Bunk Romero is a genuine phenomenon. The six-book series brings together the best of crime fiction and science fiction with an authentic sense of humor, and it definitely impressed me. So I simply had to invite its author to talk about books and the future, about science fiction and fantasy.
Emil Minchev is a writer known for the series about the werewolf detective, but also a translator who has left his mark with works such as Gone with the Wind, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Great Gatsby. But enough talk, let's get started.
Wordiness isn't Bunk's style, nor is it his creator's, but he and I have some interesting things to say to each other.
– What technological progress of recent years has managed to surprise a science fiction writer?
– I'm surprised by the lack of progress in some areas.
I thought all deliveries would be made by drones by now
and cars with drivers would be a thing of the past (like horse carts).
– So did I, to be honest. How is the future we live in similar to, and how is it different from, the one the classic science fiction writers imagined?
– Unfortunately, over the past few decades
humanity's imagination has withered a little, especially when it comes to space and the stars.
If Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov could see us today, they would weep with disappointment that we haven't even set foot on Mars yet.
– Alas, as one of my guests put it, we are closer to the Flintstones than to the Jetsons.
You've translated Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Jane Austen. What does a person learn about the future when they spend so much time in the past?
– To appreciate the fact that a hundred years is an utterly negligible amount of time, if we step back far enough and see the big picture.
– But is that still true today? And can we change the future by talking about it?
– Of course. Everyone shapes their own future, and people shape the future of the human race.
– Should we try to predict it?
– Always.
– Recently I ran an experiment—I published a text and only revealed at the very end that it had been generated by AI. Almost 90 percent of people admitted they hadn't noticed. I've been learning to write for a quarter of a century, I think it's the thing I do best, and the result definitely left me in despair. How would you feel if an AI wrote a Bunk Romero book as well as you could?
– If it happens within the next ten years or so, I won't be surprised, but I admit it would make me sad.
– What will we do all day if we don't have to write?
– We'll create in some other way. Or we'll enjoy the creations of the machines.
– What frightens you and what excites you about the progress of artificial intelligence?
– There will be upheavals, mostly for the people who will lose their livelihoods. But progress happens whether we want it or not.
– What can literature still do better than any machine?
– Eccentric, original flights of imagination that are devoid of any logic whatsoever.
– Bunk Romero has a nose for things, and we live in a time when we increasingly delegate our instincts to algorithms. Could AI lead us to a world without crime?
– In a world without prisons, we'll all live in one big prison.
We have to accept human nature warts and all—the good and the bad alike. The bad is as much a part of us as the good. And without it, we simply wouldn't be human.
– You write about monsters. Who are the monsters in today's society that you wish didn't exist?
– In my view,
the lack of empathy is the biggest and most significant problem in today's world.
– If an artificial intelligence offered you a brilliant plot for a new Bunk Romero novel, would that be a temptation, an insult or just noise? Where is the reasonable line in the collaboration between writer and algorithm, now that using it is practically impossible to prove?
– The hard part of writing isn't coming up with the plot, it's describing that plot.
– Alas, it seems to me it's already meddling there too.
Bunk solves mysteries with his sense of smell and his instincts. In an era of deepfakes, generated texts and images, which sense can bring us back the truth?
– The little gray cells, as Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's great detective, liked to say.
– The Bunk series genuinely impressed me, especially coming from a Bulgarian author. How was the idea born?
– I decided to combine my favorite genres—detective crime fiction, horror and science fiction. I had come up with
a detective investigating a locked-room murder in the future, when I was watching Ratatouille and it dawned on me:
the detective has an extraordinarily keen sense of smell because he's a werewolf.
– How do you explain the success of this particular character? Is there something Bulgarian about him?
– He was created by a Bulgarian, so I don't see how there could be nothing Bulgarian about him. Bunk weaves together favorite characters and people from my life, all of them Bulgarians.
– What did you want to avoid when you created Bunk? Which clichés of the detective genre annoy you the most?
– The down-and-out detective who is always on the brink of bankruptcy and whose personal life is a complete mess.
– What did you learn about yourself while writing about Bunk?
– I learned that there's a conservative streak in my character, especially when I get into the role of husband and father.
– Now that his series has ended, what can we expect from you?
– I've started two other series: a trilogy about ghosts investigating crimes in different dimensions—Svetlosyanka (Light-Shadow), Svetlomrak (Light-Darkness) and Svetlobezkray (Light-Infinity)—and a series of children's novels with a science fiction flavor, Mitko i omagyosanata peshtera (Mitko and the Enchanted Cave).
– Are you sure you won't miss him and won't come back to him one day? Both Holmes and Ostap Bender, the silver-tongued con man of Ilf and Petrov's Soviet satirical novels, returned even from the dead… Could it be that you've grown tired of him?
– It's not good to rest on your laurels. I'm looking ahead, toward something new and different that will challenge me to grow. Besides, I did such terrible things to Bunk in those six books that I want to let him have a rest from me.
– I hope you'll reconsider, I'll miss him! Thank you for this quick meeting, I won't keep you from your work any longer. May the muse be with you!
