John Joseph Adams - Editor & Anthologist

You’re not a marquee name just yet.  Tell us about yourself and why we should get to know you and your work.

Salesmanship? Self promotion? <gulp> That’s not my strong suit. Recovering introverts are a shy, gentle breed who rarely toot their own horns. If pressed, I’d say that what I bring to science fiction and fantasy is not only a love of those genres, but a love and respect for all flavors of good writing, no matter what category bookstores, libraries or critics try to shoehorn it into. I think that gives my characters greater range, and my stories more surprises. At least I hope so.

If pressed again, however, I’d admit that I have a grand total of three stories published or accepted for publication, I have almost no time to write anything new, and therefore most of the above is probably complete bullshit. <grin>

“John Joseph Adams made me what I am as a writer. This ought to frighten one of us.” 

I’m Director of Web Communications & Development at Carleton College, a job title that almost fits on a business card. It translates as, I manage the Web team and projects for one of the best private liberal arts colleges in the country. Proof of its quality: Carleton has a Science Fiction House. Kinda gives you hope for the next generation, doesn’t it? Lord of the Rings producer Barrie Osborne is a Carleton College alumnus, as is Pamela Dean, whose novel Tam Lin is set on a college campus that bears more than passing resemblance to Carleton.

Writing or submitting? I’ve written fiction ever since I was a kid, for the love of it, but until “Kissing Frogs” I hadn’t attempted to sell anything since my teenage-angst years– when my work was quite properly rejected as the adolescent drivel it was. A writing class I took a couple of years ago encouraged me to start putting my work out there again, which has had happy results so far.

No, although I do belong to the Critters online critique group. This story was still in the queue to be critiqued when it was accepted by F&SF. I had a gut feeling about the story myself, though. It seemed to “sing” more than my previous efforts.

I haven’t been rejected enough yet to hold a grudge. Ask me again in a year or two.

In 8th grade I wrote a whole series of awful, Star-Trek-inspired science fiction stories with my best friend. As I recall, most stories involved one of us having a fling with a starship crewmember and having misadventures on an alien world. These stories were bad enough to rip a hole in the space-time continuum, but we had enormous fun writing them, and cemented what has become a decades-long friendship.

Asimov’s, decades ago, when George Scithers was editor. It was dreadful sophomoric stuff; I was just a kid. But he was so kind in his rejections that it never crushed my dreams. I think fondly of him still for that kindness.

Those early submissions were on erasable bond. Bad, bad idea.

It’s just a classic girl-meets-talking-frog story. I’ve updated it for the 21st century, of course, with personals ads, Starbucks coffee and Prada pumps, but animal transformation stories are as old as recorded history and probably much, much older. I enjoy taking obviously fantastical elements and placing them matter-of-factly into modern settings, just to see what happens.

I did a lot of internet research about frogs, to make sure I got the small details right: the number of toes, the correct name for their hearing organs, etc. Why I thought getting the biology right mattered so much when the frog in question could speak and used to be a man now escapes me! But it did allow me to add some quirky details to the story, such as the fact that a male frog does not have a penis.

Very little of any, alas. Most of my time and energy is currently spent on my day job, raising kids, and finishing my degree through a weekend college program. (There’s a reason that the intro to “Kissing Frogs” noted that I wanted to find a way to no longer require sleep!) Writing, while dear to my heart and essential to my soul, is mostly on hold until my summer break begins. I write in my head every day, though. I have mental conversations with characters and play with plot twists. So there’s an enormous backlog of pent-up ideas waiting to burst forth when I have more than five minutes a day to myself.

I don’t write SF “instead of,” I write “in addition to.” The unfinished stories in my drawer include science fiction, fantasy, mystery, literary pieces, poetry, mainstream fiction, you name it. I read across genres and don’t see any reason not to write across them too.

The earliest one I remember was about a boy who invented a bunch of robots, but I don’t recall the title or author. Just that it delighted me. I clearly remember discovering Edward Eager, Andre Norton, and Robert A. Heinlein at about age 10, though, and feeling a wicked thrill at reading Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil a year or two later. At the time they seemed very adult and risqué to me. From then on I devoured all the science fiction & fantasy that crossed my path.

It’s such a long list! Just c‘mon over and see my bookcases sometime. But early favorites that immediately spring to mind are Tolkien, Asimov, Heinlein, Le Guin, Sturgeon, Gordon Dickson, C. S. Lewis and Zenna Henderson. Later on, I fell in a big way for Octavia Butler, Charles de Lint, John Varley, Harlan Ellison, Spider Robinson, and in recent years Robin McKinley, Matt Ruff, and Christopher Moore. The latter two aren’t usually found in the SF section, but c’mon, who are their publishers kidding?

Those are just the SF favorites, though. Many others in many genres. I’m not so much a bookworm as a bookpython.

Other than inspiring a large enough reading audience to get its publications out of the literary ghetto and into the hands of all the readers who would otherwise delight in its marvels, you mean? Only the limitations of the human imagination.

I’m convinced that most screenwriters are not themselves steeped in the long, rich history of science fiction and fantasy literature. So they simply try to slot it into their tired cinematic formulas for action movies, buddy movies and thrillers. Square peg, round hole. I’m always afraid rather than delighted when I hear that one of my favorite SF stories is being adapted for the screen. Lord of the Rings is a much-appreciated exception to the rule, thank God and Peter Jackson.

Fantasy novels that read like video games, and fictional kingdoms that read like warmed-over King Arthur stories.

Oh, how I spend the millions earned from my record-breaking bestsellers, I hope! That’d be so much better than being asked how I continue to write such optimistic stories when the world economy has collapsed under the combined weight of declining oil supplies and catastrophic global warming.

Until he rejects one of my stories, my money stays on Gordon. But I have the aforementioned decades-long affection for George Scithers, so if he gets into a cage match with Gordon I may have trouble deciding where my loyalties lie.