The Lucky Strike

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.