Gene Wolfe Interview
conducted 3/20/94
by [1]Brendan Baber
Q: What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?
GW: Plausibility, really. Science fiction is what you can make people
believe; fantasy is what people have to suspend disbelief for. Many
physicists believe that there will never be a faster-than-light drive --
it's impossible. But you can make people believe in one, since they don't
know much physics. And there are some physicists who believe it is
possible. If you talk about somebody genetically engineering unicorns,
it's probably fantasy, because people don't believe in it. But it's so
close that you can almost touch it; we're almost at the point where we can
make a unicorn.
So it's all a matter of plausibility. Do people think, "The future might
be like this?" If so, it's science fiction. If they think, "This could
never happen," that's fantasy.
Q: Magic realism?
GW: Magic realism is fantasy written by [2]people who speak Spanish.
Q: Horror?
GW: Horror is all over the map. It's one of those umbrella things, where
you can write any type of material with "horrific" elements, call it
horror and sell it as horror. Read the complete works of Stephen King, and
you'll find fantasy written as horror, science fiction written as horror,
horror written as horror, autobiography written as horror, and so forth.
Q: Why write books at all?
GW: The easy, cheap answer is, "To make money."
Q: There are better ways to make money.
GW: Yes. If you're trying to make money you shouldn't do anything as
chancy and hard as writing books.
The only real answer is that you can't help it. A real writer writes for
the same reason a real songbird sings. Somehow it's in them to do it, so
they do it. A human singer, for that matter, who can't make a dime
singing, will sing in the church choir, sing at parties and sing every
chance he or she gets. They like doing it.
I like writing. It's hard work. I get tired doing it. I've been writing
five pages a day, and that is a lot; it takes a lot out of me. But I can
come back to it the next day and still like it.
Q: How have you contributed to or changed science fiction?
GW: Oh lord, I don't know that I have. That's the kind of thing you ought
to ask John Clute, for example. I've tried to do things that seemed to me
should be done and nobody had done yet. But everybody who's worth reading
is trying to do exactly that.
Q: What are those things that you've tried to do?
GW: Oh for heaven's sake -- I had to lead with my chin like that.
I've tried to use a lot of standard scenery and props of science fiction
in a new way, and I have tried to rip off a lot of rubbish we inherited
from the utopian and dystopian novels.
Q: Rip off?
GW: I don't mean steal; I mean tear it off and throw it away.
Utopias in the utopian novels work because everyone is good and
reasonable. But everybody is never going to be good and reasonable and
want utopia to work.
Q: Except on Star Trek.
GW: There you are. The dystopian novel is just the other side of that:
Everybody is lousy and rotten in all their relationships, and they're
lousy and rotten to everyone they know. There are probably some people who
really are that bad, but there aren't very many of them, and most rotten
people are only rotten selectively. They're not lousy and rotten to their
kids, or they are, but they're nice to their drinking buddies.
Q: So the goal is to make complex character? How would you describe that?
GW: I think that's what real human character is. I used to argue this with
Damon Knight when we were still friends. Damon felt that you should write
science fiction primarily by reading other science fiction and thinking
about how the author should have done it. I felt that you should write
science fiction primarily by sitting in a place like this and looking out
in the street -- looking at the real world and saying, "What's going to
happen, what might happen, what would happen if."
Both approaches can produce good stories, and I honestly think that Damon
was using my approach some and I used Damon's some. There were some
instances where I had read a story, and I said, "Gee, that's a great
story, but what he should have done is ..." And then I sit down and write
that story. Why not? And of course the other people are doing that to me.
Why not? That's the way we play the game. I hit the ball over the net and
they hit it back.
Q: But you're specifically interested in cross-pollination?
GW: Oh yeah -- to my detriment, at times. I wrote a book called Free Live
Free; it's a science fiction novel, a time-travel novel, and there's a
private eye. People say, "You can't do that. This is a science fiction
novel! You can't have a private eye."
So I say, "Look, there are real private eyes. Look in the phone book." My
father used to have a business partner who was a private eye. This is a
real business; it isn't just in the novels of Dashiell Hammett. As a
matter of fact, Hammett was a former private eye -- he was a Pinkerton.
And they say, "Well, you can't. And there's a witch in here! You can't
have a witch in a science fiction novel!"
And I say, "Yeah, well I've had witches give me their business cards."
They're real people. They're around here. Go to the nearest occult
bookstore, strike up conversations with the customers. I'll bet you hit a
witch within the first ten conversations. Okay, so I've got one in my
story.
And they say, "Oh, you can't do that. You're mixing genres."
I'm not trying to write genres, I'm trying to write a book.
Q: And yet the genre of science fiction has been good to you.
GW: Oh sure. Absolutely. So what? I write a book or a story, and I write
it the way I think it ought to be written. Then I say, "Where can I sell
this?"
Q: What's available to an adult, adventurous reader in science fiction?
Why should they read that genre? Why should they move past realism?
GW: The adventurous reader has probably already moved past realism. I
realize that sounds like a smart remark, but I mean past the kind of
fiction that is called "realism" as a literary genre, and that's what it
is: a literary genre. It is archtypically the story about the college
professor who is married to the other college professor.
Did you read [3]Ursula K. LeGuin's novel, [4]The Dispossessed? It was
about the college professor who's married to a college professor, only
science fiction, and this planet is Russia and this planet is the United
States. When I read it I was so disappointed. I'd had a dozen people tell
me how wonderful it was.
Q: Yeah, I heard that too. Then I read it.
GW: I've read that book before; I've read it as realism many a time. It's
a John Updike kind of book. I've read that story so many times ... now I
read a book until I can recognize the story, and say, "This is what it
is," and that's as far as it goes, since I have no urge to finish it. I'm
long past feeling so guilty that I have to finish everything I start. I
don't finish ninety percent of what I start.
Look, the reason someone should go past that sort of realism is that it is
narrow, stultifying and ultimately false.
Q: And the fantastic genres aren't?
GW: No, not the better stuff. We're dealing with the truth of the human
experience, as opposed to what we are willing to accept from other people.
Q: Wait, I don't see that distinction. The truth of experiences versus
other people's experiences?
GW: That you are willing to accept.
Q: You must forgive me; I don't follow that.
GW: I mean that if you were to tell me the pivotal events of your life, as
they actually occurred, I wouldn't believe you. And vice-versa.
Q: [laughs] That's a pretty radical viewpoint!
GW: I think it's the truth. Have you ever tried telling people the pivotal
events of your life, as they actually occurred?
Q: Usually edited down so they'll believe it.
GW: See? See? Okay.
Q: But that's a pretty radical point.
GW: You're dumbing it down for the audience! Let's write literature in
which we don't dumb it down. Let's "smart" it up.
Q: That's a wild spin on reality ...
GW: Yeah. There's a great scene in one of [Neil Gaiman's] Sandman books.
Do you remember the Emperor of America?
Q: Emperor Norton the first.
GW: Yes. And there's a scene in one of the Sandman books where he and
Death are walking off into the sunset, and she's wearing his hat. That's
real. Yeah.
Q: So realism is dumbed-down reality?
GW: It's a dumbed-down part of reality -- an acceptable part. It's
mid-twentieth century upper-middle-class reality.
Q: Would you call it "materialism"?
GW: It is materialistic, but it's not materialism. Materialism is one of
those things that's so barren you can't do much with it.
There was a materialist philosophy student who used to write to me, and
would argue all of this stuff. He'd get enormously mad. (Do you know
Tree's Law? Sir Tree, the famous British actor, coined the law, "Madmen
write eight-page letters.") So this guy would send me these philosophical
tracts, and they were full of outrageous pieces of bullshit, like,
"Everybody wants to live!"
And I would say, "A guy jumps off an eighteen-story building. What could
he do to convince you that he wants to die?" I tried to get him to answer
that question, and of course he wouldn't. He'd dodge around, and he'd get
madder and madder.
So he'd say, "A piece of paper is really just hydrogen and oxygen and six
other elements, and that's all it is."
And I said, "I believe it's actually a piece of paper."
And he'd say, "No no no, it's a bunch of elements!"
So I wrote him, and said, "Okay, but remember now, every day of your life
you'll have to adopt my viewpoint to live, to go down to the store and buy
a ream of paper."
Then he said, "We cannot get along without logic."
Hell, half the people I know are getting along without logic! Most of 'em
are doing just fine! All of the animals do it, except on a very basic
level. No, the one thing that we really can't get along without is the
realization that a piece of paper is a piece of paper. If you're a mouse
you've got to say, "That's cheese. Nobody's fooling me about that. That's
not chemicals, it's not gas, it's not some sort of fake cheese. I know
cheese."
That's what you've got to do to live on the animal level.
Q: Identifying things in their relationships? On a "thing" level? Knowing
what's useful, what's functional, what you need?
GW: Knowing what it is. It is paper. It is cheese.
What I realized -- years after this correspondence was over -- the thing
that made him the way he was, was that he had never tried to take the
piece of paper, and reduce it into carbon and hydrogen and whatever. If he
had done that he would have learned that it was really a piece of paper,
because he would have found out how resistant it was to being broken down.
Go into a laboratory, start working on it with re-agents or heat or
whatever, and break it down into its constituent elements. That's how you
learn that the theoretical stuff is all very well, but you're going to get
an awful lot of glassware dirty.
It's a thing garage mechanics know. It's the difference between them and
politicians.
Q: Who's exciting in science fiction right now?
GW: You're asking the worst person in the world. Just possibly, [5]Robert
Devaroux. He's written a kind of pornographic horror novel, and a
wonderful story about a divorce between two clowns. The clown story is
perfect as it stands, a monument for all time. The horror novel has all
sorts of stuff wrong with it, but it's the kind of stuff you get when
somebody has so much talent that they get published before he really ought
to be. You know what I mean? Things are going too easy for him. Sometimes
that's fatal, of course, but I hope not. He has an enormous amount of
talent.
Q: Who are the science fiction authors living in Chicago?
GW: Phyllis Eisenstein is here. [6]Algis Budrys is here. He's editing his
own magazine now -- Tomorrow -- and I've been told that many of the
stories are Budrys writing under pseudonyms. I don't know it for a fact,
but when I look at the table of contents there are a lot of names I don't
recognize.
Budrys was involved in the Writers of the Future Contest for years and
years.
Q: So he'd have the resources.
GW: He's in contact with tons of people who won prizes in it and never
made a mark since.
Q: That's too bad.
GW: In most cases it's simple justice. The stuff they were writing and
sending around wasn't that good. People do that, and they do it for years.
Sometimes they make a breakthrough, and they do a good deal better.
Q: You had that period, didn't you?
GW: Oh sure, absolutely -- something like six years between the time I
started writing and the time I sold anything. For one thing, I was sending
stuff to markets where I had absolutely no chance. You know, I was sending
fantasy and science fiction stories to [7]Atlantic Monthly. With new
writers, you're so close to the material that you can't see it for what it
is.
Q: Seeing it for what it is ... that goes back to the point you were
making earlier.
GW: Oh, yes, it does. You see it as hydrogen or something -- floats right
off the table!
Q: [laughs] Hmmm ... what do you think of Chicago? Do you like the place?
Does being a writer in Chicago do anything for you?
GW: I like it as much as any city I know. I have an urge to get away from
it and be a rural writer, but that's not Chicago's fault; that's something
in me. The Tribune shines and stinks. It may be the worst thing about
Chicago, but Dan Rostenkowski is a runner-up.
Q: He got re-elected, you know.
GW: Oh yes, I know he did. But Chicago has a great deal going for it. A
lot. All you have to do is visit St. Louis and you realize what Chicago
has going for it. You know? It's paradaisical!
We used to have the most wonderful supermarket in the world in Barrington.
It was called Bockwinkles, and I'm sure you never heard of it. It was like
you had stepped into a higher order of reality. It was absolutely
incredible -- unbelievable. They moved in a baby grand piano and had a man
in evening clothes playing Christmas carols. They had a waterfall -- and
this is a supermarket. Everybody who worked there was good-looking.
Q: They only hired beautiful people?
GW: Yeah! Absolutely! The box-boy was handsome; the check-out girls looked
like they could be models or actresses! It closed, of course. It was too
good for the area it was in.
So Chicago is probably as good as it can be without going the way of
Bockwinkles. You've got to have a certain amount of dirt and noise and so
forth or else people are going to say, "This is fake." People would look
at that store, and say, "This is very high-priced," but it wasn't. It
wasn't any more expensive than anyplace else. But it was too good for them
to shop there.
Chicago is about as good as it can be without being so good that something
in us -- the thing that hates things that are extraordinarily good --
destroys it. The same thing is true of Sydney, Australia, which is a
beautiful city. I can't think of another American city that compares.
Seattle, perhaps.
Q: The thing in us that destroys the exceptionally good?
GW: Sure. It's a part of original sin. It's the desire for ugliness and
evil in human beings. Who was it that said, "Sex is only dirty if you do
it right?"
Q: Woody Allen.
GW: Ah! I didn't know who said it, but it's a great line. And it embodies
that entity. I wonder what Mia Farrow has to say about that.
What are the movies worth seeing?
Q: Hmmm ... I've missed most of the first-run films. I should make it out
to see them. Schindler's List is supposed to be very good.
GW: It's supposed to be great.
Q: The Piano is supposed to be very good.
GW: It's a very good romance novel done as cinema. If you're familiar with
the romance novel genre, you'll recognize all sorts of genre mechanisms in
it. It's very much a genre piece of writing. But people who aren't
familiar with the genre don't recognize it.
It's like the revenge play. Hamlet is a revenge play, but nobody knows
revenge plays. It's a genre work.
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Web Comments to: Paul Duggan
[9]pduggan@op.net
All contents copyright (c) 1994 Brendan Baber
email: [10]HerrBaber@aol.com
Used with permission
HTML and links by Paul Duggan Revised: August 20, 1996
URL: http://world.std.com/~pduggan/wolfeint.html
References
Visible links
1. mailto:HerrBaber@aol.com
2. http://www.ollusa.edu/alumni/alumni/latino/latinoh1.htm
3. http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/sf/leguin.html
4. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html
5. http://www.cat.pdx.edu/~caseyh/horror/author/devereaux.html
6. http://www.catch22.com/~espana/SFAuthors/SFB/Budrys,Algis.html
7. http://www.theatlantic.com/
8. http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfe.html
9. mailto:pduggan@op.net
10. mailto:HerrBaber@aol.com
He interrupted her. Close at hand is a stable where two beautiful ponies are kept. They are snowy white, and are consecrated to the goddess Ku-wanon, the deity of mercy, who is the presiding genius of the temple. They are in the care of a young girl, and it is considered a pious duty to feed them. Pease and beans are for sale outside, and many devotees contribute a few cash for the benefit of the sacred animals. If the poor beasts should eat a quarter of what is offered to them, or, rather, of what is paid for, they would soon die of overfeeding. It is shrewdly suspected that the grain is sold many times over, in consequence of a collusion between the dealers and the keeper of the horses. At all events, the health of the animals is regarded, and it would never do to give them all that is presented. On their return from the garden they stopped at a place where eggs are hatched by artificial heat. They are placed over brick ovens or furnaces, where a gentle heat is kept up, and a man is constantly on watch to see that the fire neither burns too rapidly nor too slowly. A great heat would kill the vitality of the egg by baking it, while if the temperature falls below a certain point, the hatching process does not go on. When the little chicks appear, they are placed under the care of an artificial mother, which consists of a bed of soft down and feathers, with a cover three or four inches above it. This cover has strips of down hanging from it, and touching the bed below, and the chickens nestle there quite safe from outside cold. The Chinese have practised this artificial hatching and rearing for thousands of years, and relieved the hens of a great deal of the monotony of life. He would not have it in the scabbard, and when I laid it naked in his hand he kissed the hilt. Charlotte sent Gholson for Ned Ferry. Glancing from the window, I noticed that for some better convenience our scouts had left the grove, and the prisoners had been marched in and huddled close to the veranda-steps, under their heavy marching-guard of Louisianians. One of the blue-coats called up to me softly: "Dying--really?" He turned to his fellows--"Boys, Captain's dying." Assuming an air of having forgotten all about Dick¡¯s rhyme, he went to his place in the seat behind Jeff and the instant his safety belt was snapped Jeff signaled to a farmer who had come over to investigate and satisfy himself that the airplane had legitimate business there; the farmer kicked the stones used as chocks from under the landing tires and Jeff opened up the throttle. ¡°Yes,¡± Dick supplemented Larry¡¯s new point. ¡°Another thing, Sandy, that doesn¡¯t explain why he¡¯d take three boys and fly a ship he could never use on water¡ªwith an amphibian right here.¡± Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie? And years of remorse and despair been your fate, That night was a purging. From thenceforward Reuben was to press on straight to his goal, with no more slackenings or diversions. "Is that you, Robin?" said a soft voice; and a female face was seen peeping half way down the stairs. HoMElãñÔóÂÜÀ³ó
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