C. E. McGill: On Revisiting Classic Science Fiction

C. E. McGill is a writer of speculative and historical fiction, born in Scotland and raised in North Carolina. McGill is the author of the novel Our Hideous Progeny, and their short fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Strange Constellations. You can find more of them on Twitter or Instagram.

In this post, C. E. discusses the process of turning their final university project into their debut novel, Our Hideous Progeny, their advice for other writers, and more!

Name: C. E. McGill
Literary agent: Susan Armstrong
Book title: Our Hideous Progeny
Publisher: Transworld/Doubleday (U.K.); Harper (U.S.)
Release date: May 4, 2023 (U.K.); May 9, 2023 (U.S.)
Genre/category: Historical (with a touch of fantasy/science fiction)
Elevator pitch for the book: Our Hideous Progeny is a spin-off of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, set roughly 50 years after the events of the original book and centering Victor Frankenstein’s great niece. Mary (née Frankenstein) Sutherland is working as a paleontologist in Victorian London when she rediscovers her great-uncle’s notes and decides to use them to put some paleontological theories to the test (in a very hands-on fashion…).

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Our Hideous Progeny actually began as my final year project in university. I’ve always loved science and science fiction, so I started out in uni studying aerospace engineering—but after the unfortunate realization that I hate lab reports with a fiery passion, I knew I had to change course. After much soul-searching, I realized that it was actually reading about the history of science and technological discovery that had inspired me most; fortunately, my university offered a “create your own degree” program, so I was able to put together a rather eccentric curriculum combining creative writing, scientific history, and narrative representations of science (such as in sci-fi movies, popular biographies of scientists, etc.).

Naturally, in the course of this new degree, I ended up reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, widely agreed to be the first true work of science fiction. I had read Frankenstein before, when I was 15, but had found it far too lacking in spaceships for my taste at the time; rereading it as an adult, however, with far more knowledge about the historical and scientific background of the novel, I found myself really enjoying it.

At the same time, I was taking a class in the history of 19th-century science which covered paleoart—i.e., artistic representations of prehistoric life. As I looked at these early attempts at bringing the past to life, at pieces like the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs which were meant to simulate as accurately as possible for the Victorian public what these long-dead creatures might have looked like, the two topics clicked together in my head. I asked myself: What would happen if some descendant of Victor Frankenstein—who also happened to be a paleontologist—rediscovered his notes and decided to bring the past to life in a much more literal way?

It was the very tail end of 2018 when I came up with the idea for Our Hideous Progeny, so simultaneously aeons ago and not long at all in the grand scheme of things. I distinctly remember sitting at Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, bemoaning my lack of suitable final-project ideas. They pressed me—oh, come on, you don’t have even one single scrap of an idea? Well, I admitted, maybe one… but it’s very silly. (They loved it, and from that point on I was relentlessly peer-pressured—thankfully—to give the concept a spin.)

It was in the spring of 2019 that I dove into research for the book, greatly aided by my advisor Dr. William Kimler, a historian of 19th-century science who provided me with a fantastic (and terrifyingly long) list of books to read. Given that I was essentially creating my own curriculum, neither of us really knew what form my final year project ought to take, but we eventually agreed on a 7,000-word short story, with an accompanying essay and poster presentation. I ended up turning in closer to 30,000 words … Clearly, the story was already straining at the seams!

After I graduated, I spent close to a year gradually turning OHP into a full-length book. I began querying around March of 2020, about the same time as I also moved back from the U.S. to the U.K., which was just exquisitely stressful timing on every front. I ended up signing with my wonderful agent, Sue, in August; I edited OHP with her for a year, signed with my publishers in late 2021, and edited with them for almost another year. A huge amount has changed about OHP since that initial final-project draft—introducing new characters and plot points, taking some away, generally rearranging the shape in which the story was told to improve suspense etc.—but the bones are still very much the same.

Oh, absolutely—the first one being how quickly I ended up signing with my agent! I had heard all sorts of figures regarding the average time it takes authors to find agents, and I had tried my best to make peace with the statistical likelihood that I would be spending the next five to 10 years in the querying trenches.

We’ve all heard stories about successful authors who were rejected by XYZ number of agents before they found representation, and I think what people often take from these stories is a kind of “Ha! Eat that, all the agents who turned them down!” sentiment—but after working myself as a first-reader for a short story magazine, I came to learn that it’s far more complicated than that. There were many fantastic and technically accomplished stories submitted to our magazine which didn’t end up making the final cut, either because the tone or style or content wasn’t quite a perfect fit for the editor’s preferences, or simply because (as happened surprisingly often!) we’d already published a story about cannibal mermaids or Martian cowboys or what-have-you last month, and it wouldn’t do to double-up.

Anyway, all that is to say, I’ve learned that publishing is just as much about luck and timing as it is about any kind of merit—whether your manuscript happens to land in the hands of the right person at the right time with the right agency/publisher, etc. Which is why I nearly fell off my chair (a rickety fold-up deck chair, where I sat in my pajamas hunched over an antique side table, just for the dramatic visual—I was still waiting at that point for my actual furniture to follow me across the Atlantic by boat) when, barely six months after I’d started querying, I received an email from Sue offering me representation. I feel so fortunate to have found Sue when I did, and I’m so grateful to her for finding such a great home for OHP at Doubleday/Transworld and Harper!

One of the things I love most about writing are those moments when you feel like it’s effortless—when you get to know the characters so well that it’s almost as if they’re speaking through you. Our Hideous Progeny was the first full novel-length work I’ve ever written (unless you count the dystopian NaNoWriMo project I hacked out when I was 11), and I was delighted to find how much more pronounced this effect was when working with the same characters for far longer than I would while writing a short story. Although there was still plenty of staring and cursing at a blank screen, of course, I also got to experience far more of those amazing moments when it felt like Mary was just giving me the words.

Well, enjoyment, for one! Personally, my favorite stories are always those that transport me to another world for a while, whether a fantastical one or a window into some time in the past—and it’s my hope that Our Hideous Progeny does a bit of both.

If OHP convinces any readers to check out the original Frankenstein, too, that would be amazing! It’s such a beautiful piece of writing, and a fascinating and foundational piece of science fiction. I did my best to make sure that Our Hideous Progeny would still make sense and be enjoyable for readers who haven’t read Frankenstein, but for those who have, there are plenty of fun Easter eggs and themes in conversation with Frankenstein that I hope people will get a kick out of.

To have fun with your writing and write the stories you’d like to see in the world. When I first came up with the idea for Our Hideous Progeny, I worried constantly that it was far too silly to write for my final year project, or to turn into a novel, or to be picked up by an agent…

On the other hand, as I fell increasingly in love with the idea and began to treat it more seriously, I worried that I was being too pretentious by trying to add themes and meaning to a story which essentially boiled down to “Frankenstein, but, like, with dinosaurs.”

Ultimately, however, it was exactly the kind of weird, queer, science-fictiony, slightly-pretentious nonsense that I myself love to read—and given that the novel-editing process involves rereading your own work approximately 10 billion times, it’s important that you actually enjoy the book.

Plus, I think that it really shines through in a piece of work when the artist behind it adores what they’re doing—and I hope that readers feel that way about OHP, too!

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