Author Interview: Tal Klein
The author of The Punch Escrow on embracing technological progression, the authentic shaping of characters, and having one’s brain explode
It’s a lot like dinner and drinks with a handsome counterpart. What begins as a flirtation: some austere glance, a subdued giggle, an evocative sentence, inevitably results in total envelopment. You’re smitten, lost, gone. But before you completely register as an interloper within this new world, make sure that your means of transportation — those devices which teleported you elsewhere — don’t copy you only to kill your original self. If such is the case, well, I suggest you throw on some 1980s new wave tunes and enjoy the inevitably unstoppable rush that is your future.
Tal M. Klein’s The Punch Escrow took me for a momentous ride — with its laughs, terrors, and theoretical concepts, I was unable to stop the pages from flowing one after another. On the surface, this Sci-Fi thriller speculates on the nature of human connectivity and the lengths which one might go to retain their love for a partner. Usually that would be enough for most writers. But for Klein, the relationship shared between Joel and Sylvia is a catalyst by which the severity of the novel’s themes might best be explored. You see, in 2147, everything we’ve ever thought might be possible has become a reality. Our applications have developed personalities. Our forms of identification are displayed by comms which allow us to register and acknowledge one another via a look and a nanobyte processing within the brain. We have digital personal assistants. Everyone in the world utilizes the same international currency. And of course, teleportation is now real. Or is it?
It’s possible that International Transport — one of the largest, most hegemonic corporations in the world — hasn’t told us everything. Though we may instantly move from New York City to Costa Rica, it’s not actually us: the original person who steps into the device, which arrives at our desired location. We are copied. That copy is then sent to where ever in the world we might wish to go and the original — the us that entered the device — is cleared — or is it murdered? With his sharp wit, entertaining dialogue, and invigorated approach to constructing a futuristic society in which the powers of marketing and technology have created an ethical dilemma the world is completely ignorant of, Tal M. Klein gives the audience a novel which is as much about our desire to be and feel authentic as it is about our needs to think and go beyond what is currently possible.
Tal M. Klein read at Literati Bookstore on July 28th. His debut novel, The Punch Escrow, has been a featured review on Ars Technica and he recently spoke with Paste Magazine. In the week leading up to the reading, I was lucky enough to ask him about all of the big ideas which populate this thrilling read.
For some reason — purposeful or silly — I found myself thinking a lot about Walter Benjamin while reading your book. The manners by which copies take away from the authenticity of the original and deny a transparent viewing of the processes of production kept creeping into the back of my mind. In The Punch Escrow, teleportation is actually duplication: people are copied from an original location and sent to the location which they wish to arrive at and upon arrival the original version of them is cleared. In many ways — similar to Benjamin — we find ourselves believing that the copy is less authentic. The process by which one is teleported is also lacking in transparency — nobody knows that they are being copied and then cleared. Still, people continue to teleport and the copies are undeniably human: they walk, talk, breath, love, experience anger, despair, lust, etc. How should one best unravel these competing arguments?
I’d rather you be silly! I like that you brought up Walter Benjamin. Do you know his early essay, The Task of the Translator? I think it bears significant relevance here. You stated, “We find ourselves believing that the copy is less authentic.” I would hope the book’s conclusion is more open to translation. While the original Joel Byram might be of such a mindset initially, there are moments of the other Joel’s life which he absorbs later — in retrospect — that blur his position on the matter. As for the reader, well, I think it depends on which character the reader most closely identifies with. If we look at things from Sylvia’s position, I don’t know if she is certain the copy of Joel is less authentic than the original. If we further pivot and occupy, say, Corina Shafer’s position, I don’t think she particularly cares which Joel is which, she just wants there to be one of them.
Joel Byram seems like he’d be an enjoyable character to write — an anti-hero, quick witted, esoteric smart-ass forced into the role of the leading man. At the same time, I would assume he might have become a little frustrating to deal with. Sometimes seriousness is needed, especially when one happens to be an international criminal. How did you go about balancing his various traits so as to allow for his development throughout the story?
That’s an easier question. Have you ever seen the French film, Alexandre Le Bienheureux? I imagine Joel as a younger version of that film’s protagonist. Not that Joel finds himself in a similar marital scenario, mind — in the movie Alexandre’s wife was overbearing and mean. But the character, Alexandre, was a happy-go-lucky pragmatist. Alexandre’s relationship with his dog, whom he trained to handle his menial needs is akin to Joel’s relationship with the semi-sentient technology around him. Joel treats life as a Rube Goldberg device. The means to his ends are sometimes convoluted because the obvious solutions aren’t always available to him. He’s an anti-hero, as you say, and thus cannot superman his way out of conflict. Without risking a spoiler, I harken back to your earlier question; there are moments in which Joel accepts death might be a necessary component of a device necessary to his survival. Once he is aware another version of him is out there, death becomes a means to an end, but not a means to his end — if you get my drift. The hardest part was walking the fine line between smartass and jerk, and that’s not something I can take credit for. I can thank my wife, my beta readers, and my editors for calling me out whenever Joel took a turn for the jerk side.
The passages in which the reader gets to witness Joel’s talents as a salter were some of my favorite. I found myself thinking back to the Amazon Echo scare of late last year. The hypothetical gap between that consumer scare and the contents of your book is quite unsettling: from people fearing an application might be listening in on their private conversations, recording data in order to sell them more — possibly unnecessary — products, to a time in which professionals are paid to deliberately dupe, trick, or expose the knowledge gaps of an application in order to ensure total consumer satisfaction, while simultaneously being paid in an international currency. We’ll see what happens within the next one hundred and thirty years. But for now, as both a novelist and a consumer, how do you grapple with the concept of salting?
We humans can figure out how to accomplish complex tasks like walking or beating a video game by both practice and observation. However, thus far we haven’t been able to give computers those same skills. Today we are just starting to move away from “reinforcement learning,” a methodology that rewards “luck.” For example, today when the we ask an AI program to learn how to play a maze game, it moves randomly, knowing nothing about the game board. As it discovers new rewards or shortcuts it begins placing little algorithms in those spots, which continuously learn how best to avoid pratfalls and get more “points.” However, modern research has shown that computers perform much better when humans participate in the process, at least initially. Rather than rely on “luck,” the computer can develop its algorithms on the soundness of human logic. Eventually it can develop algorithms that guess what the humans will do next. At some point it will stop needing human input because it will be able to predict what the humans would do with a high degree of certainty. How do I feel about it? I think it’s an inevitability. History has shown that those who stand in the way of progress always lose. I believe it’s better for us to embrace progress and try to shape it rather than impede it.
I found your usage of footnotes to be both helpful and entertaining. This isn’t always the case whenever a novelist adapts footnotes as a necessary component for storytelling. Were these footnotes always prevalent? Did they always have the same Joel Byram voice to them?
Thank you for saying that! I’m finding The Punch Escrow’s footnotes have become the most controversial and polarizing aspect of the book. They exist as a reminder that the original manifestation of The Punch Escrow was as a text book from the future on the history of teleportation. In a way the novel as you read it now is the inverse of its first draft; a dry text book with snarky footnotes left intact by a man who warns the reader of “the truth.” My publisher and editors warned me that my copious use of footnotes might alienate readers, but I felt strongly about their inclusion — I’d spent three years researching the clockwork of my world and felt then (as I do now) that the “how we got here” is an important part of “what’s happening now.” Adding Joel’s voice to the footnotes was my way of bridging what the book then was with what it is now.
Even though your novel takes place in the year 2147, you’re a big fan of allusions. Romeo and Juliet, the band Culture Club, the film The Princess Bride: there are multiple nods to art which appears in a time and society separate from the one in the book. What might a Sci-Fi writer be able to gain when referencing certain art forms which exist outside of the time period of their story?
Since the story was being told by Joel, I needed to find a way to explain how one guy happened to have such a mastery of science. The only means I could think of counteracting his apparent scientific omniscience was to give Joel a penchant for trivial knowledge. I’m terrible at giving advice to other writers because I suffer from impostor syndrome. References to and metaphors of the past helps bridge the gap from the book’s world to the real world. It’s all about suspension of disbelief. And Chekhov’s gun!
I’m curious about the different Sci-Fi authors you enjoy reading. The reason I mention this is because I found your reinvigoration of the teleportation motif to be utterly fascinating. What made you reappropriate this more traditional component of the genre? Are there any Sci-Fi authors whose writing intrigued you to the point of wanting to play around with the concept of teleportation?
I’d like to say there was this profound voice inside of me that always wanted to tell the world how commercialized human teleportation might actually work and warn people of its existential ramifications. That, however, would be a lie — and I am here to tell the truth. The truth then is, I never really thought much about teleportation other than as a Sci-Fi trope — a disposable Star Trek transportation mechanism — until it came up as a non-sequitur in a conversation. Someone with a PhD in computer science explained how teleportation would really work using actual science, and it blew my mind. I said something like, “So you’re saying every single time Scotty beamed Kirk up, he would have had to kill him?” — “Yes,” came the answer — and my brain exploded. That’s when I started researching teleportation. I felt a craving to solve that problem. But what influenced the most popular aspects of The Punch Escrow; the Hard Sci-Fi, and Joel Byram’s voice, respectively, are owed to Andy Weir’s The Martian, and Scott Meyer’s Off To Be The Wizard (the first book in the Magic 2.0 series). I had a chance to meet both these authors in person for the first time at San Diego Comic Con this year and unlike any other celebrities I’ve met before, these two were genuinely worthy of their hype.
