The Big Question with Jack McDevitt: 5-21-01
The Big Question with Jack McDevitt
Interview with: Li Rapkin
THE BIG Q&A
Q1. Aspiring writers hear a lot about self-discipline, dedication, and professionalism when the pros talk about writing. An English or journalism degree is a great start, but new writers have a lot to learn that academia doesn’t cover. What are some of the things you’ve learned in the field, as opposed to the classroom?
A1. The kind of knowledge we’re talking about is hard to put into words. If you could, people could acquire their skills in an academic setting. But trying to become a writer by taking classes in creative writing is like trying to learn to drive by reading the driver’s manual. There’s literally everything to learn, and most of it simply cannot be taught.
The aspiring writer has to know how to stage dramatic moments, has to acquire a sense for the flow of language, and for the flow of dialogue. He has to learn how to get critical information to the reader without slowing the narrative down, or bringing it to a dead stop. He has to learn how to create human beings and get them down on a page. He has to be able to construct a plot that makes sense, how to motivate his characters, how to create characters that people will root for.
There’s a lot more, but none of this is very easy to put into a lesson plan. The best approach is probably to read as widely as one can –history, science, the great novels, probably some Greek drama– to write, and to watch the life around us. Watch how people react to problems and how they celebrate success. Listen to the way they speak. Get into their minds. Empathy is one of the basic tools anyone needs who plans to write fiction.
Q2. Have you ever considered writing for a visual medium-TV, film, or theater? Why or why not?
A2. No. I enjoy working with prose fiction and just have no ambition to go elsewhere. I like what I’m doing. Anything else would take time.
Q3. NASA, which is a civilian agency, has run into funding problems with its programs, resulting in the “faster, better, cheaper” paradigm and use of 20-year-old space shuttle technology. The Soviet Union funded its space program as part of the military, and while it had its problems, its status as a military agency had quite an effect on funding. What’s your take on civilian and/or private vs. military funding for space science, exploration, and development?
A3. I assume by military funding you mean that the government underwrites the expenses. Considering the costs involved, and with no serious prospect for offsetting profits, it seems to me that a national effort is the only way to go at present.
Q4. You’ve mentioned in some other interviews that as a kid, you enjoyed Flash Gordon serials. Were you or are you also interested in comics?
A4. I learned to read from Superman and Sheena back in 1940. Before I got to school. I’ve always believed that a lot of kids in my generation did the same. The comic readers were always way ahead of the vocabulary lists. At present I still have a fondness for the old comics. I enjoy reading an occasional JSA update, but it’s mostly nostalgia.
Q5. In the Foreword to the Meisha Merlin edition of Hello Out There, you wrote, “Who today would believe that a major power might seriously consider launching a pre-emptive strike over a question of weapons development, a scenario that was front and center in the original Hercules Text? Somehow it seemed not entirely implausible in 1985.” Now, President Bush wants to “update” the 1972 treaty that prevents the U.S. from developing a “Star Wars” missile defense system, despite the fact that even our allies are opposed to the prospect. Are we back where you started?
A5: I sincerely hope not, although in some ways the world in 1972 was less dangerous. The Atlantic carried a cover story some years ago titled “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War.” Its thesis was that, with the Soviets, we always knew who the bad guys were, who we had to negotiate with, and what the risks were. It made for stability.
I’m no fan of Soviet premiers, but they do deserve some credit. A long line of them combined with U.S. presidents to keep out of a hot war, and we owe our lives to their joint restraint.
Joint restraint is a lot harder to come by when you increase the number of participants (”players,” as the term seems to be), and everybody holds his cards under the table. The risks that armageddon may happen are, I think, considerably reduced from the 1970’s, but the possibility of isolated use of mass weaponry has increased. So it’s not a return to 1972, but we seem instead to be on a bus to a place with its own unique hazards. Not as potentially devastating, but more difficult to control.
Q6. You’ve written about archaeology in several of your novels-what about the subject captures your attention? Have you ever visited a dig?
A6: I’m fascinated by aliens. They are romantic, mysterious, edgy, utterly unpredictable. They are the reason we are so hooked on starflight. If we were somehow to establish that there are no aliens, that we are alone in the universe, most of us would immediately lose all interest in going to Vega.
But the problem with the alien is that as soon as you bring it on stage, it becomes a guy in a rubber suit. This is true whether we’re talking about movies or books. And at that point all sense of mystery and romance is lost. Some writers try to get around the problem by creating exotic logic systems, but then the creature simply becomes a guy in a rubber suit who is also incomprehensible to the reader.
My own solution is to keep the little green men offstage. That can be done by leaving them at a distance (as in The Hercules Text, where they’re a million light years away), or by arranging to have them either dead or missing. That’s where the archeology comes in. A ruin once inhabited by aliens is to me far more interesting than a full-blown civilization with alien patrols and alien taxis.
I’ve never been on a real dig, although I once participated in a mock dig on Mars (with real archeologists) during a meeting of the Asimov Seminar some years ago.
Q7. In the beginning of Infinity Beach, scientists are preparing to turn several stars into supernovae as part of a plan to search for intelligent life. One of the main objections from the opposition is that humanity will attract the wrong sort of attention. What’s your opinion of projects such as Voyager and SETI, which could attract the wrong sort of attention in real life?
A7: The universe would obviously be a safer place if we were the only ones in it. But I think the possibility of intelligent aliens being both hostile and (relatively) nearby is extremely unlikely. The level of reason required to achieve interstellar travel should be sufficient to preclude any possibility of attack, especially when one tries to imagine a motive for such an assault. Why would they bother? Surely we have nothing they can’t manufacture themselves. Even the notion of humans serving as food (think “To Serve Man”) for creatures with a different kind of digestive tract is far-fetched.
I’ve wondered how we’d respond as a society if SETI struck gold. And I suspect while the science and SF communities would get excited, the rest of the population would behave more or less in the same way they would if a new tribe were discovered along the Amazon.
Q8. What have you been reading lately?
A8: Pax Brittanica by Jan Morris; Dreamcatcher by Stephen King; A History of the American People by Paul Johnson; the Benjamin Franklin edition from the Library of America; The Great Design by Robert K. Adair; and Laurie King’s The Moor.
Q9. Deepsix just came out in March…what have you got in store for your readers?
A9: Live From Babylon will be out next year from Ace/Berkley. Priscilla Hutchins, from The Engines of God and Deepsix, gets into more trouble. More archeological trouble, I should add. This time with a very old starship.
Q10. You’ve had quite a variety of “day jobs”–customs inspector, taxi driver, English teacher, to name a few. Which was your favorite, and why?
A10: There were two. I enjoyed being an English teacher (and theater director). My former students still track me down on occasion. I had the good fortune to introduce some of them, when they were actively resisting reading, to Ray Bradbury and The Martian Chronicles.
It was magnificent to watch them come alive when that exploratory ship lands on Mars, near a town that has picket fences and a church steeple. And they open the hatch and hear a distant piano playing “Beautiful Dreamer.”
Doing supervisory and management training for the Customs Service was also rewarding. They have good people, and we used to spend our time talking about how you get employees (or kids) to work hard and produce results. Mostly, of course, it has to do with leading the way.
Q11. The Deep South has a reputation in other parts of the country as somewhat lacking in culture, and especially higher learning. How’s the view from early 21st Century Georgia?
A11: We’re looking at a bright future. The areas of the South with which I’m familiar are actively seeking to upgrade education. And the region that produced Willa Cather, Richard Wright, and William Faulkner, must be doing something right.
Websites:
http://www.sfwa.org/members/McDevitt
http://www.asisem.org/1996/jack.html
http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/mcdevitt_jack.html
Family: Married to Maureen McDevitt.
Former Day Jobs: Naval officer, Philadelphia taxi driver, customs officer, motivational trainer, English teacher.
Hobbies: Chess, bridge, theater, movies, reading mysteries, lunch.
Professional Organizations: Science Fiction Writers of America
Awards: Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalist, Engines of God
2000, Phoenix Award for body of work
2000, Nebula Award nomination, Infinity Beach
1999, Nebula Award nomination, “Good Intentions”
1998, Darrell Award, Eternity Road
1998, SF/F Editor’s Choice, Moonfall
1998, Nebula Award nomination, Moonfall
1997, Nebula Award nomination, Ancient Shores
1996, Hugo Award nomination, “Time Travelers Never Die”
1996, Nebula Award nomination, “Time Travelers Never Die”
1991, UPC International Prize, “Ships in the Night”
1986, Philip K. Dick Special Award, The Hercules Text
Publishers: Eos
Harper Prism
Tachyon Publications
In Europe, Voyager
Novels
Deepsix, 2001
Infinity Beach, 2000 (UK Title; Slow Lightning)
Moonfall, 1998
Eternity Road, 1997
Ancient Shores, 1996
Standard Candles, 1996 (Anthology)
The Engines of God, 1995
A Talent For War, 1989
The Hercules Text, 1986 (Ace Special No. 7)
Hello Out There (contains a rewritten version of The Hercules Text and A Talent For War)
Novellas & Short Stories
“The Emerson Effect”, 1981
“Cryptic”, 1984
“Ships in the Night”
“Time Travelers Never Die”
“Good Intentions” (Co-written with Stanley Schmidt)
Nonfiction
“Twelve Blunders”
