As for journals, I love the journals of Henry David Thoreau and Virginia Woolf, and often feel they are the whole story as far as literature goes; they are novels written as first person hyperrealist accounts of a single consciousness, say. And we don’t have any other novels that come even close to doing what they do as far as getting inside the head of another human being—except possibly for Proust’s novel. So they are considerable works of literature in that sense and I often wonder if a journal would be the best way to go if you were intent to do this particular thing, which it seems to me most literature does indeed want to do. But neither Woolf nor Thoreau had kids. There’s a time problem here, and also it takes a certain mentality to keep at it year after year, which is what is required. Also, with both of them, when really bad things happened, their journals went silent, usually for months and sometimes for years. So there seems to be some kind of problem there with what the journal can actually face up to, as a form. Maybe.
I know that you write and publish poetry. Have you published outside the SF field? Have you published fiction outside the field?
No, all my poetry is stuck inside my stories and books. It helps me to think of my poems as being by someone else. And all my fiction has been published in SF magazines or books, although sometimes brought out as “general fiction,” by my publisher, but booksellers know which section to put it in after it’s off the front tables.
Are there special “chops” for writing SF? Are there ways in which SF is less demanding?
I don’t know, I guess there are some techniques particular to SF, maybe the ways in which the future background is conveyed, or something like that. I can’t imagine it’s less demanding than any other kind of fiction, it feels about as demanding as I can handle, anyway. My near future and my farther future stories feel about the same in terms of writing, although I will say that when I came back from years on Mars to write about Antarctica, it was a huge relief to have other people making up the culture for me, rather than trying to do it all myself. In that sense I think SF is a bit harder. But it’s all hard, and none of it is “realism,” so I think distinctions here are very fuzzy.
What part of the process of writing fiction do you like best? Least? Is there a process to writing fiction?
I like the writing. These days I write only novels, and I like most the last three to six months of writing a novel, when I bear down and really go at it like a maniac. There is a real joy to be had in submitting to a task like a madman. It feels like things are coming together, and the process is one of identifying problems and then solving them on the spot, and then moving on. So there is a problem-solving aspect to it that reminds me of hiking cross country in Sierra, where every step is a decision, like every word coming up in a sentence. You get into a flow and then it’s problem, solution, problem, solution, and that goes on at a smooth good pace for a long time, and at the end you’re somewhere else. Often when in this flow state I will have a couple of hours pass and it feels like only about fifteen minutes have passed, and that I take it is the blessed state, the Zen state, prayer, what have you. Writing as hiking a prayer.
The part I like least.... Well, first draft when faced with a hard idea can be tough. It makes you feel stupid. But I have learned to ignore that and grind on, and so it’s not so bad once you get in the habit. I don’t much like dealing with editorial comments, but truthfully, my editors now are so good that that part is not so unpleasant either, because it’s helping the book and that always feels good. I like readings. I don’t like the wasted time associated with business travel, but this is not a very bad thing either. I guess I mostly like all of it. I don’t like people telling me what fiction is or is not, in the sense of what I can or cannot do (see below).
Do you research and then write, or do the two overlap?
I usually research as I am writing, on a need to know basis. If I did my research first, I would never get started writing. I call this the Coleridge Problem, because he listed all the things he would need to learn before he could write his epic poem, and he never wrote his epic poem. And I find the research is so much more effective when it is specifically to support a particular scene or chapter. So in the Mars books, the Years of Rice and Salt, and the climate books, I researched as I wrote and it worked very well to suggest to me what the scenes needed, or better, how they could be extended or made even more interesting. It’s a good stimulus to fiction, researching on the fly.
Where did the idea of Years of Rice and Salt come from? That’s got to be one of the great UNDISCOVERED high concept ideas of SF. Mostly we recycle old ones (apocalypse, first contact, etc). Was that a ‘eureka’ moment, or did it just leak in from somewhere?
Thanks, I like that idea myself. It came to me in the late 70s, and it was indeed a kind of AH HA moment, in that I was thinking about alternative histories, wanting ideas, and thought of the one for “The Lucky Strike” too, and looking over the alternative histories I decided what was needed was the most major change you could think of, that did not simply change the game so much that it wiped away everything. Because you want comparison. So that Harry Harrison’s novel in which dinosaurs evolve to high intelligence instead of mammals, is an alternative history in a way, but not—useless as such, because the comparisons are invalidated by the fact that the difference there is too huge to be able to play the game. So I was thinking, well what would be the biggest change that would still work in terms of comparison to our history, and it seemed to me that Europe’s conquering the world was so big that if it hadn’t happened—and then it hit me, and I said Wow and ran to write it down quick before I forgot it and ended up wandering around moaning saying I had a good idea, I had a good idea but I can’t remember it now, it won’t come back—which has sometimes happened to me.
So, once I had the idea, I knew I couldn’t write it, that what it implied was beyond what I was capable of expressing. I wondered if I would ever be capable of such a thing (I have a couple of good ideas I’ve never written because I can’t think how to yet), but after the Mars novels I figured I had worked out the method, and I was feeling bold. I’m glad I wrote it when I did; I don’t know if I have the brain cells for it now. Although that’s partly that book’s fault, because I blew out some fuses writing that one that were never replaced.
Antarctica. You were there. Was that scary, or just fun?
It was fun. I was having fun every waking moment, and I seldom slept. It was so beautiful, and alien; like being on another planet.
I did have one scary twenty minutes, when we were in a Kiwi helicopter, pilot about twenty-eight, a real vet, and co-pilot about twenty-four, and we were trying to fly around Ross Island’s north end to get from Cape Crozier back to McMurdo, rather than taking the straight route around the south end; and we were flying toward a cloud bank and the co-pilot, flying, said to the pilot, “you don’t want me to fly into that do you?” and there was a silence of about ten seconds before the pilot said “No,” and we turned around. But then we had about twenty minutes flying back toward Cape Crozier, where it wasn’t clear that the winds would allow us to land. Under us was black water with orca pods visible (very cool before) and the very steep snowy side of Ross Island. And there are a fair number of crashed helicopters still half-buried in snow all over Ross Island and the dry valleys, so we knew what could happen. In the end the co-pilot stuck the landing straight into the wind at Cape Crozier and we retired to the penguin scientists’ hut there and hung out for twenty-four hours until the winds died down.
Other than that, it was heaven. I would love to go back.
You’re pretty good at landscape. What’s that about? Is it a fictional skill or something else entirely? You’re also pretty good at erotic scenes.
Thanks. I like landscapes and think they are worth some sentences to describe. Also, I’ve seen some landscapes and paid attention when in them, so that I feel I can bring something new to the page when I write them, something I saw myself rather than read in a book. There are a fair
number of writers who write down only things they have learned in books, and in their personal relationships. They think that being nifty or tasteful with the word combinations is enough to make it good writing, but I’m not so sure. I think new perceptions out of the world are better. So this is something I can bring.
As for erotic scenes, I decided long ago that I wasn’t going to put violence in my stories just to jazz up the plots, like Hollywood and TV—that that was fake too, it was all out of books and TV and movies, and the writers didn’t know what they were talking about, and if I tried I wouldn’t either. It’s guesswork, it’s lazy, it’s a cheat. So, but fiction these days and maybe always is pretty reliant on sex and violence, and so without violence, that left sex. Everyone’s an expert there, so the test for writing about it is finding ways to make it sexy. That’s not easy, but it is fun to try.
Someone once described your Mars books as an infodump
tunneled by narrative moles. I think it was a compliment. What do you think?
No, not a compliment. I reject the word “infodump” categorically—that’s a smartass word out of the cyberpunks’ workshop culture, them thinking that they knew how fiction works, as if it were a tinker toy they could disassemble and label superciliously, as if they knew what they were doing. Not true in any way. I reject “expository lump” also, which is another way of saying it. All these are attacks on the idea that fiction can have any kind of writing included in it. It’s an attempt to say “fiction can only be stage business” which is a stupid position I abhor and find all too common in responses on amazon.com and the like. All these people who think they know what fiction is, where do they come from? I’ve been writing it for thirty years and I don’t know what it is, but what I do know is that the novel in particular is a very big and flexible form, and I say, or sing: Don’t fence me in!
I say, what’s interesting is whatever you can make interesting. And the world is interesting beyond our silly stage business. So “exposition” creeps in. What is it anyway? It’s just another kind of narrative. One thing I believe: it’s all narrative. Once you get out of the phone book anyway, it’s all narrative.
And in science fiction, you need some science sometimes; and science is expository; and so science fiction without exposition is like science fiction without science, and we have a lot of that, but it’s not good. So the word “infodump” is like a red flag to me, it’s a Thought Police command saying “Dumb it down, quit talking about the world, people don’t have attention spans, blah blah blah blah.” No. I say, go read Moby Dick, Dostoevsky, Garcia Marquez, Jameson, Bahktin, Joyce, Sterne—learn a little bit about what fiction can do and come back to me when you’re done. That would be never and I could go about my work in peace.
But I thought you liked infodumps.
I do! But let’s call them something different and also think of them differently. Think about all writing as narrative, because it is (outside the phone book and other such places). Scientific abstracts, TV Guide summaries, all writing has information that traverses time in the telling and in reality too, so it’s ALL narrative. So, okay, some of these omnipresent stories are about us, and some of these stories are about the rest of the world. And what I think the people who speak of “expository lumps” or the smart-asses who reduced that to “infodumps” are saying is, you can only talk about us. The proper study of mankind is man (Pope) etc., etc., well, that’s just silly. Why be so narcissistic? There are many, many stories that are extremely interesting that don’t happen to be about us. That’s what science is saying, often, and that’s what I’m saying in my science fiction. So, my Mars novels are a narrative, the story never stops for even a sentence, even in the list of tools that goes on for two pages, it’s just that sometimes it’s the story of the rocks and the tools and the weather, and sometimes it’s the story of the people there in interaction with all that. I know it reads a bit differently and freaks some people out, but I can see others like it as well. Even some of the people freaked out read on, irritated and mystified.
What do you think of the current state of Earth’s Mars enterprise?
Well, the robot landers are sending back some fantastic photos. And the orbiting satellites. A balloon floating at low altitude and taking good photos and moving images would be mind-boggling too. As for human landings, those would be exciting, but they seem a long way off; I don’t know if we are going to see them in our lifetimes. But I don’t think there’s any hurry there. I’m not in the group who says we have to go there fast to save our civilization, etc. I don’t believe it’s true. We need a healthy Earth and a sustainable civilization, and the Mars project will come. So it may be some time.
How come you only drive Fords?
Ha, well, my dad worked for Ford Aerospace and so he got to buy Fords at dealer cost or lower, and his family too, and this was therefore something he could do for us. I’ve driven a Cortina, an Escort station wagon, and a Focus station wagon, those have been good cars, and my wife has driven two Tauruses, we won’t talk about those. I want my next car to be a little electric station wagon that I can sleep in the back and fit in my bikes and bales of hay. If Ford makes one, fine. If not I may be off somewhere else.
You’re a big supporter of Clarion, the science fiction “boot-camp” workshop. Why?
I’m a big Clarion supporter because I tried to express my thanks to a dead person. Maybe not the best idea.
Clarion gave me a six-week party and a group of good friends, a cohort, a block party in the small town that is science fiction. It gave me tangible evidence that I was serious about becoming a writer, and taught me a lot of craft points, some of which I agreed with, others not. It gave me some time with six fine writers and people (Delany, Wolfe, Zelazny, Haldeman, Knight and Wilhelm) whom I’ve read with intense interest and pleasure ever since.
What do you think of the current MFA-in-writing boom? Do you think working in a commercial field (like SF) sharpens or dilutes a writer’s vision?
I think getting an MFA in creative writing is a bad idea. If you want a graduate degree to help get a job, then the PhD is stronger and gives you more options. With an MFA you need also publishing credits to get a job, so it is not sufficient in itself, as a PhD is, and it only gives you a chance at teaching writing anyway, not all literature. So it’s weak in that sense. If you are going for that MFA in order to learn more about writing, I’d say any other graduate degree will give you more raw material for your writing, while you can teach yourself writing on your own; you will be anyway.
I don’t know what working in a commercial field does to a writer’s vision. A lot of the effect must be unconscious. Ultimately you seem to be saying, does the desire for readers change what you write? Surely it must. But isn’t the desire for readers pretty basic to writing? So, maybe it sharpens your vision, in those terms.
Have you ever thought of yourself as part of a “school” in SF? Did it last? Was it fun?
Oh I hate all literary schools, not just the ones in SF but everywhere. In science fiction they are particularly small and stupid: marketing ploys, herding instincts, white guys wishing they were back in high school and were the tough guys smoking cigarettes out in the parking lot—that’s a deeply stupid thing to wish for—gee, I wish I was back in high school. Sorry, but no.
I was called “literary science fiction” for a while, that’s the kiss of death in terms of sales, then I was a victim of certain cyberpunks’ need to have somebody to mug to show they were punks, that was fine, but a “school” was invented to “oppose” them in a rumble like the Sharks and the Jets, so then I was a “humanist,” that was dumb; then I wrote the Mars books and I was suddenly “hard SF,” but hard sf is only hard in its attitude toward the poor, in other words right wing, so that didn’t seem to fit very well, even though I talked about technology. Now people have given up. Sometimes I am called “utopian SF” but that could not be a school, as there is only you and me and Ursula in it: a study group more than a school. Well, I jus
t don’t believe in them. I believe in science fiction, which is a kind of small town in literature, not highly regarded by big city people, but I like it, and I like the big city too. The whole point is to be as idiosyncratic as possible, the town madman. Although in our town that’s a tough label to earn.
Were you ever close to any of the “old-timers” in SF? Which ones? What did you get from them?
Not really close, but I loved the several interactions I had with Jack Williamson, one of the kindest, smartest people in writing, modest but incisive. He published science fiction from 1928 to 2008—isn’t that eighty years? I’m having trouble believing my math. Anyway he was great.
I’ve met Asimov and Bradbury, and talked with Clarke on the phone, and they are all generous friendly people. I guess I get from them the sense that the community is a real community, that the people in it function like neighbors in a small town, helpful to the young people.
Your first big trilogy was the Orange County (Wild Shore ) series. Did you feel you owed that to your birthplace or was it because Orange County California somehow concentrates all the tendencies good and bad in modern America?
That trilogy is called Three Californias, as the handsome Tor trade paperbacks say. I guess it was a little of both. I wanted to ground some of my science fiction in my actual home town, and I also felt like I was the beneficiary of a lucky coincidence, in that my home town seemed to me to represent some kind of end case for America, some kind of future already here for the rest of the country to witness and hopefully avoid following. I’m not sure that was a true perception, but it had to do with the westward movement in American history, and the fact that when people reached the Pacific there was no where else to go, so the leading edge of malcontents and dreamers was stuck there and had to make something of it. LA is the big exemplar of how that can go wrong, San Francisco how it can go right, and Orange County is like the purest expression of LA. And in my time it was so beautiful, then it was so destroyed, and it was so drugged out; it seemed a good spot to talk about America, so I used it. It still feels like a lucky thing, and I think it was fundamental to me becoming a science fiction writer in the first place. When I ran into science fiction at age eighteen, I said, Oh I recognize this, this is home, this is Orange County.
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