Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (41 page)

Like Pohl,
Damon Knight
sfencyclopedia.com/entry/knight_damon
> was first a fan; both were members of the
Futurians
http://fancyclopedia.wikidot.com/futurians
> in the early forties. And like Pohl, Knight moved effortlessly through many different precincts of the genre. Not only was he a writer and an editor, but he was probably our first reviewer and critic of note. His devotion to the craft of writing led him to co-found the
Milford Writers' Workshop
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Writer%27s _Workshop
> in 1956 and the
Clarion Writers Workshop
clarion.ucsd.edu>
in 1968. He was also responsible for founding the SFWA and served as its first president. Although he wrote nine novels, including my favorite, the very strange
Humpty Dumpty an Oval
sfsite.com/09b/hump17.htm
>, his reputation as a writer rests mainly on his lucid and at times acerbic short stories, the most famous of which is probably
"To Serve Man"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
>. Knight edited reprint anthologies throughout his long career, but his crowning achievement as an editor was the twenty-one editions of
Orbit
sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/orbit
>, which, along with Terry Carr's
Universe
and Robert Silverberg's
New Dimensions
sfencyclopedia.com/entry/new_dimensions
>, were a centerpiece of the golden age of original anthologies. He published
Joan D. Vinge's
sff.net/people/jdvinge/home.htm
> and
Kim Stanley Robinson's
kimstanleyrobinson.info
> first stories in
Orbit;
regular contributors included
Kate Wilhelm
katewilhelm.com
>,
Gene Wolfe
ultan.org.uk/category/gene-wolfe
>, and
R.A. Lafferty
mullekybernetik.com/RAL
>.

Terry Carr's career as a writer and editor was tragically cut short at age fifty when he died of congestive heart failure. Although not prolific, his inventive short stories had a profound effect on a generation of writers, certainly on a young tyro named Jim Kelly. Carr had an astonishing run as an editor of short SF. He edited various Best-of-the-Year anthologies from 1965 to 1987, at first with Donald Wolheim and later as a solo editor, during which his tastes helped define the genre. His ground-breaking original anthology series
Universe
sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/universe
> has been lauded by the
Science Fiction Encyclopedia
as "arguably the best (and longest-lasting) of all original-anthology series in the field." He was twice editor of the Ace Specials series of novels and in one astonishing year, 1984, showcased six first novels that helped launch the careers of some of our most celebrated writers:
William Gibson's
williamgibsonbooks.com
>
Neuromancer,
Kim Stanley Robinson's
The Wild Shore,
Carter Scholz
sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/scholz_carter
> and Glenn Harcourt's
Palimpsests,
Lucius Shepard's
clarkesworldmagazine.com/shepard_ interview
>
Green Eyes,
Michael Swanwick's
michaelswanwick.com
>
In the Drift,
and
Howard Waldrop's
sff.net/people/waldrop
>
Them Bones
—all authors previously published in
Universe.

Michael Moorcock
multiverse.org
> was a central figure in the
British New Wave
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave _science_fiction
> and was hugely influential in its American counterpart. His stories and novels, especially the Elric stories, the Jerry Cornelius sequence and the Dancers at the End of Time series, span the subgenres of the fantastic. He's won a Nebula, a British Fantasy Award, a Campbell Memorial Award, and a World Fantasy Award, and his lifetime achievements have been recognized by the
Prix Utopiales
utopiales.org/en
>, the
Horror Writers Association
,
and SFWA. As an editor he is best known for the controversial British magazine
New Worlds
sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/new_worlds
> that he began editing in 1964. Moorcock pointed out the flaws he perceived in the traditional commercial science fiction of the time and promoted writers, both American and British, who were open to literary experimentation. Among those who he first published were
Ian Watson
ianwatson.info
>,
Robert Holdstock
>, and
Vernor Vinge
worldswithoutend.com/author.asp?ID=41
>.

q and a

While recounting the storied accomplishments of these great writer/editors has its place, I thought you might be interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and rewards of pursuing the dual career. Thus I have asked three of the best to share their experiences.

Do I really need to introduce Robert Silverberg and Gardner Dozois to readers of this magazine? I think not. So let me take just a moment to sketch the highlights of
Jeff VanderMeer's
jeff vandermeer.com
> career. He has won the World Fantasy Award twice, once for his novella
The Transformation of Martin Lake,
set in his ongoing Ambergris sequence, and once for co-editing the original anthology
Leviathan 3.
His most recent Ambergris novel is
Finch.
He has edited fourteen anthologies by my count, some reprint and others original, including the well-received
The New Weird
and
Steampunk,
with his wife
Ann Vander-Meer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_ VanderMeer
>. His latest publishing venture is
Cheeky Frawg Books
cheeky frawg.com
>.

Who was the first editor who you felt really got what you were doing and supported your career?

ROBERT SILVERBERG: Jerome Bixby, when he was running
Planet Stories
circa 1951, read a couple of my early stories and told me I was going to have a successful writing career. (He didn't buy any of them—but he could see the promise. I was sixteen.) When I actually did start my career, a little later in the Fifties, I started selling to everybody at once—John W. Campbell, Howard Browne, Robert W. Lowndes, Horace Gold, Tony Boucher, and others, so no one editor can get the credit for being the first who really got what I was doing.

GARDNER DOZOIS: My first story was bought out of the slush pile by Frederic Pohl, but I never actually worked with him much. The first editors who seemed to get what I was doing and supported my career, editors who I worked intensively with and whom I came to think of as my mentors, were Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, who started buying my stories for original anthologies such as
Orbit
and
New Dimensions—
markets that were a bit more open to stylistic innovation than most of the other markets were at the time. If I'd had only the magazine markets to submit to, if the original anthologies hadn't existed, I doubt if I would have been able to sell anything at all—at any rate, it would have taken a lot longer, and I probably would have had to wait until the magazine market started to loosen up a bit in the early eighties.

JEFF VANDERMEER: Actually, my eventual wife Ann was one of the first people who got what I was doing and published my work, in her magazine, and then helped publish my first book,
Dradin, In Love.
Otherwise, I'd say Gardner Dozois was the most supportive, buying two early stories for
Asimov's
and giving me a long letter of rejection on
Dradin
encouraging me to keep writing at a time when I wasn't feeling optimistic. Ellen Datlow was very kind while I was at Clarion, hearing that I wasn't having the best time of it, and calling me to check up on me. Sheila Williams was also very kind at my first World Fantasy. On the other hand, I think the indifference of many editors or outright marginalization has been just as helpful. I have as a result never felt at all like an insider and to this day feel as if I'm hustling from the outside looking in. This is invaluable in terms of staying hungry and in terms of having a sense of what's going on at a "street level." You can otherwise become too comfortable and relax too much into a certain position within a literary community, which is detrimental to a clear vision.

Are there debut or lightly published writers who you have showcased as an editor of whom you are particularly proud?

SILVERBERG: The one that stands out above all others is Gardner Dozois. His story, "A Special Kind of Morning," was the first story I bought when I began editing
New Dimensions,
a beautiful piece of work, probably the best I ever acquired. It was almost his first story, too.

DOZOIS: There are a lot of debut authors I'm proud of, including George R.R. Martin, Joe Haldeman, Connie Willis, Michael Bishop, Allen M. Steele, Mary Rosenblum, Tony Daniel, and Kage Baker; I didn't buy his first story, but I worked pretty extensively as a mentor to Michael Swanwick when he was just starting to finish stories and send them out.

VANDERMEER: As for writers I'm proud of publishing—Stepan Chapman, who won the Philip K. Dick Award with a book I published, especially. Also writers like Michael Cisco (who Ann published first). Works brought back into the public sphere written by Michel Bernanos, Leena Krohn, and Eric Basso. These are all amazing writers who happen not to work in commercial modes but can write circles around most everyone. Ann and I are also both proud of publishing many works in translation, and in publishing Swedish writer Karin Tidbeck's first collection.

exit

We judge an editor on his ability to elicit the best work from established writers and his perspicasity in discovering new talent. Writing this has led me to reflect on how lucky I have been in my own relationships with my editors. Of those mentioned above, I have to single out Terry Carr and Damon Knight as being essential to my development as a young writer. Without their support and encouragement, I wouldn't be typing this sentence. Although I aspired to appear in
New Dimensions
back in the day (actually just showing up on Robert Silverberg's radar would have made my day!), I never had the right story. Since then, however, I have been able to place a number of stories in his anthologies. And let the record show that Gardner Dozois bought three of my award winning stories and much of my best work. Not to mention that he and Sheila took a leap of faith by handing this column over to a geek whose main qualification was a prodigious capacity to waste time on the net!

Next column, more wisdom from three of the best editors...um...writers... er....
people
I know.

THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS

Ed Finn
| 3079 words

It all started a few months before I arrived at Arizona State University. Neal Stephenson was on a Washington, D.C., panel with the university's president, Michael Crow. Stephenson was talking about how dystopian our visions of the future are, and how we seem to have lost sight of our ability to think and do "big stuff": the Apollo Program, national infrastructure projects, and the microchip, for example. Crow responded that maybe it's the science fiction writers who are letting us down by failing to conjure up grand, ambitious futures that will inspire us to get out there and make them real. Stephenson perked up at that one, and the two began to talk about how we might get science fiction writers actively involved in shaping the future.

That was the conversation that landed on my desk when I joined ASU as a University Innovation Fellow in July 2011. Stephenson and Crow were interested in building a real connection between science fiction and the industries of science, and the challenge was to come up with an idea for doing it in a university setting. This new project would need to address very broad, public goals while remaining relevant within a research and teaching institution.

The two-page overview of the Center for Science and the Imagination was surprisingly easy to write. I found just the right quote from Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." A few paragraphs about how the center would bring together science fiction writers and scientists, imaginers and engineers, and we were off to the races. Crow liked it. Stephenson liked it (though he corrected an embarrassing
Star Trek
mis-reference). I started building a coalition of interested parties at and beyond ASU. Something like a hundred meetings later, the center was born.

The Center for Science and the Imagination has a simple goal: get people thinking more creatively and ambitiously about the future. I see this mission as having two interlocking halves. First, we need to share a broader sense of agency about the future. It's not something people in white coats are cooking up in a lab somewhere; it's not something that will be announced by a glitzy product launch in New York or Silicon Valley. In fact it's not a single thing at all, but a spectrum of possibilities. And whether we consciously accept it or not, we are all making choices that shape the future we are creating together.

Second, we need to become more comfortable with the tools we have for envisioning that future. The reason I put imagination in the title of the center is that we all have access to this shared space for creative problem solving. I'm a humanities guy (my Ph.D. is in American literature, I worked in journalism, I wrote a collection of poetry as an under-grad), but I don't want the center to turn into another art vs. science debate club. Imagination is the key to moving forward in every discipline, even though the language of professionalism in many of them forbids or discourages unorthodox thinking. So I hope the center can become a vehicle for radical thought experiments, odd conversations, and, most importantly, a safe venue where anyone can take intellectual risks.