The Current Q&A;

You know Chris Hadfield the astronaut. His new novel draws on his days as a Cold War fighter pilot

Intercepting Soviet bombers taught Hadfield that people aren't just 'bad or good'

Posted: 4 Hours Ago

Long before Chris Hadfield won hearts as the Canadian astronaut in command of the International Space Station, he was a Cold War fighter pilot intercepting Soviet bombers.

Nowadays he's also a best-selling author.

His new novel The Defector draws on those Cold War experiences, spinning a tale of espionage and geopolitics that's rooted in his real life experiences. Hadfield spoke to The Current's Matt Galloway about writing fiction inspired by his personal expertise. Here is part of their conversation. 

Part of [your] expertise is as a Canadian fighter pilot … in and around the Cold War. 

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used to practice launching cruise missiles on North America on a regular basis, and they would fly out of northern Soviet Union, come down in between Greenland and Iceland. And they had to get to sort of, like the push-the-button-line where they were close enough, where they could have done enormous damage to our continent. Obviously, as a defender of our country, we had to scramble and get out there and intercept them. I would sleep in the Quick Reaction facility. 

What does that mean? 

We had to be airborne in 12 minutes, from a dead sleep, to flying an F-18. I mean, what did you do in the last 12 minutes ... and then once you're airborne, then we race to the East Coast. And I did the very first intercept of the big Soviet heavy Bear bombers with the CF-18 ever. And I did it several different times, protecting Canada during the Cold War. And so that tension and that geopolitical manoeuvring — that we're seeing rekindling right now, of course, to the world's detriment. That's what was part of my professional career, but that's at the core of The Defector.

When you look back at that time … what stands out to you the most? 

Not too many years after that, the Iron Curtain fell down, or was knocked down. And we were co-operating with that same group of people. And what really struck me was people all are trying to do the best as they can, within the culture that they grew up in and the set of rules for life that they know best. 

[That] same group of people that were practicing doing wicked damage to our continent — just ten years later, we were working together, hand-in-hand, to build a research laboratory space station. I helped build the Russian space station Mir, and I lived in Russia for five years. 

WATCH: CBC Archives: Chris Hadfield's move from pilot to astronaut

And yet the pendulum swings back, you get a terrible bout of leadership, a wicked person like Putin. And now here we are on the other sides of the fence again. 

And so I think what I really took from that is you need to be ready to protect the things that are important to you, but you also need to recognize that everything has nuance. And the people in that other airplane or that other whatever, they are just trying to do the best with what they know and what they're allowed to do, just like you are. And I mean you've got to go back to first principles, but at the same time there are no absolutes. 

This novel is called The Defector and at the centre of it is a defector … how personally were you prepared for something like that? Somebody that, in those moments, that somebody would slide from one side to the other? 

I was out intercepting a Soviet bomber on Christmas Eve — December 24th — and of course, we're different languages, different cultures. 

I would fly my F-18 up very closely and identify what their purpose was, had an enormous light that I could flick on with my baby finger, this enormous quarter-million-candle power light. 

WATCH | What Chris Hadfield achieved in space:

And so I flew up late at night, intercepted this bomber, and [was] talking to NORAD, North American Air Defence. 

And as we peeled away, over our radio frequency came "Merry Christmas," you know, in a thick Russian accent. 

And I thought, well, obviously it's no surprise that they're listening to our frequency and communicating back and forth. But they were doing their job, serving their country for right or for wrong, you know. And I was doing the same. Both of us convinced that we're doing the right thing for our value system. But at the same time, we're just a bunch of people — and politicians come and go.

And so when I write a book like The Defector, I need each of my characters to be true to who they are. And what's fun now is my recurring characters, Kaz Zemeckis and Svetlana and all of them, they're with me all the time. They're like my own little panel, judging everything that's happening and providing my own internal monologue commentary on the world that's around me. And they help me think of new things. And as I write, I'm really just sort of enabling them to behave like the characters that they are. 

That's the real delight of writing fiction, is recognizing people aren't monolithically bad or good. People are just trying to do what makes sense to them.

Audio produced by Ben Jamieson. Q&A; has been edited for length and clarity.