Representations of the future are like blooms untimely plucked: they wither and age unnaturally before their time. Films like Star Trek or Planet of the Apes, for instance, were of pensionable age the moment they hit the silver screen while the future in sci-fi books is overtaken by the present in a matter of paragraphs.

It is only in exceptional cases that such rot relaxes its hold. To mention an unattainable literary benchmark, more than two decades have passed since Orwell’s countdown hit the 3…2…1, yet 1984 remains forever a year stuck in the future and Winston Smith’s gin-soaked tears flow forever.

I always felt Lisa Falzon’s paintings were similarly untouched by the rot of Greenwich Mean Time. Her dangerously playful paintings do not follow the linear succession of past, present and future, nor do they get stuck in any time zone. Rather, they expand in otherly, uncanny movements that leave viewers yearning for something they cannot put a finger on; something that tastes like future nostalgia.

What Ms Falzon’s paintings also make me hungry for are the unwritten words and the untold narrative behind the canvas. With her first novel, Xi Mkien Ieħor, Ms Falzon finally starts unravelling this narrative, without, however, letting her visual portfolio dictate her words.

“I have been writing just as long as I have been painting,” Ms Falzon tells me. “Neither form or expression is the result of the other. Of course, I suppose there is a link between them, since both have their roots in the same soil of my imagination. Yet they are two plants growing side by side. The blooms might smell the same because they share a soil, but one doesn’t blossom out of the other.”

Ms Falzon is also reluctant to categorise her work under the sci-fi genre. “I would hesitate to say that Xi Mkien Ieħor falls within the sci-fi genre for the simple reason that the universe I describe isn’t one based on the same laws of physics as ours. Usually, science fiction – the kind that comes with spacecraft whooshing at the speed of light and laser pistols – retains a platform of physics we can relate to, despite its futuristic setting. In Xi Mkien Ieħor, space is more like an ocean; it has its ebb and flow. Which is why, despite the setting being a “universal” one, in that it includes planets, moons and stars, the work does not need the technical terms that would be required of a sci-fi novel. Had Xi Mkien Ieħor required such terminology, like “airlock” or “cockpit”, the language would have been unpalatable in the vernacular. I would have had to use words in Maltese that are so out of use as to require a dictionary. It would have been possible to do so, but the end result would have made for a tedious reading experience. Rather, what I have tried to do in Xi Mkien Ieħor is work with words that I use in my everyday dealings with the world; words that I have known all my life and with which I am on more than just speaking terms.”

“What Xi Mkien Ieħor feeds off,” Ms Falzon adds, “is my interest in the notion of doppelgangers, the evil twin. I wasn’t even aware of this interest until others started pointing out how often this theme featured in my art. I was surprised to find it so prevalent – I had never noticed it before. The same happened with Xi Mkien Ieħor – it was only when I wrote the final word and looked back that I became aware of the reflective element in the book; the duplication of good and evil.”

Xi Mkien Ieħor is indeed like a mirror; reflecting and refracting in a cyclical movement: worlds are created and destroyed; memory is lost, found, then lost again. Even the initiation journey of ancient hero-myths on which the novel travels is devious. So are the characters: they are not engaged in the eternal struggle between good and evil. Instead, the hero, Denbu, is not wholly good, while Splengun, the nemesis, has redemptive traits. The natural elements themselves, which support the characters’ acts, can be both playful and monstrously tempestuous.

“In Xi Mkien Ieħor,” Ms Falzon says, “nothing is steadily good or straightforward evil. Sometimes, the hero is the villain. Evil is present, but it is almost a detached entity. Even the protagonist spotlight shifts – who is the story really about? It doesn’t give away who the real puppeteer is, who the man behind the curtain, moving the dials, is.”

This complexity contributes to the backdrop to Xi Mkien Ieħor being at the same time a real and unreal stage that leaves you wondering and wandering. The universe embodies a fantastical energy, constantly expanding beyond the reader’s understanding, intricately branching out into territories unexplored by the factual. Yet it is still familiar, reminiscent almost of childhood: the sky, for instance, is frisk, riħa ta’ nagħnieh (the sky, as fresh as a bunch of mint) or togħma ta’ perlini (tasting of sweets). It is this duality between an aural and olfactory world we know and an unfamiliar technological setting that makes Xi Mkien Ieħor an acknowledged strangeness. Indeed, it is the ‘natural’ metaphors themselves that create and carry the technological universe of Xi Mkien Ieħor.

“Although I have always loved astronomy and physics as a concept,” Ms Falzon explains, “I have always been really stumped when it came to working out the sums. So despite my love for science, there is a part of the artist in me that clashes against the hard nuts and bolts of arithmetic. This “familiar outer space” setting could be a result of this split in me. The universe I describe is a personal thing, an almost private experience for the main characters. It feels like it is there just for the protagonists. It is tactile, warm, there’s no vacuum. The hostilities in the universe described come from known, albeit fierce, sources. It is not a universe that can be seen when looking outside; it’s the one seen when looking in.”

It is this universe that gives Ms Falzon’s creativity the necessary space to roam. The characters she creates breathe with her fantastical imagination: the scavenging space sharks; the universal entrepreneur Dott Tott and his slaves; Denbu collecting stars and mounting them like butterflies.

“Every character in a story is like a musician in an orchestra,” Falzon says. “There are only a few key characters in the novel, yet they have an expanding universe to explore.”

“Still, I don’t think of the universe in Xi Mkien Ieħor as one that I have created. Instead, it is more of a universe that I see through my eyes - in fact, Xi Mkien Ieħor could be a children’s book, and it could be an adults’, yet the ideal reader is always me. It is me in the lighthouse; me with the jar of storms forever poised before I unleash it on the world. Splengun is my reflection, or perhaps I am Splengun. It is personal and warm and mine. It is my story. But I think it could be someone else’s too.”

Xi Mkien Ieħor is published by Merlin Library.

Xi Mkien Ieħor will be launched on November 1, at the Manoel Theatre courtyard. The book is published by Merlin Library.

For more information, visit www.lisafalzon.com.

Source: Weekender, October 11, 2008