cressida does not foresee (and maybe cannot understand), their relationship changes.
It’s hard to talk about Cressida without revealing too much about The Kraken Sea itself, but I love her as a character because she is multi-faceted; she’s not simply the big bad, she’s not simply a betrayer. Cressida is doing something awful, and placing the world at large in great peril, but from her point of view, that world improves if her methods succeed. What would she have become in that new world? That’s probably a story all on its own!
The Kraken Sea is available now.