Interview with Cliff Lewis, Author of We the Future

Congrats on the release of We the Future! I always start with the short and sweet: give us the elevator pitch.

 
Thanks so much for the conversation about We the Future. This story means so much to me. We the Future is about what happens when an anxious, asthmatic boy teams up with a girl from the future to launch a climate strike big enough to rewrite history. It's a funny, scary, heart-warming time heist that makes an inspiring playbook for young activists.
  
I love the description on your author site: Weird stories on important topics. We the Future is such an attention-grabber. It snags you from the first page and just keeps propelling you forward with a fast-moving tale. And yet, “rewriting history to stop the climate apocalypse” is a heavy subject. Did you ever struggle with balancing the tone?
 
In everyday life, I'm often the guy who cracks a joke during a serious moment or who brings up something heavy in the course of light conversation. A playful story about a serious topic is kind of my sweet spot, so I wouldn't call this a struggle.
 
But I will say this: You are pointing to the exact reason why I felt this book needed to be written. Young people deserve to know how much is at stake in their future, and they shouldn't have to be a science buff or a climatologist to get the message. I wrote We the Future as a fast-paced, time-bending caper to help kids learn about the climate crisis and climate activism without ever feeling like they’re learning a thing. It’s kind of like a gummy vitamin; you feel like you’re chewing up a Sour Patch Kid, but it’s actually a blast of probiotics, vitamin C and calcium—a whole lot of good stuff you’ll need for a long and healthy life.
  
I instantly sympathized with Jonah being an asthmatic and facing a future that won’t let him breathe. How did that component enter the book?
 
I lived it! As a kid, I was blindsided by a sudden asthma attack at school one morning. It landed me in the hospital for several days. So I know firsthand the value of every breath—and how it feels when the air we breathe falls under attack.
  
One of my favorite quotes is: “Most grown-ups are obsessed with the way things are. They’ll never save the world if it means they’ll have to change it.” It seems one of the messages of the book is the best tool for change is an imagination: the ability to picture the way things could be. Do you agree?
 
A million percent. Averting the potential catastrophes of the climate emergency will require a lot more than individual lifestyle changes. Our entire modern world is built around fossil fuels and other extractive industries, so it's going to take some serious world building to turn things around. People need to rethink not just how we generate our energy, but how we use it in our infrastructure and systems of transportation. And not only do we need to build big things, but we also need to imagine how that huge transition can make the world a more just and prosperous place for everyone—not just the very rich. This kind of change begins with an open heart and a big imagination.
  
Please tell us about pacing. I think you do such a fantastic job moving from one scene to another. I got the feeling that scissors (or delete button) were more important to you than the pen. Is that right?
 
The revision process was huge, but a lot of the pacing came from the strange way I produced the first draft. I wrote almost the entire novel while running. Every morning I would wake up before 5:00 a.m. and run circles around my neighborhood while dictating this story into my phone. Then I would get back to my computer, paste that text into my manuscript and clean up all the voice-text errors. I'd never written anything so fast, but it felt important for me to write this book with the same urgency that Jonah or Sunny would have. It's a time-sensitive story about a time-sensitive subject.
 
Why are you driven to write for younger people? Why this age specifically?
 
Young people have a right to know what all the “responsible” adults have done—and continue doing—to their world. And they have every right to fight back.
 
I also believe that, when people in this age group organize themselves for collective action, massive things can happen. As a parent, I can tell you from experience that, if there's anything more relentless than the greedy grasp of the fossil fuel industry, it’s the relentless petitions of a 7th grader who’d just been handed an unfair deal.
 
There's this scene in Avengers: Infinity War during the battle for Wakanda where, after Thor has been out of the fight for most of the movie, he shows up like a lightning strike with Stormbreaker in his hand and screams "BRING ME THANOS!!!" That's what it's like when middle school kids show up for the climate fight. They're the strongest Avenger.
  
The voice of this book is pitch-perfect–it can be tough for an author to pin it down, that voice that kind of seesaws between childhood and adolescence. Was it easy to find, or did you work at it? Have any strategies for authors struggling with that one?
 
I'll refer back to my writing-while-running technique here. Let’s start calling it “cardio-drafting” for short. At first I just thought it was a good way to break away from writer’s block and digital distractions, but also, when you're covered in sweat and maintaining a 160 bpm heart rate, you don't have the patience for any grown-up word mincing. You get straight to the point—which is very on-brand for the middle school crowd.
 
Cardio-drafting may not be for everyone, but I think other writers could try something similar. Dictation alone, minus the cardio, is itself a powerful tool for honing your character voice. I mean you're acting out the part and making your literal voice a part of your writing process. I’d recommend anyone give it a try!
  
You’re surely going to light a fire inside your readers, make them want to get involved in climate issues. Where do you suggest they get started?
 
For starters, I wouldn't recommend doing what Jonah does at the beginning of We the Future, where he desperately tries to eliminate every single use of carbon emitting technology in his life. No one saves the world alone. Instead, get yourself plugged in with a bunch of folks who are already in the fight.
 
The climate activist organization with probably the most organizing muscle would be Sunrise Movement. Sunrise is a youth-based climate activism group with chapters distributed in schools all across the country. They might already have a chapter in your school! But, even if they don't, they're always ready to equip new recruits for starting chapters of their own. And if you're not ready to start organizing your own chapter, they also provide opportunities to volunteer virtually as well.
 
But if you'd rather learn a bit more about the climate fight before jumping in, you can check out the middle grade nonfiction book How to Change Everything by Naomi Klein and Rebecca Stefoff. This book creates a soulful, practical, and accessible space to explore the ways that young people are already working to rewrite the twenty-first century for the better.
 
As a kid of the ‘80s, I got some serious Back to the Future vibes, and I loved it. Really, though, the idea of being able to rewrite our future or destiny has intrigued writers of books and scripts, etc. for ages. If you could go back and do anything to alter our present, what would it be?

The way I have labored over this question… But I think I’ve got it!

If I could do exactly what Sunny does in We the Future, and travel back to one specific year to turn the tide of history, I would go back to the year 1968. The first thing I would do (in April of that year) is somehow avert the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was only 39 years old at the time. At that point, King was expanding his activism to take on what he called "the three evils" of racism, poverty and war. I can only dream of what a movement with that kind of spirit and moral clarity could have accomplished throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond.
 
Then I would do some sightseeing until June, when I would somehow avert the death of Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for president at the time and could well have sunk Richard Nixon's first presidential campaign. Just imagine a world with a quicker end to the Vietnam War, without the embittering corruption of Watergate, and with a president more likely to cave under the political pressure of a "Poor People's Campaign" led by the still-living Martin Luther King Jr…
 
Chills. 

  
What’s next for your writing?
 
I'm working on a new middle grade novel that's even weirder than We the Future. I love this story so much. I won't give you the full summary right now, but I will tell you this: It involves a 90s time-capsule house, escape room-style puzzles and a deep dive into the wonderfully complicated relationships we share with our cousins. Also, it's heavily influenced by The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Just like everything I write, this will be a weird story about important things.

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Keep up with Cliff Lewis at his author site, and be sure to get your own copy of We the Future: Snag a copy from Bookshop, or buy direct from Jolly Fish.