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OtherRealms Issue 18 Part 03
Electronic OtherRealms #18
Fall, 1987
Part 3
An Interview with Mike Resnick
[This interview was held on October 25, 1986
on the Delphi timesharing system by Sysop
Mike Banks (Kzin) and other Delphi members.
If you are interested in joining the Science Fiction group,
the local access number can be located by dialing 800-544-4005.
Log onto the computer with account JOINFICTION and password URANUS
which will qualify you for a special discount]
Kzin> OK. It's my pleasure to introduce Mike Resnick, author of Tor's
current bestseller Santiago, the "Tales of the Galactic Midway Series,"
the "Velvet Comet Series," et al. Anything you want to say at the
start, Mike?
Resnick> Hello, all. No, I think I'll just start by answering
questions. After all the lectures I give, it's a pleasure not to have
to make an opening statement that is slyly geared to eliciting easy
questions.
Bob> Uh, excuse me, Mr. Resnick, but where do you get your ideas?
Resnick> I wish I knew. I got the notion for the carnival series from
The Elephant Man, which I felt left an interesting story untold. For
Walpurgis III, it was an argument with my wife. For Santiago, it was a
brief speech in the Leone film, Duck You Sucker!
Bob> Do they pop unbidden into your mind, or do you have to sit down
and think about them?
Resnick> Ideas are a dime a dozen. After you've been writing as long as
I have (25 years), they not only pop unbidden into your head, but
you've already sifted through and edited them by the time they make it
to your consciousness.
Ralph> Mike, what's the count on books you've written now?
Resnick> Ralph, I've written 19 SF books, and about 270 others, all but
a handful under pseudonyms.
Kzin> Walpurgis III is one of my favorites of yours.
Resnick> I had been writing a weekly column on the supernatural for 4
years, and had totally backgrounded a world that had been colonized by
Satanists. But I had no story to tell. Then one night Carol and I had
one of our few knock-down drag-outs. I stalked down the stairs thinking
that she was the most evil woman in the universe and before I hit the
bottom stair I had the story (and ran back to kiss her and tell her
so): What happens when a society that pays lip service to Evil is
confronted by Evil Incarnate?
Kzin> Great...especially in the mood you may have been in. Do you find
the story development more difficult than the inspiration?
Resnick> Certainly. Inspiration is easy; mechanics and technique are
more difficult. My own recurring problem is that I frequently choose
the wrong viewpoint character for the opening chapter, and then have to
totally rewrite it.
Kzin> ...made much easier with a word processor of course.
Bob> Of course... How many times do you find yourself rewriting a
story?
Resnick> This will sound like a glib answer: as many times as Carol
sends me back to the drawing board. She is my wife, my co-author in all
but the typing, and my editor. I have never listened to her advice and
had a story fail to sell first time out of the box, whereas I
occasionally ignore her advice, and usually have a much harder time
selling. She has mastered the most difficult discipline, which is the
art of finding stories and characters that play off MY strengths,
rather than selecting those she would write were she at the computer.
Philipob1> What kind of schedule do you have for rewriting?
Resnick> My schedule is usually this: Carol and I will discuss and
research as story until I'm ready to write it (i.e., I know every
scene, every character, etc.). This can take from a week to five years.
Next, I write a brief outline and obtain a contract. Then I go to work.
I write 4 or 5 nights a week, usually from 10:00 PM to about 4:00 AM. I
leave what I've done on the dining room table for Carol (who wakes up
before I do), and when I get up, her corrections and comments are
waiting for me. If it's a easy fix, I do it then and there, and write
more new material in the evening. If I was 'way off base. I rewrite the
whole damned thing at night. Usually I write between 10 and 18 pages at
a sitting. Once in a while less, rarely more.
Kzin> Mike, just how fast do you type?
Resnick> I'm self-taught, but I'd guess I do a good 50 words a minute.
Back in my anonymous hack days, I used to write and sell 150-200 pages
a week, so I know I'm fast. Now I'd rather be good, and you can't know
what a luxury it is to be able to rewrite and polish your prose unless
you've been denied the opportunity, as I was in the sex and gothic
fields in the 60s and early 70s.
Stan> What other names have you used for SF writing?
Resnick> None, for SF writing. All my pseudonyms were in hack fields:
soft-porn, doctor/nurse romances, gothics, that kind of shit. I'm proud
of my SF, and I'm happy to use my own name of it.
Philipob1> Do you have any thoughts on the future of SF, where its
going, what's going to be popular, etc .
Resnick> Yes. I think traditional good-storytelling will carry the
day. Critics and editors didn't kill the New Wave; lack of sales did.
I think the same will hold true for cyberpunk. We'll keep the best of
Gibson's methodology and throw the rest on history's junk heap. In
fact, I think cyberpunk has a lot going against it, because its
advocates are trying to narrow the definition of what is already a
category field, whereas the New Waveicles claimed that their stuff was
too broadbased to be included in the narrow confines of SF. Which is
why guys like John Shirley and Bruce Sterling and the rest are cutting
their own financial throats with their polemics. Further, except for
Gibson, I don't see that any of the cyberpunks has sold very well. The
best-seller lists still include our dinosaurs (Asimov, Heinlein,
Clarke), and our story tellers (Anthony, Foster, McCaffrey, Chalker,
[blush] me, and the like.
Bob> What is cyberpunk??? And how does it differ from new wave?
Resnick> Well, that's a tricky question. The term was invented by
Gardner Dozois, and picked up by a handful of our Youngish Turks.
Essentially, it's near-future, high-tech stuff with information-laden
sentences. The prose is very dense. Example of non-cyberpunk prose: He
turned on the faucet and the water flowed out. Example of information-
laden prose: He turned on the fresh-water faucet and the water trickled
out. Same action, but much more information about a society that's
running out of fresh water. See Gibson's works for the best examples.
Kzin> But wouldn't it be easier, in the first example, to simply write
"He turned on the faucet?" Water flow is implied. In the second
example, saying the "water trickled out" is important.
Resnick> I think it would be easier -- but I write simple, bare-bones
prose. Cyberpunk has two non-commercial problems that I see: one, it's
harder to read, because you daren't skim, and two, it's limited to the
next couple of centuries, since even Arthur Clarke couldn't extrapolate
a high- tech computerized society much beyond that.
Bob> Which of the 'old dinosaurs' do you like the best. Did any have an
effect on your writing style?
Resnick> My favorite dinosaurs are C. L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, and Fritz
Leiber. No, I don't think any SF writer influenced my style; you must
remember that I was 15 million words into my career before I turned to
writing serious SF, and by then I had pretty much developed my own
voice and style...
Kzin> Which of your own books is your favorite?
Resnick> My favorite is Adventures, because it was far and away the
most enjoyable to write. My best in print is Santiago. My best of those
not yet in print is probably The Dark Lady (Tor, November 1987). But
since every writer ought to believe that his current book is his best,
I'm working on one titled Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future, which I
think will be better than any I've done.
Kzin> Adventures and Ivory are two books out of Africa as it were...you
have a third one?
Resnick> Actually, I have three more. On the contract that I'm
negotiating with Tor, there will be one entitled Paradise, which will
be a science-fictionalization of the history of Kenya. And in the next
2-3 years, I'll be writing companion books (not sequels) entitled
Purgatory (a stfnalization of the history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) and
Inferno (Uganda).
Outdoorsman> All from Tor?
Resnick> I hope so. I've been very happy with them. But right at the
moment, the only one I'm negotiating with Tor is Paradise.
Stan> by any chance was one of your earlier books called Birthright:
The Story of Man?
Resnick> Yes, it was. Birthright: The Book of Man, actually. It's been
a nice income maker for me: I've sold it to a number of countries, and
it's earned about 300% more abroad than here.
Stan> Anybody that could kill off the human race like you did, ain't
someone you are going to convince easily of anything he doesn't what to
be convinced of!
Resnick> The human race had a pretty fair run of it in Birthright. As
any of the characters in the book might say, next time we'll do it
better. I enjoyed writing it. In truth, it's not one of my favorites,
in that it's probably the only one I've written that could have been
published, as is, in the 1940s.
Kzin> What conventions will you be attending the rest of this year and
next?
Resnick> I'm toastmastering Lunacon next March in NYC. I always hit
Midwestcon and Rivercon. And in 1988, I'm toastmastering the worldcon
in New Orleans.
Bob> What got you into writing? I mean, any kind of writing, not just SF?
Resnick> My mother was a writer -- not a very successful one -- but she
gave me an interest in it. And when I looked around for a profession
upon leaving high school, I realized that there was an awful lot of
money to be made if you were a quick and facile writer. I was just
bright enough to realize that no 20-year-old has anything important to
say, so I forsook Art for 15 years and became an anonymous millionaire.
And, as my pal Barry Malzberg says, you learn an awful lot writing for
a penny a word that they don't teach you in creative writing courses.
Unlike most writers, who hate writing and love having written, I enjoy
the actual act of writing. I feel guilty when I go more than 2 days
without working at my computer, and I'm at my happiest when a chapter
comes out exactly the way I had hoped it would when I sat down to write it.
Bob> Any hints?
Resnick> The usual: writers write. Non-writers talk about writing.
There are various ways to "practice" while you're learning your craft.
For dialogue, I know of no better way than taking a play you didn't
like and re- writing it. Ditto for short stories, if only to learn
structure. Novels are supposed to be hardest -- I don't find them so,
but I've been writing them all my life -- because most writers never
master the ability to pace a novel. You've got to be able to look at
your first 40 pages and know how to structure th next 300 from there --
not to hit your climax too soon, not to write at a scream, not to spend
so long building that you become dull. It's an instinct, but an
acquired one.
Kzin> Tough job, and I agree. I guess the big question is how many
novels it takes to acquire that skill.
Resnick> Well, it not only varies with the writer, but also with the
type of novel. Now that I'm a "lead" writer, my publishers want thicker
books -- and I've learned that structuring a 600-pager is a hell of a
lot different -- not necessarily harder, but definitely different --
from structuring a 275- pager.
Kzin> Why do they want thicker books? So they can raise the price?
Resnick> Absolutely. Lead books tend, these days, to go about $3.75;
the rule in the pub industry is a penny a page. Therefore, they want a
thick enough ms. so that the typesetter can come up with those 375
pages, which probably means 500 to 600 mss. pages. Just as lesser-known
writers are required to turn in shorter mss., because their names on a
cover won't justify a price of $3.50 or $3.75.
Stan> what attracted you to SF specifically?
Resnick> I've always been an SF reader. My science is nonexistent, but
I do write morality plays -- and it's a lot easier to set up a moral
parable if you've got all of Time and Space to play with. And, Ellison
to the contrary, it's easier to sell and to make $$$ if your book is
marketed as SF.
Kzin> What's the hardest part about writing for you, Mike?
Resnick> The beginning. As I said earlier in the interview, I
frequently toss out two or three beginnings before I come up with a
start I like. As I get closer to the end, I become more aware of my own
mortality. I become convinced that I'm going to wrap my car around a
tree with 43 pages to go, and they're going to farm out the finish to
Lin Carter. So I race like crazy. Once the book is finish, I'm
immortal again -- until I get toward the end of the next book.
Nap2> I run a SF SIG on a local board that seems to have mostly Star
Trek types. How do I get them turned onto written SF?
Resnick> Star Trek is a swipe -- probably unknowing -- from Van Vogt's
The Voyage of the Space Beagle. Have them read it and see what
happens. Or, have them read Fred Brown's "Arena," the only SF story
that Trek knowingly adapted, and see if you can get them discussing the
differences...and reading more SF.
NowBob> Do you think that anybody can become a good writer?
Resnick> No, I don't. I think anyone can become an adequate writer --
which is what the racks are full of. Good is a little harder. Also,
timing helps. A good fantasy writer would have starved before JRR
Tolkein and Lin Carter turned fantasy from a sometime thing into a
marketable category. And Barry Malzberg, probably the finest literary
writer the field has ever seen, might have made a fortune if he'd come
10 years earlier or later, instead of just scraping by and getting lost
among the New Waveicles.
NowBob> Who is Barry Malzberg? What did he write?
Resnick> Malzberg wrote some 25 novels and 300 short stories from 1969
to 1976. Galaxies and Herovit's World were the best of them -- probably
the best novels of the 1970s. He won an award for Beyond Apollo.
Ellen> Can I have your autograph? <grin>
Resnick> I'd be delighted. And you have no idea the things I have been
asked to autograph in the wee small hours of conventions! I know I was
shocked; probably no one else here would be. But I signed anyway... I
can tell you my favorite SF groupie story, if you wish?
Kzin> sure, Mike.. Go ahead!
Resnick> I was sitting on a panel with Budrys, Sheckley, and Dozois at
Windycon a few years ago, and I was supposed to meet Carol (my wife) in
the hallway outside the panel room when it was over. As I was looking
for her in this huge crowd, a girl, maybe 15 years old, walks up and
says, "Didn't I just see you on that panel?" I said that she did, and
she says, "Are you a pro?" I said I was, and she says, "Wanna fuck?"
Now, this girl is younger than my daughter, and I gently explained that
I didn't want to fuck... So she lowers her head in thought for a
moment, then looks up brightly, and says, "Well, can you point out
another pro to me?"
Ellen> Wonderful! Did you?
Resnick> I pointed out Algis Budrys. I don't think he's forgiven me
yet.
Ellen> Was his wife there?
Resnick> Of course. I was flabbergasted. But that was years ago, and
I've heard and seen a lot stranger things since. I really thought only
rock stars had groupies. I now think the science fictional definition
of Virgin is a girl who hasn't been to bed with Bob Tucker!
Ellen> Who (or whom) is he??? (or should I know?)
Resnick> Wilson Tucker, author of The Long Loud Silent and The Year of
the Quiet Sun...but more importantly, a Truefan since 1933.
Kzin> Well-known personality at cons, especially in the Midwest...he
doesn't look that old.
JIMSB> What is your favorite book?
Resnick> My favorite of my own works is Adventures, because it was a
joy to write; my best (among those that have seen print) is Santiago.
My favorite novel is Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ,
and my favorite SF novel is Olaf Stapledon's The Star Maker. And while
we're at it, my favorite films are Lawrence of Arabia and They Might be
Giants, my favorite plays are Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures, my
favorite food is veal parmesan and my favorite pasttime is being with
my wife. It's a dull, satisfying life. Oh, and my favorite colt and
filly are Seattle Slew and Ruffian.
NowBob> Did you ever try to talk about religion in your works? also, do
you think that authors can write about religion in SF, and get away
with it?. I know that in Dune, Herbert tries to.
Resnick> I've had no problem writing about religion. In fact, I have a
novel, still in print from Signet (its 4th printing, actually --
blush!) entitled The Branch, that is about the Jewish Messiah (as
opposed to Jesus, who wasn't). My lead character in Eros Decending
(Signet, 1985) is Dr. Thomas Gold, a Jerry Falwell type who is overcome
with passion for an alien prostitute... My narrator of Adventures is
the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, whose religion is a
little something him and the Lord worked out betwixt themselves one
afternoon, and whose Tabernacle, once established, becomes known as The
Best Little Tabernacle in Nairobi. A major character in Santiago (Tor,
1986) is Father William, a gun-wielding, overeating, bounty-hunting
preacher who sends criminals off to work in the pits of hell a little
ahead of schedule and one of the demonstrations (they're not really
chapters) in Birthright is about religion. So yeah, I do write about it
quite a bit. I have given God speaking roles in 3 books and stories.
Reason: it would be sacreligeous for a Jew or a Christian to do so, so
I seem to have become his Literary executor.
NowBob> What do you think of hard SF?
Resnick> I think it's an art in itself, and I appreciate it when it
doesn't interfere with what's important. But to me, the only purpose of
serious literature (and SF qualifies as such) to is to chronicle the
struggles of the human heart against itself to the extent that a hard
SF background detracts from this, it's detrimental (in my admittedly
minority opinion). Thus, I can appreciate Neuromancer because the high
tech -- and man's adaptation to it -- WAS the story. Whereas I didn't
think much of the classic Mission of Gravity, because it was nothing
but a mathematical exercise in building a high-gravity planet and
hoping the readers couldn't catch any errors.
NowBob> Did you read A Mote in God's Eye?And what did you think of it?
Resnick> I read The Mote in God's Eye, and liked the 2nd and 3rd
parts; the 1st and 4th parts left me cold. I must confess, at great
personal risk given his popularity, that Niven has never been one of my
favorites. I find his prose clumsy, his characters shallow, and his
science brilliant. Since I don't rank him among my favorites, I guess
you know what's important to me in an author. I did like his Ringworld
concept, but he didn't do anything but describe it.
NowBob>You can use the forces of science as an enemy, especially in
short stories. Niven carries that off well.
Resnick> Sure you can. Bradbury made a career of it, without ever
understanding the forces of science. (Which is not a put-down: he's one
of my favorites.)
NowBob> Well, in Neutron Star, tidal forces play the role of a main
adversary. But the mystery of what the killer force is kept me on my
toes. I also liked the characterization of the puppeteers.
Resnick> He's not a bad writer; please don't misunderstand. I simply
meant that his strengths, of which he has many, are precisely those
that don't appeal to me; and his weaknesses, of which we all have some,
are those that bother me most.
NowBob> Did you ever read A Canticle for Leibowitz?
Resnick> Brilliant book, by a brilliant writer. I wish he hadn't
disappeared for a quarter of a century after writing it. (He's back
this year, after all this time, as a co-editor of some anthology.)
NowBob> I heard it was one of top five SF novels ever, which include:
The Demolished Man, The Left hand of Darkness, A Canticle for
Leibowitz, something by Zelazny, and another which totally escapes me.
Resnick> There's no official list. My own top 5 (modestly excluding 5
of my own books) would be The Star Makers and Last and First Men by
Stapledon, Galaxies and Herovit's World by Malzberg, and probably
Dimension of Miracles by Sheckley. But I'd put two Bester's in the top dozen.
tan> Have you read anything by James Hogan?? What do you think of him??
Resnick> I've not read any Hogan, though we share the same agent. I
find that I tend not to read any fiction when I'm writing, not that
I'll swipe ideas or characters, but that I subconsciously start writing
in the author's voice, and sometimes it takes me a day or two to catch
it, which means a day or two wasted... And since I write 8 or 9 months
a year, and am contracted way into the future, my fiction reading
suffers accordingly. As I keep saying, writers don't have time to read.
Tim> Have you ever had a chance to read any S. Lem -- comments?
Resnick> I read Solaris, which I liked somewhat, and Tales of Prix the
Pilot, which I didn't. From the title, I had rather hoped Prix would be
like Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, but it wasn't. And I hated Memoirs
Found in a Bathtub. But I'll be lenient on Lem, and blame it on the
translator.
Tim> Have any of your works been translated? How do you feel about the
translations?
Resnick> I've sold 13 of my SF novels to Germany, 8 to Italy, 6 to
Japan, a few to Holland and the Scandanavian countries, and some to
Spain. Since I have trouble with English and am even worse in other
languages, I have no idea how the translations read, but I hope the
translator paid more attention to them that the cover artist did. It's
very disconcerting to get your high-tech novel in the mail from some
distant land, and see a naked barbarian on the cover. And, in my
Japanese translations, they come with attached bookmarks. On one of the
bookmarks there is a photo of me, surrounded by seven little Japanese
gentlemen in suits and ties, and we're all looking happy, and smiling
at the camera. But I never posed for that picture. They cut my photo
out of Locus and pasted it on someone else's body, and I'm going crazy
trying to figure out what I'm doing there and what we're all so happy
about! Nobody out there wants to know how to sell books, or who's
buying, or how to read a contract? This is a first!
Stan> Can you tell us how to write them?
Resnick> The standard answer is to apply seat of pants to seat of chair
and type. However, there are a couple of tricks. One of them is to
write an outline (for yourself, not your publisher), and include about
7 to 10 things that must happen in each chapter. These can be anything
from lighting a stick of pot to killing an emperor -- it'll give you an
idea of how the book's action flows. If you come to "Gets into trouble"
followed shortly thereafter by "Gets out of trouble" you'll quickly see
that there's a little something lacking in your plotting. Also, people
tell beginning writers to draw upon their friends for characters. I
don't know about you, but my friends are a pretty dull lot: they spend
all their time reading and/or writing. Your lead characters should be
unique constructs, of course, but your bits players can be taken from
the persona of actors and actresses. In other words, give a character
Peter Lorre's speech patterns, and his language will be unique and
always ring true, because you know how Lorre talks -- and if you make
the character a 6-foot female, no one will know it's Lorre, or give a
nasty guy Sydney Greenstreet's reactions but Clifton Webb's diction and
Darren McGavin's looks, and it'll ring true, sound true, and not be
spotted. Now, please understand: this is a trick for spear-carriers
only. If you haven't got a couple of lead characters who are uniquely
your own, you aren't ready to write your book yet. Which leads me to
another point: most failed books fail because they were written too
soon (not too fast; too soon). You can't stare at a blank screen or a
blank sheet of paper and wait for inspiration. Inspiration is the
impetus, but then mechanics take over, and you've got to meticulously
work out what your characters feel and believe and must do, and how
your plot must thread its way across the pages. And when a competent
author produces a turkey, 99 times out of 100 he sat down and wrote it
before he'd done his homework (by which I mean his mechanics, not his
research).
Stan> Earlier you defined cyberpunk. Can you define New Waveicles?
Resnick> The New Wave came about in the early 1960s, originating in
England and being imported to the US by Judy Merrill and Harlan Ellison
(in editorial capacities). Basically, it was a generation of writers
who felt confined by the accepted definition of science fiction, and
wanted to expand the parameters of the field: keywords were "inner
space," "speculative fiction," "experimental writing," and
"mainstream." The latter was the operative word: they felt that SF was
a ghetto. In England, J.G. Ballard was the foremost exponent of the
New Wave school writing; at various times, Malzberg, Silverberg,
Ellison, Delaney, Zelazny, Spinrad, Disch and others were considered
New Wavers here. But all of them denied it, while vigorously defending
the concept of the New Wave. Ellison in particular didn't want his
stuff classified or advertised as SF because he'd seen the success
Vonnegut and Bradbury had by "breaking category," in other words, by
being accepted as mainstream writers. Well, the New Wave died, not
because of editorial or critical rejection, but because it couldn't
sell in the marketplace. These days, of course, the average SF writer
makes more money than the average mainstream writer, SF books dominate
the bestseller lists, and no one except Ellison minds being labeled as
an SF writer. Still, it was good for the field, because we kept the
better experiments and incorporated them into the body of the
literature, and got rid of the rest.
Stan> Why Africa?
Resnick> I went to Africa last winter, and am going back after the
worldcons in 1987 and 1988. I have always been fascinated by British
East Africa -- the history, the animals, everything about it -- and
have incorporated it, in bits and pieces, into more of my SF books than
you might think. In fact, Adventures was set entirely in Africa. The
next 4 books I plan to write all have their basis in African events,
and since I have signed lucrative contracts on them, the IRS allows me
to deduct my safaris.
Stan> Is Adventures the full title? Is it still in print?
Resnick> It's in print from Signet. It's a parody of every bad B movie
and pulp story ever set in Africa, and lampoons Tarzan, elephant's
graveyards, slave trading, ivory poaching, lost races, naked white
goddesses, etc. I noticed that I mentioned Lucrative book contracts.
This is a necessity. It's hard to get the IRS to allow you to deduct a
$10,000 safari as research for a $5000 book.
Stan> Yeah, but you're doing more than 1!
Resnick> I'm spreading the books out so that I can spread the safaris
out. Also, we go with a private guide, a former white hunter who allows
us to make our own itinerary, introduces us to old-time hunters and
explorers with stories to tell, takes us to locations we want (or have)
to see that normal safaris don't go to, and we don't have to share his
time or 4-wheel- drive Landrover with anyone else.
Stan> need a baggage carrier??
Resnick> If you knew how many shots were required, you might not
volunteer. I felt like a goddamned pincushion between the cholera,
malaria, yellow fever, gamma globulin, diphtheria, typhoid, polio, and
tetanus.
OtherRealms #18
Fall, 1987
Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach.
All Rights Reserved.
One time rights have been acquired from the contributors.
All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors.
OtherRealms may be reproduced in its entirety only
for non-commercial purposes. No article may be reprinted
without the express permission of the author.
