John Joseph Adams - Editor & Anthologist

The Slush God Speaketh…to John Scalzi

Hey, happy Turkey Day!  Who’s ready for some leftovers?  I know I sure am.  If you are too, enjoy this delicious leftover Scalzi. 

These are outtakes from the SCI FI Wire piece I did about John Scalzi’s new novel, The Android’s Dream a couple weeks ago.  So here’s John…

*** 

…on the genesis of the book:

Well, the genesis was pretty mundane: After Patrick Nielsen Hayden bought Old Man’s War, he asked me if I had any other books I wanted to sell. I didn’t, but I lied through my stinkin’ teeth and said I did, and pitched the book [...] [and] Patrick said, “Great, we’ll take that.” So that’s how that happened.

[...]

I started writing it right away, and finished it in mid-2003. Originally it was planned to be released after Old Man’s War, but then Tor decided they wanted The Ghost Brigades to come out first, in order to capitalize on OMW’s success. In retrospect I think this was the right move; I think the 1-2 punch of OMW and TGB helped make my name, and this will help to show I have a bit of range.

***

…on the humor in the book:

It’s fun because much of the humor in recent science fiction is of the surrealist sort that Douglas Adams wrote in his Hitchhiker books. I’m a huge fan of Douglas Adams, but I think there’s something to be said about playing with other forms of humor and seeing how they work with science fiction. This has also come in handy when I’m trying to convince people who don’t think they like science fiction to give the book a shot, since lots of people like the style and wit of Hiaasen and Leonard, and might be willing to try something in that vein, even if it’s not in a genre they usually read.

***

…on mixing genre elements:

Generally speaking I’m a big believer of seeing what works in other writing genres, swiping it and seeing if it works in science fiction as well. In biology there’s a term called “hybrid vigor” which means that the offspring of two creatures who are genetically disparate will be healthier and have better survival qualities than that of two creatures who are largely genetically similar. I think “hybrid vigor” works with writing, too. Or at least I hope it does, for the sake of my book.

*** 

The Slush God Speaketh…to Tamora Pierce

Here are some outtakes from a SCI FI Wire piece I did about Tamora Pierce’s new novel, Beka Cooper: Terrier.  So here’s Tamora Pierce…

—————

…on the magical realm of Tortall:

[...]

I’ve been working in Tortall since 1976.  My first girl hero disguised herself as a boy to become a knight there, dealing with learning the customs of a gently bred noble, and learning that smiling, friendly noblemen sometimes were not at all friendly.  She took her amusements in the capital’s dives, introducing her friends to the low friends she made there, and unwittingly forging alliances between nobles and the lower classes that created a progressive government in Tortall that has been in conflict with its conservative nobles ever since.  A queen who was thrown away by her own people for the crime of being a female royal has built on that progressive legacy, creating a combined police-military company that teaches people of the countryside to defend themselves and to better their lot in life.  A girl mage whose magic has created a bond with animals has seen her influence spread, seeding a revolution of sorts among the animals who come in contact with her, so that they begin to see they can affect the course of human affairs.  Another girl openly went for her knighthood, passing tests by hostile examiners and proving her skills in open combat, further casting the battle lines between progressives and conservatives in relief, though she wasn’t aware of it.  And now the disease is spreading, as a spy bred from the cradle and taught by the realm’s best intelligence operatives has taken the reins of intelligence gathering in one of the kingdom’s neighbors.  The stakes of the great game just went up.

[...]

—————

…on the genesis of Beka Cooper: Terrier:

Fans have been asking me for years if I was ever going to write a book set in the time of the lady knights, the period when they flourished.  I had also wanted to do something more with the Lower City, home of the slums and of one of my most popular characters, George, King of the Thieves.  I’ve also spent a lot of time writing among Tortall’s upper classes; I wanted to show how the other half lives.  Also, since reading my Trickster books, fans were curious about the absence of slavery in Tortall–what happened to it?  So all of these things came together, and slowly Beka’s picture started to emerge.

—————

…introducing Beka Cooper:

Beka is cool.  She’s sixteen, hellaciously shy with people she doesn’t know, pretty enough (though not gorgeous).  She’s smart, tough, and fast in physical combat.  She knows the streets and the people.  [...]  And she attracts some unusual friends, including three young people who are rapidly moving up in the hierarchy of the city’s criminals.  Of course, it takes people a while to figure out that she’s worth befriending, since she can barely manage to talk when she’s out of uniform.  It tells us something about her that wearing the uniform makes it possible for Beka to speak to strangers.

…on the personal nature of the narrative:

Any book is personal.  I am excruciatingly shy, though I’ve learned to deal with people publicly over the last six years or so.  Public appearances used to be murder for me, and they still exhaust me: I drew on that for Beka’s own shyness.  Pounce, who was Faithful in my Alanna books, was my college cat Fido–these days my cat Scooter stands in for him.  Aniki and Kora, two of Beka’s friends, are friends of mine.  I got the idea of the pigeons as the carriers of the dead from feeding flocks of pigeons in the parks of New York City years ago, and have made the personal acquaintance of some of the corner dust devils who gave me the idea for Beka’s informants.  The treasure that is so sought after in the books came from my current obsession, bowls and trays of which are strewn over my desk.

More than these things, though, I was a poor kid.  I’ve dealt with the prejudices our society has against the poor and against people who want to work their way out of being poor.  I’ve seen the way the poor are treated by this society.  I’ve read a lot of true crime over the years, and repeatedly I’ve noticed the number of murder cases in which the death count is allowed to rise because the murders occurred in the population of the poor, and no one cared enough to investigate.  I’ve touched on this in other books, STREET MAGIC and SHATTERGLASS, but largely from the points of view of those who have moved outside the slums.  Beka is part and parcel of the slums.  They would be unbearable to us if we weren’t seeing them through the eyes of someone who accepts them as the way life is lived.

The idea of your family being dismayed by you, and feeling you are less than respectable, is certainly personal.  So is the idea that you end up choosing the family that makes you happy–again, that’s something I’ve dealt with in other books.

—————

…on research for the book:

For medieval law enforcement, such as it was, for the makeup of the basic sap, for food and beverages, magical charms, and basic investigative procedure, I researched.  I always do a lot of research for my books.  The biggest single item for these books was the slang.  A lot of the words I use are actual medieval terms, and I did a lot of searching to find them!  Some I adapted, and I had to sneak in a few from later times, but a lot are genuine, and the product of a lot of digging.

—————

…on firsts and terriers: 

This is my longest book yet, 560 pages.  It’s another first in that it’s written in first person, in Beka’s own, streetwise voice, in a journal format.  We see her new life unfold as she does, with all its slips, hurts, and victories, even if they’re small ones.  I’d ask people to keep something in mind about terriers: once they get their teeth in something, they never,
ever let it go.

—————

The Slush God Speaketh…to James Gurney

Here are some outtakes from a SCI FI Wire piece I did about James Gurney’s art portfolio, Home Planet.  So here’s James Gurney…

…on one of the paintings in the book:



This one for example I did for National Geographic magazine about all the uses of soybeans.  Everything in the painting is made from soybeans, not just tofu but animal feed and all the rest.  And I used the Norman Rockwell style because we wanted to show that soybeans are an All-American crop more so that anything. 

…on the publication history of some of the paintings:



Some of them are originals.  Let’s see.  This one, “Flights of Fancy,” was done for the New York is Book Country, which is a trade event that publishers hold in New York City every year.  They ask an artist to do a painting that encompasses the joy of reading and something about New York City.

This one is a painting I did of a harvest scene at a local farm market that was done for a local outdoor plain air painting event and I don’t think that’s been published before.  

[...]

“Sea Monster” was reproduced in Fantasy & Science Fiction but I
actually did that back in 1981 as a portfolio piece and this is the biggest version that existed of that.

…on the development of dinosaur research:

The field of dinosaurs has evolved and our image of dinosaurs has evolved even since the time I started painting them actively in the early 90s.  We all grew up with the image of dinosaurs as cold blooded reptiles or evolutionary failures, but the view now, and the view that all the kids are growing up with, is based on the new sciences of them being dynamic, intelligent, and bird-like rather than more like crocodiles or reptiles.  And it was that revolution in thinking about dinosaurs that really helped Dinotopia come into being.

In 1989 at the Boston Worldcon, I was just coming up with the idea for a lost empire populated by people and dinosaurs and I was pitching this idea to someone at the bar at the Worldcon, and this guy tapped me on the shoulder and handed me his business card.  And he said “I’m the head dinosaur paleontologist at the Smithsonian and you got a lot of your facts wrong, but if you come down I’ll straighten you out.” So I went down there he ended up vetting
all of the work in various stages and even coming up with some ideas. One of his ideas was to have the notorious Oviraptor dinosaur, which means egg stealer, to have that dinosaur in charge of the hatchery to redeem its reputation; it was always thought of as a lowly scoundrel.  So I did that I called it the ovenutrix–same dinosaur I just gave it a different name.

And sometimes science follows art, because about two years after that scientists went back to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and decided they weren’t stealing other dinosaurs eggs, they were actually protecting their own eggs which is kind of an amazing thing that happened.  Our ideas about dinosaurs have changed …. Its very important to me in Dinotopia to make sure the dinosaurs are as accurate as possible at least in their physical form. Of course, I am taking this step into fantasy of having them as sentient creatures that humans have formed a civilization with. But I try to stay current with the latest discoveries.  In fact this painting of the giganotosaurus is based on a recent discovery of from the mid 90s of a meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina that’s bigger than T-Rex.  I worked with paleontologist Rodolpho Coria, who found this creature, and we worked together to show a picture of it running toward us, but since that time even this theory has changed as some paleontologists have really done the work and decided that a creature that big could not run.  Maybe they could do a fast walk, but they would need huge thigh muscles to be able to run at the speeds we are thinking here.  So you have to stay current with all of this. And I try to.

…on what it means to be named Guest of Honor at Worldcon:

Well, it’s a great honor and it’s good to see a lot of the folks that I met some years ago at the first one I went to.  And there are so many of my heroes who have done work in this field.  It’s really a treat to be sitting in the seat this time around.  I’m having a great time at the convention.  It’s a real terrific tradition to have this contact between readers and artists.  I think it makes the field of science fiction and fantasy a little different [from the mainstream] where there isn’t have this kind of fan contact.  I think artists feel a lot more responsible to have work that’s on the covers of books that really represents what’s in the books. In some fields of  paperback covers people don’t read the books at all and you can tell. But I think it’s pretty well understood when you are in the science fiction field that you really have to do justice to the books you are illustrating and there are very smart people out there reading them.  I really appreciate that kind of collaboration and collegiality between artists and readers.

—————

Interview with Cory Doctorow

Science Fiction Weekly published my interview with Cory Doctorow today.

[Excerpt:] We’d been briefed, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on trusted computing by Microsoft, under an arrangement where they would give us a prepublication briefing and we would agree to a moratorium on commenting on it until they went live. But we would tell them what we thought of it so that when they went live they could have their responses ready, but we could have our critique ready. It was a little bit of nice detente. So after the moratorium ran out I published a story on called “0wnz0red” on Salon. It was up for the Nebula and so on. That story was a critique of trusted computing and was really well received. And I got an email from one of the of trusted computing people at Microsoft saying “How can I rebut a short story?” And I thought, “I found an avenue of attack for which they have no defense. I think I’ve got to pursue it.”

Go read it and tell me what you think!

The Slush God Speaketh…to Josh Conviser

Here are some outtakes from a SCI FI Wire piece I did about Josh Conviser‘s first novel, Echelon.  So here’s Josh…

—————

…on Echelon:

[...] 

Basically, I’m interested in how a “Big Brother” gets created, and then how that kind of pervasive surveillance system would break down.  Echelon centers on the theme of control.  In the big picture – that’s expressed in Echelon’s attempt to control humanity.  In my hero’s case, that theme takes on a much more personal nature.

My hero, Ryan Laing, begins as an agent within Echelon.  He’s a tough, capable spy who has spent his life maintaining Echelon’s iron grip – a man all about control.  But, after an incident that opens the book, Laing gets injected with a new and untested form of artificially intelligent nanotechnology – which I call drones.  This makes him the first true cyborg.  It becomes hard, even for Laing himself, to know where he stops and machines begin.  Echelon then delves into the physical and emotional experience of Laing’s transformation. The drones give Laing tremendous capabilities, but they come at a price.  As a separate intelligence within him, the drones threaten Laing’s very sense of self.  Laing must learn to incorporate this new presence into his identity, relinquishing the solitude of own inner space. 

Laing’s internal struggle with this foreign intelligence only amps his experiences through the story.  While recuperating, Laing uncovers a conspiracy within Echelon that threatens to upset the manufactured peace he has worked so hard to create.  This knowledge sets Laing on the run, hunted by those who would use Echelon’s vast power for their own ends.  Laing must come to terms with his own inner transformation even as he attempts to foil a plot that would plunge the world into chaos.

So, the theme of control – or maybe its fiction – runs through Echelon.  Laing’s internal struggle mirrors Echelon’s larger attempt to control humanity.

…on the genesis of the novel:

I came across Echelon in my career as a screenwriter.  I’m always hunting for ideas that could be interesting.  Echelon immediately struck me as fertile ground for an exciting and timely story.  When I decided to write a novel, Echelon was first on the list.  In wanted to write something that would pull the reader in and offer a gripping, wild ride.  Echelon definitely lent itself to such.

I’m also a big traveler, having lived in Asia, Europe and Australia.  So, when it came time to choose locations, I had a great selection to pick from.  Echelon covers a lot of ground, hopping between LA, Scotland, Nepal, Thailand and more.  I’ve had the good fortune to have lived and traveled through most of the places Echelon touches down. 

I also wanted to incorporate my experiences as a mountaineer into Echelon.  I grew up in Aspen, Colorado and have done a lot of climbing all over the world.  Very little sci fi, or spy fiction for that matter, deals with the natural world.  Trying to incorporate such into a techno-thriller offered a unique challenge. The fact that Laing is a rock climber is central to his character.  His need for control comes through in his climbing.  I also used nature as a means of interfacing with information.  The heroine in my story, Sarah Peters, is a hacker.  Her incursion software turns hacking into a white water kayaking experience.  The tougher the hack, the rougher the water.  In kayaking, one has a split second to deal with a crush of stimuli.  As such, it seemed the perfect means of interfacing with a huge amount of shifting data.  So both in reality and on the flow (my version of the internet), the natural world plays an important role.

…on the research that went into writing Echelon:

There was a good bit of research that went into Echelon.  Most of my projects are research driven.  HBO’s Rome would be a good example of my previous work.  I like pushing myself into another world, learning as much as I can about it, and then finding a story within it that resonates today.  Before Echelon, I did this by writing about the past.  Setting Echelon in the future allowed my imagination free rein.  I tried to create a world, a plot, and a set of characters that are all driven by what’s going on today.   As such, I did a lot of research on the real ECHELON.  Also, all the technology in Echelon is based on work happening today.  I pour over all the scientific journals looking for interesting tid bits. 

…on the issues Echelon explores:

[...]

It’s these issues [domestic spying in the name of safety] that interest me.  I have no easy answer on how to work our way through.  I don’t want to allow the government free reign, but I do want our intelligence agencies to have the tools to do their job.   The balance between security and freedom is tenuous.  Overloading freedom puts us in harm’s way.  But, overemphasizing safety erodes the freedom we hold dear. 

I love science fiction’s ability to explore such issues on a personal, visceral level.  It’s one thing to talk about the future ramifications of our actions.  To thrust a reader into that future world is a much more potent experience. 

…on his authorial inspirations:

Sci-Fi wise, William Gibson’s Neuromancer is at the top of my list.  I first read Neuromancer in college and it blew me away.  I also like Neal Stephenson – particularly Cryptonomicon.  I love Orson Scott Card for his ability to shed light on modern geopolitics by looking at possible futures.  That’s a lot of what I attempted in Echelon - looking at our current actions through the lens of a possible future.

And to my mind, Frank Herbert’s Dune series is one of the most wonderful creations in all of literature.  To create such a novel world and then populate it with politics, characters and drama that are so gripping and recognizable is an achievement I strive for.

Echelon was also greatly influenced by spy novelists like Ludlum, Le Carre, Forsythe, and Littell.  I love their ability to plunge a reader a world hidden from our own.  Like these authors, I want to pull my readers into an adventure removed from their daily lives. 

Style-wise, I’ve gotten a lot out being a screenwriter.  In a screenplay, there’s no room for anything extraneous.  I bring that mentality to writing prose.  I try to make every word count.

The Slush God Speaketh…to Dabel Brothers Productions

Here are some outtakes from a SCI FI Wire piece I did quite a while ago about the new literary comic adaptations from Dabel Brothers Productions.  So here’s DB Pro executive editor Sean J. Jordan…

There are some titles, I suppose, that simply aren’t visually stimulating enough to be told in comic book format, and there are others that progress too slowly to make interesting panels. We ran into that very problem with a story we adapted by Robert Silverberg called THE SEVENTH SHRINE — the story was a great murder mystery, but the comic would have been so full of talking heads that it wouldn’t have been very exciting. So we produced it in a storybook style instead, hiring a wonderful painter named Anders Finer to create bold and vivid imagery for the book. The result was something truly fascinating and unique that really reminded us of the power of the medium.

As for the licenses we choose, we have our favorites that we’re looking into. I, for one, would love to adapt Robert Asprin’s MYTH series, and I know another member of our staff is hoping we could adapt one of Larry Niven’s books (namely RINGWORLD) down the road. But in general, we’ve worked to speak to the most popular authors in the fantasy/sci-fi genre, and we’re hoping to continue to astound our readers with new titles we’ll be adapting each year.

—————

…on the potential challenges posed by adapting a sexually-explicit series like Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels: 

You know, we get this question a lot, and I think that the Anita Blake books have an unfair reputation based upon the increasingly erotic events of the more recent novels in the series. The first five books have almost no sexual content, and they’re set up to read more like thriller mysteries than romance novels. 

—————

…on other projects forthcoming from DB Pro:

Here are a couple of original books we’re producing that are part of our partnership with other companies.

Monte Cook’s PTOLUS: CITY BY THE SPIRE is the official tie-in to the upcoming paper and pencil campaign set of the same name from Malhavoc Press. Monte is a long time D&D campaign designer and one of the creators of the d20 game system, so his expertise in the realm of fantasy is fairly high. PTOLUS is a six-part miniseries that tells a great story with a female fantasy heroine who _doesn’t_ wear a skimpy thong or get herself captured by bad guys, so it’s already notable and original from page one. The art, by Canaan White, is absolutely breathtaking, and we think PTOLUS will be a sleeper hit this year. It hits shelves in June.

Michael Lent’s PREY: ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES is a story not unlike the show “Surface” where an ancient creature rises from the Pacific and begins attacking people in a coastal California community. Michael Lent wrote a very popular book on screenwriting called BREAKFAST WITH SHARKS, and this story is actually based on one of his own (currently) unproduced screenplays. PREY hits shelves in July.

—————

The Slush God Speaketh…to Hal Duncan

SCI FI Wire recently published a story I wrote about Hal Duncan’s, Vellum, which is a World Fantasy Award finalist. There weren’t many outtakes, but there was one good bit that I was sorry didn’t make it into the piece, so here’s Hal…

…on what it is about Vellum that he thinks the award judges responded to:

I suspect it’s the combination of grand vision and deep-felt humanism, the ludicrously ambitious attempt to tell a story on such an epic scale across multiple realities but at the same time make it a very intimate story of characters the reader really cares about.  For those who click to what I’m trying to do, I think it can be quite a moving book in places.  Lucius Shepard described it as “the Guernica of genre fiction” and that’s bang-on in terms of my aims.  The scale, the structure and the style of the narrative — it’s all meant to affect the reader the way Picasso’s painting affects me as a viewer and others like me. 

—————

The Slush God Speaketh…to Kevin J. Anderson

SCI FI Wire recently published a story I wrote about the latest Dune novel, Hunters of Dune. I ended up with more good material than I could fit into the piece. So, here’s Kevin J. Anderson…

…on writing the Dune prequels before concluding the original Dune saga:

[...]

When Brian and I first got together in around 1996, our first thought was to complete the story after CHAPTERHOUSE.  However, we didn’t have any notes, no clues to where Frank Herbert was going with the story.  We would have to do it on our own.  However, at that time there had been a gap of ten years since the last DUNE book was published.  We decided to try and revive interest in Frank Herbert’s great universe, which was always my favorite science fiction book of all time.  That’s why we chose to tell the immediate prequel to DUNE in the three “House” books, a story that all fans could enjoy.  While we were plotting HOUSE ATREIDES, Brian received a call from the estate attorney who had found two safety deposit box keys in Frank Herbert’s files, and when Brian opened the boxes he found printouts and disks marked “Dune 7 outline” and “Dune 7 notes.”  There we had the roadmap for how the story was going to end, and we saw the whole tapestry of the chronicles the Frank Herbert had planned.

When HOUSE ATREIDES was published, it became a runaway bestseller.  In addition, sales of Frank Herbert’s original DUNE novels increased by more

than three times.  So far each one of our novels has been an international bestseller, and the fans are ready for the grand climax.

…on future plans for writing in the Dune universe:

[...]

After [the forthcoming Paul of Dune trilogy], we’ve got some general ideas, but we haven’t made any definite plans.  Since Brian and I work so well together, we might even try something original of our own — I’ve got my very popular “Saga of Seven Suns” series (just turned in volume 6, out of seven), and Brian is writing his “Timeweb” trilogy.  We’ve already started talking about a big space opera to do together.

————— 

…on working with Brian Herbert:

We both love DUNE so much, we’ve read all the books over and over, studied all the notes Frank Herbert left.  Brian and I get together face to face for several days (he lives in Washington state and I live in Colorado), where we talk over each book, brainstorming the overall plot.  When it crystallizes enough, we begin to break it into chapters.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll write up the notes into a detailed outline, then we split the chapters, 50/50.  We choose the ones that interest us most, then we each write the draft of those chapters; when we’re done, we swap computer files and rewrite each other’s stuff, then it goes back again, usually ten or more times until we’re done.

…on other projects:

Also, we’re doing a book-signing tour for HUNTERS; the full details are at http://www.dunenovels.com/dune7blog/page92.html.  And, Brian and I have signed and hand-numbered ten thousand copies of HUNTERS, which will be distributed at random from the bindery, so in order to find a signed copy, it’ll be like finding the golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!  (Full details at http://www.dunenovels.com/dune7blog/page61.html.)

I love to write the giant, epic stories with lots of characters, planets, storylines, politics, and action.  Even the DUNE novel I write every year with Brian isn’t enough to keep me completely occupied, though — I’m also writing another complex SF series, The Saga of Seven Suns.  Each volume is about 500 pages long and very complicated; the fifth book has just been published, and I’ve turned in the sixth — and I intend to end it with the next one, Seven Suns, seven volumes.

—————

The Slush God Speaketh…to Steven Barnes

SCI FI Wire recently published a story I wrote about Steven Barnes’s latest novel, Great Sky Woman. I ended up with more good material than I could fit into the piece. So, here’s Steve…

————— 

…on the writing of the novel:

This book was the hardest thing I’ve ever written.  Not merely because of the research, which was killer, but because I was trying to depict a shift in mentation, and early on decided to experiment with structure and voice to represent these changes. The experiments just didn’t work–the book was becoming complicated rather than complex.  So two-thirds of the way through, I had to strip out virtually everything I’d done and start over.  It was terrifying! 

 

…on his research trip to Africa:

What I sought was something I can’t quite put into words.  It was the…essence of early existence.  The common thread connecting all of humanity.  I’ve studied trans-cultural Shamanism for twenty years, and was able to identify unifying image systems and reality maps stretching from Native Americans to Celts to hunter-gatherers the world over. 

 

…on the ancient African folklore and spiritualism in the book:

All world religions seek to place their people at the center of the universe.  Just as many indigenous people simply call themselves “the people” our current religious institutions subtly–or not so subtly–reinforce the notion that we are closer to God than anyone else.  Looking at African myths, one is struck by the universal human tendency to try to understand–to create a Cosmology.  Many of them are “Just-So” stories seeking to explain a behavior or environmental feature.  Others seek to implant rules for survival in the consciousness of their children.  Great Sky Woman contains many of those–some traditional African, some from other cultures, and some synthetic but plausible.  Spirituality asks the question where we come from and where we are going.  I must have examined the beliefs of a hundred specifically African peoples, as well as the prior research in Shamanic cultures worldwide, to create what seemed to me a reasonable picture of what people at that phase in human development MIGHT have thought of the world.

…on his authorial inspirations:

Heinlein, Clarke, Niven (my mentor and dear friend), Burroughs (Edgar Rice and William), Poe, and Jack London rank high.  I probably channeled Burroughs more than Jean Auel [when writing Great Sky Woman], but I deeply respect what she did to popularize the genre.  My all-time favorite writer is William Shakespeare, and I read one scene of Shakespeare aloud every day before beginning work.

…on how to categorize a novel like Great Sky Woman:

Hmmm.  Anthropological Science Fiction?  A Paleolithic romance?  A protopsychological adventure?  I’m really not sure. If it feels mythological rather than intellectual, this writer breathes a huge sigh of relief!

————— 

…on “Self-expression” and giving back to the writing community:

I feel that an artist’s greatest obligation is that of Self-expression.  That’s “Self” with a deliberate capital “S.”  In other words, to burrow through the ego, and make contact with the honest essence of who and what he is in this life. To understand that is to understand what makes humans human, and to glimpse the structure of the chaos that gave birth to creation.  Fiction is our clumsy attempt to convey this ineffable essence–and its primary obligation is to entertain.  One would think that this places the needs of the artist and that of the merchant at odds with one another, but it really doesn’t.  Through myth and story we can speak of times long gone, or in the distant future, or the hidden reefs of the heart.  I am hugely grateful to the readers and editors who have allowed and encouraged me to spend my life exploring these arenas, and mapping out the territory in my books.  I have a blog and web site, as well as a free writing course I send out daily. 

You can find them all at
www.lifewrite.com



It’s my way of saying “thank you.”

The Slush God Speaketh…to Greg Bear

SCI FI Wire recently published a piece I wrote about Greg Bear receiving the Heinlein Award.  I ended up with more good material than I could fit into the piece. So, here’s Greg…

…on the similarities/differences between Heinlein’s work and his own:



Mr. Heinlein loved tweaking nearly everybody’s expectations–as long as it was entertaining. And we certainly share that aspect in our works, though I think Mr. Heinlein was a better pure entertainer than I’ll ever be. He loved fantasy–especially James Branch Cabell–and so do I. And throughout my career, I’ve felt the urge to debate Mr. Heinlein in story form–a grand tradition best exemplified by Joe Haldeman’s response to STARSHIP TROOPERS,  THE FOREVER WAR. My response to RED PLANET (the first real sf novel I ever read, when I was nine) and THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS was MOVING MARS. As far as urging space exploration, that’s a general theme in a lot of my books and stories, but the pioneering aspect I’ve mostly left to others, so far–my companion in this year’s award, Jack Williamson, and a host of other favorites have done terrific work in this area. My most detailed examination of our future in space is in MOVING MARS–where the space hardware and geology still hold up to technical scrutiny! The physics, of course, is a little more controversial!

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…on whether or not he’s a fan of Heinlein’s work:

GB: Definitely. As I said, RED PLANET found me at a very early age–and I read everything I could get my hands on thereafter. Often, he provided sense of wonder–sometimes, laughter–or both together–and always, an urge to respond, to shout “Of course! But…and then…”  It was a delight recently to go back over some of my favorites for the Science Fiction Book Club edition of OFF THE MAIN SEQUENCE, a huge collection of Heinlein’s stories, for which Michael Cassutt and I provided foreword and introduction.

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