Tag: Interviews

INTERVIEW: JJA on The Once & Future Podcast

Anton Strout interviewed me for episode 78 of The Once & Future Podcast, which he describes thusly:

Wherein I talk with award winning editor/anthologist John Joseph Adams about a deep love of the post-apocalyptic, how we’d be the first ones dead, military fantasy, BREAKING ANTHOLOGY NEWS FROM SAGA PRESS, the neuroses of authors, Viking and folk metal, his Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, and the 743 anthologies he has releasing this year.

It was a fun interview! Give it a listen.

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NEWS: Myke Cole, Weston Ochse, and I Discuss OPERATION ARCANA on the Latest Episode of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Myke Cole, Weston Ochse, and I discuss OPERATION ARCANA on the latest episode of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy:

Fantasy books are full of epic battles like the Battle of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings. And for most fans just reading about such battles is enough, but some fans go further, enlisting in the military in order to live out real-life adventures. One of them is Weston Ochse, a thirty-year military vet who still works with the military, traveling regularly to warzones in countries like Afghanistan. He traces his yearning for adventure back to reading The Hobbit as a child.

“That desire was definitely inculcated by the idea that one lone hobbit can make a difference,” Ochse says in Episode 143 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And if one lone hobbit can make a difference, then this poor guy from Tennessee can make a difference too. So absolutely it was inspirational.”

Read the article and/or listen to the whole episode over at Wired.com. [read | listen]

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INTERVIEW: SF Signal on Wastelands 2

SF Signal interviews me about Wastelands 2:

What do you especially enjoy about editing anthologies, and what kinds of special problems do anthologies present (i.e. choosing stories, contacting authors, winnowing, etc.)?

JJA: When I’m doing a reprint anthology like Wastelands 2, I enjoy being a curator, and it’s a responsibility I take very seriously. When you read one of my anthologies, I want it to be clear that much more went into it than just slapping the first X number of stories I found between two covers; when I do a reprint volume, I really try to search far and wide, and cast as wide a net as possible to ensure that I included all of the best material on the given topic that is available. I read everything you so you don’t have to; “Trust me,” I say, “I’ve conducted an extensive survey of the field, and these are all the stories on this particular theme that you need to read.”

Read the whole thing at SF Signal!

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Interview: Nick Sagan

[Note: This interview first appeared in Science Fiction Weekly in 2006.]

Nick Sagan is the son of astronomer Carl Sagan and artist/writer Linda Salzman.  He was born in Boston, MA in 1970, and grew up in Ithaca, NY and Los Angeles, CA. Prior to becoming a novelist, he worked for several years in Hollywood, writing scripts for a variety of projects, including several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.  His novels include Idlewild (2003), Edenborn (2004), and Everfree (2006).  You can visit his website at www.nicksagan.com.

Science Fiction Weekly interviewed Sagan via e-mail in April 2006. (more…)

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Interview with Tim Pratt

SCI FI Weekly just published a Q&A interview I did with Tim Pratt. Here’s a snippet:

What would you do with a zombie army?

Pratt: My house would be kept so clean! Except for the bits of zombie falling off here and there. Seriously, though, what wouldn’t I do? Zombies for all the menial tasks I hate! (Nothing involving food prep, natch, but yardwork? Definitely.) Plus, I would have the single greatest haunted house in the world each Halloween.
 

Read the whole interview!

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"Retrospect" by Ann Miller

image Ann Miller, whose story "Retrospect" appears in the February 2008 issue of F&SF, said in an interview that the story actually started as a poem. "I was fooling around with the idea of how different books, if they were sent back in time, would change history and working with the play of ideas when I realized I’d need a larger vehicle to explore the concept properly," she said. "The first line of the story was initially the first line of my poem."

The story concerns a fledging auction agent who unwittingly gets involved with a circle of book lovers who are considering sending a book back in time, Miller said. "As the story develops, the protagonist discovers that the glittering world he has chosen, of high-stakes auction and finance, cannot sustain him and he gravitates toward his new circle of friends whom he feels are more genuine," she said. "They also ultimately betray him, and the unfolding of the narrative involves the choice the protagonist makes, given these experiences, when history has been changed and he has the chance to change it back."

(more…)

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"Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita" by James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle

image James D. Macdonald, whose story written in collaboration with his wife Debra Doyle, "Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita," appears in the February 2008 issue of F&SF, said in an interview that the story is about a scholar in search of a rare book. "With overtones of paranoia and undertones of unresolved sexual tension," he said. "It’s also an origin story for one of the non-protagonists but major supporting characters in [our novel] Land of Mist and Snow."

The origin of the story, Macdonald said, comes from a line in Land of Mist and Snow, in which one of the characters, Captain William R. Sharps, USN, says, in a letter to Commodore Vanderbilt: "I found the lost ur-text of the Grey Book (in the wine cellar of a fortress in Carpatho-Ruthenia — an amusing story, worth telling over brandy and cigars, but not germane to my present communication), and bent my energies toward transcribing and translating those portions which had been purged from the younger MSS."

But the reader never does hear that "amusing story" in the course of the novel, Macdonald said. "In fact, I had no idea when writing the novel what the story was that he had to tell. But that line sat in the back of my mind and the story asked to be told."

(more…)

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"If Angels Fight" by Richard Bowes

image Richard Bowes, whose story "If Angels Fight" appears in the February 2008 issue of F&SF, said in an interview that the story was inspired by a trip he and his sister made to the old neighborhood. "It brought back a lot of memories including the politicians. I knew kids whose fathers were in politics. But politics was almost like popular entertainment–everyone knew about it, talked about it, rated politicians," Bowes said. "And the Kennedy family was a constant presence. JFK’s mother came from there. It was where her father, ‘Honey Fitzgerald’ had his mansion, until it burned down one night. Her relatives still lived in the neighborhood. The story’s roots were my trying to give a feeling for that lost, almost mythic moment. John F. Kennedy himself makes and appearance as an impatient young senator who’d just had to attend an aging relative’s birthday party."

"If Angels Fight" starts with the unnamed narrator being asked by Carol Bannon, the scion of a Boston political dynasty to help her find her long lost brother Mark who was a childhood friend of the narrator. "The narrator has helped the family with this several times over the years. The difficulty tracing Mark Bannon is that to all intents and purposes he died some years before," Bowes said. "The rest of the story is the narrators search in the byways of intrigue and politics and his memories of Irish Boston in the 1950’s when politics was a sport, a hobby, a way of life."

(more…)

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