1. How old were you when you started reading
SF? Do you remember a turning point when you knew you were "hooked?"
If so, what influenced you?
If you count Edgar Rice Burroughs, I started about the age of six
or seven. And I got turned on to imaginative fictions by reading my way
through Andrew Lang's various volumes of fairy tales (Blue Book, Red Book,
and then the climactic Gold Book) when I was in the second grade. But my
first contact with real SF began about 1932 when I was nine years old and
discovered a used magazine store in downtown Kansas City. My father and
my uncles had been bringing home the pulp hero magazines such as DOC SAVAGE,
THE SHADOW, OPERATOR #5, THE SPIDER, G8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES, etc., and
I learned that I could trade them two-for-one to Andy at his used-magazine
store, and he had all those dusty stacks of ASTOUNDING STORIES, WONDER
STORIES, AMAZING STORIES, that he'd rather sell for a nickel each, but
I had more magazines than nickels. These magazines had all the adventure
of the pulp hero magazines but a quality of idea as well, and I was hooked.
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2. Do you read any works of SF repeatedly? If so, what are they and
why those particular works?
I don't have time to go back to favorites, and the unread ones, of
which there are many, are always more enticing. But I did re-read some
Burroughs when I was working on ALTERNATE WORLDS and Wells and Verne and
some of the other greats, and I re-read almost all of Asimov's novels when
I worked on ISAAC ASIMOV: THE FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE FICTION.
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3. Do you see any particular time period as "the" golden age
of SF?
I belong to the age group that lived through the 1937-1950 period
as the Golden Age. I had picked up FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES when it first
came out in 1939, with all the marvelous old Munsey All-Story and Argosy
reprints, and I began getting into ASTOUNDING occasionally, but the major
discovery came when I returned from service and discovered all the great
anthologies that began appearing in 1946 and reprinted all the golden age
stories: ADVENTURES IN TIME AND SPACE, THE BEST OF SCIENCE FICTION, A TREASURY
OF SCIENCE FICTION, and the rest. I realized that 1937-1950 was a period
when Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, and van Vogt were introduced and at their
peak, along with other great writers, and that then everyone knew what
SF was and where to find it (in the pages of ASTOUNDING). Although there
have been many great stories and magazines since (FANTASY AND SF, for instance,
and GALAXY that may have been offered work--and places to be published--that
were closer to what I wanted to read and to write), 1937-1950 was the Golden
Age.
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4. Is there a particular field of SF that you personally prefer? Any
authors that you read regularly (other than the ones you've taught in your
classes at KU)?
I like hard science fiction written humanely--that is, solidly based
on science and rigorous scientific speculation, but written with a sensitivity
to language and character. I like anyone who writes in this fashion, Gregory
Benford, Greg Bear, David Brin, Robert Silverberg, for instance, but I
like others who tend more toward the soft sciences, such as Ursula K. Le
Guin, Brian W. Aldiss (who can be rigorous as in his HELLICONIA trilogy),
William Swanwick, Connie Willis, and lots of others.
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5. Do you have a mentor? Who has influenced you most in your work?
I never had anybody who worked closely with me. Caroline Gordon,
who gave a writers workshop at the University of Kansas back in the 1950s,
taught me a great deal about style and structure, and I have picked up
many things from reading other authors, from Asimov, Heinlein, Simak, Pohl,
and many others. But I mostly was self-taught. I'm not sure how good a
student I would have been, but it is ironic that I have spent a great deal
of my career teaching fiction writing!
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6. You've had a varied career but much of it seems to have revolved
around SF. What has been the most satisfying aspect of what you've done
over the years?
I've done a great many things, as you say, and I have enjoyed all
of them, directing public relations, teaching SF and fiction writing, writing
about SF, but any fiction writer would have to say that there is nothing
more satisfying than a story or book that works well.
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7. What is the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University
of Kansas and your role in it?
The Center for the Study of Science Fiction was founded in 1982 to
bring together the various programs at the University of Kansas in the
classroom, in Special Collections, in conferences and summer programs,
and special projects. It was renamed in honor of our parents, J. Wayne
and Elsie M. Gunn, after the death of our father in 1990, when my brother,
Dr. Richard W. Gunn, endowed the Center in their honor. It provides a focus
for programs in teaching and scholarship, particularly the Intensive English
Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction, the Writers Workshop in Science
Fiction, the Campbell Conference, and the Campbell and Sturgeon Awards
and the SF and Fantasy Hall of Fame, all of which take place in the summer,
in July. People can check out the details on the Center's website: falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~sfcenter/
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8. You've recently returned to writing for a non-academic audience.
What projects are 'in the works'? Will you be focusing on fiction?
I have updated and expanded the other volumes of THE ROAD TO SCIENCE
FICTION (#1 and #2), and they should be published within the next year
or so. I also have finished #5, which is about British SF, and that should
be published early in 1998. I also have finished a millennial novel, CATASTROPHE!,
which should be available in hard cover early in 1998. I'm also working
with a couple of producers about possible film adaptations, and I want
to get back to writing stories again. Maybe another novel, but I'm not
working on anything yet.
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9. The Road to SF made many older works available to new audiences.
Are there any authors that have been neglected that you'd like to see reintroduced
to today's audience? Was your purpose in putting together the Road to SF
to ensure that many of these works wouldn't simply be 'lost'?
I think there is a big problem in that new readers of SF and fantasy
get the illusion that the genres began when they started reading, and thus
have a limited background for judging the originality and quality of what
they read. I created THE ROAD TO SF as a textbook primarily, and secondarily
as a resource for the general reader; I had come to the conclusion that
the best way to teach SF was through the short stories, and that the best
approach was historical--that is to define SF by example and to show what
it is by how it got to be what it is. I feel that a reader who knows where
his reading comes from and how it got to be what it is today can appreciate
a story or a book in a different way (and to my mind a better way) than
the one who doesn't have that kind of knowledge. There are hundreds of
authors and stories that readers of SF ought to be familiar with; many
are forgotten today and ought to be rediscovered, too many to name individually.
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10. Are you concerned about recent changes in the publishing and book
distribution industry in terms of the future of SF? Do you see electronic
media having an impact on the SF field?
I am concerned--see my article on "The Year in SF" in NEBULA
AWARDS 30. Magazine circulations are declining, and the readership is aging.
The major publishers are focusing on a few big, best-seller books and a
great many fantasy and SF trilogies. There still are as many excellent
books as ever, but they have become more difficult to find, and the so-called
mid-list novels are harder and harder to place. Anything out of the ordinary,
that may be difficult to promote to an identifiable audience, is rejected.
SF people, as a group, should try to support those publishers who are keeping
classics and older titles in print (and maintaining a sense of history)--who
are filling in, that is, the gap left for mid-list books--and to promote
readership by young people, publishers such as White Wolf, for instance.
Work with high schools to supply their libraries with books, talk to English
classes about SF, introduce young people to the joys of reading and the
special joys of reading SF. Books are even better than SF movies and TV.
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11. Are you a SF collector of any kind?
I never set out to be a collector and I have never understood the
fascination with autographs, even though I have signed many, but a love
of books has meant that I have acquired books over the past half-century
and kept most of them. Now I am in the process of giving them to Special
Collections at the University of Kansas, so that they can be used by other
people, particularly students of the genre.
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12. Are you involved in SF fandom?
When I was growing up, I never knew about fandom, never even met
anyone else who read SF--much less wrote it. My only contact with fans
was reading their letters in the magazines, and my only contact with editors
was sending them stories and getting their responses. My first contact
with fandom was when I persuaded my employers, book publishers in Racine,
Wisconsin, to send me to the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago
in 1952--and suddenly I was overwhelmed by meeting and talking with many
of the writers and editors I had been reading and sending stories to. I
went to half a dozen conventions thereafter, eventually became a member
of First Fandom, and have maintained my ties with fandom ever since, although
these days I don't get to many conventions outside of the local one in
Kansas City.
12. +1. What advice would you give to aspiring SF writers?
Dedication is as important as talent. Becoming a good writer means
sacrificing a great many other worthwhile ways to spend your time, and
it has to matter more than those, even if you never become really successful.
Then you have to work at it, writing regularly whether you feel like it,
whether you feel inspired, whatever. Revise to make it better. Write what
you like to read; become intimately familiar with it; and submit what you
have written to editors, sending it out again when it gets rejected. Finally,
understand that the hard-worked editor's strategy is to say "no"
fast, so that he or she can get through a stack of ms. as quickly as possible
and maybe find something worth publishing; so the writer's strategy has
to be "don't give the editor a reason to say 'no.'" Know what
you're doing, demonstrate your authority, write something involving and
prepare it in full consciousness of what being a professional means. Make
what you submit impossible to put down. Then you'll get published.
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