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eBook Category: General Nonfiction/Science Fiction
eBook Description: A collection of interviews with Terry Bisson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, John Brunner, Jonathan Carroll, Robert Holdstock, Ellen Kushner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Ray Faraday Nelson, Frederik Pohl, Dan Simmons, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and Gene Wolfe.

eBook Publisher: Wildside Press, Published: USA, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2002

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [694 KB], eReader (PDB) [231 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [217 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [190 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [251 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [237 KB], hiebook (KML) [540 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [265 KB], iSilo (PDB) [189 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [222 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [275 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [296 KB]
Words: 69733
Reading time: 199-278 min.
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The Best of my Talk Show, with the Realization That I Am Not Johnny Carson

Here are a dozen of my old interviews. None of them has been previously collected into a book and there has been no attempt to update them. Since the interviews were conducted over a period of about a dozen years, they contain obvious temporal dislocations. Ursula Le Guin and I are speaking of her Tehanu: the Last Book of Earthsea as if it were brand-new and actually the last book of the Earthsea series, when of course there have been two more Earthsea volumes since.

That is very much the point. A collection of old interviews is not a reference book. The "facts" are not necessarily expected to be right, any more than the opinions expressed are necessarily the writer's final words on the subject.

Anything but. Think of this as being like a selection from the archives of (hopefully) a pretty good talk show. When an interview first appears, in, say, Science Fiction Chronicle, it needs to be up-to-the-moment. It is news. The forthcoming books mentioned are still forthcoming. What the subject of the interview has to say has an obvious topical interest. This is where he or she is now.

But I think it's equally or even more interesting to read what Ursula Le Guin was thinking right after she resumed the Earthsea series, or how Fritz Leiber looked back on his long career at a convention guest-of-honor presentation two years before his death.... One of the things I most vividly remember about conducting that interview was my concern that Fritz (who was in a wheelchair) might roll backwards off the stage ... so I did the whole thing sitting sideways with my foot under the wheel. Fritz was in good cheer and freely ranging back over forty-plus years of writing and experience. I had interviewed him once before, at the First World Fantasy Convention in Providence in 1975. We both noted the still-standing Starry Wisdom Church (as it is known to readers of Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark") visible from his hotel room. But Nyarlathotep did not intervene and the interview I did then (which is in SF Voices 1) came out quite differently from the 1990 one, of course, because Fritz was at a different point in his life and career.

So here we have literary time capsules. The datedness can be precisely what makes them interesting--and raw material for future critical research. Don't you wish that someone had interviewed, say, Robert A. Heinlein, every five years throughout his career? No two interviews would have been alike. The Heinlein of 1970 would have been in violent disagreement with the Heinlein of 1940, but the fascination would be in seeing how he got that way.

So here, from my archives ... that wonderful moment when Marion Zimmer Bradley reacts to the story of the fan who administered the Free Amazon's Oath in all seriousness ... Ray Nelson telling a bizarre tale about Philip K. Dick ... Jack Williamson explaining how he has been able to keep in the forefront of Science Fiction for eight decades.

I do continue to think of these interviews as my talk show. Considering I have been doing interviews for almost thirty years now, it must be one of the longer-running talk shows around. I attribute its success to my very early realization that I was not Groucho Marx or even Johnny Carson, the sort of person who is himself the star of the show and invites guests on as foils for his own wit. No, it's not that at all. I flattered one of the interviewees in this book, who complimented me on the results. I said, "It's easy. All you do is find someone interesting, get 'em started, point the microphone, and shut up."

It's not quite as easy as that, but that is the key to being a successful interviewer. The subject, the person being interviewed, is the person of interest. What I do is ask leading questions, which exist solely to provoke responses. They probably do reflect my opinions at the time, but are of small consequence, other than how they caused Marion or Fritz or Ursula or Dan or Gene or Ellen to say something profound or go off on a funny riff or volunteer some anecdote about their lives or careers. It's vitally important that the interviewer not be a microphone-hog.

That being so, I will now shut up and leave you to read the book.

--Darrell Schweitzer

Philadelphia PA

December 1, 2001