Twenty-five years after Mortal Engines first introduced readers to its unforgettable world, Philip Reeve is back with Bridge of Storms. We caught up with Philip Reeve to talk about returning to this world, how sci-fi has changed, and what it’s like looking back on Mortal Engines all these years later. Fun fact: we also watched the movie with Philip Reeve, and that was such a fun experience! For those who haven’t read the books, Scholastic UK is reprinting the series with new covers so it’s the perfect time to pick the series up!
Bridge of Storm marks a return to the world of Mortal Engines, 25 years after the first book was published. What drew you back to this universe now, and what made this feel like the right moment to revisit it?
I hadn’t really planned to return to Mortal Engines world, but my previous books were very different (the Utterly Dark series, quite gentle fantasies set on a 19th Century English island) and when I was wondering what to follow them with I thought an adventure story set against the Mortal Engines backdrop might be fun. It also gave me a chance to use a few characters and ideas which never found a home in the original books.
Returning to such a rich and established world must come with both freedom and pressure. What did you most enjoy about stepping back into this setting, and what did you find most challenging?
The best thing is that the rules of the world and the background details are all established, so I could just get on and write. The tricky bit was not completely repeating myself, and not doing that prequel thing where all sorts of things happen which change the meaning of the original books – or which characters in the original books should know about and mention. So I kept the stakes relatively low – the fate of characters rather than the whole world – and made sure not to involve any of the characters or places from the first Mortal Engines.
When you first imagined this world, fantasy and science fiction were in a very different place culturally. How do you think readers’ tastes have changed over the past 25 years, and did that influence how you approached Bridge of Storm?
I think science fiction is much more mainstream and respectable now, which in some ways is good – I used to meet teachers and people in publishing who really didn’t understand what it was for at all, but I don’t get that any more. But, like pop music, sci-fi used to have a sort of trashy mystique precisely because those sorts of people didn’t like it, and that’s gone now – I miss it!
I also think there’s rather too much fantasy and sci-fi about. When I was growing up it was something I had to seek out, but I suspect kids today roll their eyes and think, ‘not another visually extravagant fantasy world..’. You can’t really worry about that as a writer though, there’s no future in trying to second-guess the audience. I just write for myself and hope that, if I’m entertained, other people might be too.
Looking back at the original Mortal Engines quartet, is there anything you now see differently as a writer, or anything you might be tempted to change, reinterpret, or expand upon if you were writing it today?
I’d change all sorts of things, of course – there are lots of details of the world and the prose that could be improved, and of course there were things that I did plot-wise which had to be undone in later books – if I’d had more idea of where the story was going I could have avoided that. But I don’t think I’d change the overall plot or the characters, or the tone of the books, I think they were what I was aiming for.
One of the joys of returning to a long-established world is the chance to explore its history, consequences, and evolution. What new elements of this universe were you most excited to explore in Bridge of Storms?
Bridge of Storms and its predecessor, Thunder City, are set about a century before the original Mortal Engines, so it was nice to explore a slightly different version of that world. It’s slightly less ruthless in some ways, with cities asking nicely before they eat smaller ones, and various gentleman’s agreements governing their dealings with each other. So you can see, I hope, how this strange system of Municipal Darwinism caught on, and actually worked reasonably well for a while. But you can also see that it’s starting to fray, and how it will descend into the city-eat-city free-for-all of Mortal Engines.
You recently watched the Mortal Engines film again with fans as part of the anniversary celebrations. What was that experience like, and did it shift how you think about the story now, 25 years on?
I think fans of the book tend to be sceptical of the film, although it has brought in a lot of new readers, to be fair. It was made so long after the book was written, and I had so little involvement in the process, that I tend to think of it as completely unrelated, and it doesn’t affect how I think about the books at all. I think the first thirty minutes are pretty good, it was nice to see that again.
For readers who may discover this world through the film before turning to the books, what would you hope they find when they step onto the page?
I hope they’ll find more and better jokes – I always thought of Mortal Engines as at least partly a humorous book! And the world is bigger – especially if you go on and read the sequels and prequels. There are more characters, more cities, more subplots and set-pieces. There isn’t room for very much of that in a 2 hour film, but a book gives you a lot more freedom.
