The Big Question with RJ Sawyer: 8-07-02
The Big Question with RJ Sawyer
Interview with: Li Rapkin
Li talks to author Robert J. Saywer about alternate history, writing, and why it’s great to be Canadian.
Q1. In the short story Vintage Season (author’s name escapes me at the moment), a group of time travelers are playing tourist in the past, visiting the best that history has to offer. Given the opportunity, where and when would you visit-and why?
A1. I’m a sucker for great moments in science. I’d love to have been on hand for the trial of John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, or for the debate between Thomas H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce over evolution. And it sure would have been something to be at Mission Control on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took his one small step.
Q2. It seems to me that a sizeable amount of the alternate history that sells well in the U. S. is about the American Civil War-I’m thinking of novels such as Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South and Harry Harrison’s Star and Stripes series, specifically. Is there anything that you find comparable in Canadian history, as far as a very obvious place to make a significant change?
A2. Historically, Canada is a very different country from the United States. We gained our independence through negotiation, not revolution, and we’ve never had a civil war. Although Americans have doubtless heard a lot about the possibility of Quebec separation, the facts are (1) it isn’t likely to ever happen, and (2) if the Quebecois ever do decide by a properly administered referendum, the rest of Canada will peacefully negotiate a legal separation agreement; no guns will be involved. That’s typical of Canada. Whereas the US founding documents promise “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Canadian ones promise “peace, order, and good government” - which, ironically, is all you need in place to allow you to get “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” anyway. So, to answer your question, no, there are no real, dramatic turning points in Canadian history comparable to those in U.S. history: no wars, very few assassinations, and so on. Frankly, we Canadians like it that way. There was an attempt a few years ago to do an anthology of Canadian alternate histories, but, although some of the writing was very good, the “turning points” were downright trivial in most cases: what if a particular airplane contract hadn’t been cancelled; what if a hockey game between Canada and the U.S. had had a different outcome; and so on.
Q3. Some of your novels, including the newest, Hominids, use a lot of prehistoric material. Is prehistory harder to research or write about than a well-documented time period, such as the 19th or 20th century?
A3. The answers are yes and no. Yes, it’s harder to research, for two reasons: the paucity of the data, and the difficulty of sorting actual information from mere speculation. Remember, in many cases, what we think we know about a given fossil is just one person’s opinion - the guy who happened to study that specimen. And no, it’s in fact easier to write about the prehistoric past, because there is so much room for interpretation. It’s also, I think, more interesting. Would the world really be that different today if the south had won the U.S. Civil War, or even if the Axis Powers had won World War II? After all, we live in a world in which racism and ethnic cleansing are still very much realities, despite the supposedly favorable outcome of those wars. But would the world have been different if the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out, or if it had been Homo neanderthalensis instead of Homo sapiens that had survived to the present day. Oh, my goodness, yes.
Q4. Your work crosses over somewhat with the mystery/crime genre, especially in Frameshift and Illegal Alien. How does crossing genres affect the way you and your publisher market a book?
A4. There are two ways to look at genre crossing. One is that you’ll get the union set: all those who read SF and all those who read mystery. The other is that you’ll get the intersection set: just those who read both SF and mystery. The reality is the latter. Ask a mystery reader if they’ve ever even heard of Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, and the answer is probably no. Ask an SF reader what Asimov they’ve read, and they’ll reply with Foundation or The Gods Themselves, but not his SF/mystery crossovers. Same thing with Larry Niven: everybody’s read Ringworld, but not everybody has read The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton. In my own case, I cross over into mystery just because I like doing so, but I don’t harbor any hopes of attracting mystery readers - and I say that despite the fact that my novel Illegal Alien, a courtroom drama with an extraterrestrial defendant, was named “the best Canadian mystery novel of 1997″ by The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper. Even with that imprimatur, the book sold almost exclusively to SF readers. There are mystery/crime elements in my novels Golden Fleece, Fossil Hunter, The Terminal Experiment, Frameshift, Flashforward, and Hominids - but my publishers essentially ignore that angle, and market them, quite rightly, as science fiction.
Q5. In your 1993 Books in Canada profile, you were quoted as saying “Writing is just about the only field where if you make it in New York, you don’t necessarily gain acceptance back in Canada. Instead, you’re looked as someone who’s done something tawdry and disreputable.” On the other hand, your advice to beginning writers includes “SF publishing is centered in the United States, for the most part. There are no Canadian domestic SF book publishers worth considering as your first choice. If you want to publish SF, submit to editors in New York.” Why is something that American authors do all the time tawdry and disreputable for Canadian authors? Is there a graceful way out of this double bind?
A5. Canada has no tradition of genre publishing. That’s not to say that Canadians don’t write in all genres - we do, and we often do it quite well - but since Canada is a small country in terms of population, publishers simply publish books, with no category labels. Except for Harlequin, the world’s largest romance publisher, which is Canadian, there are no Canadian publishing companies of any size devoted to a single genre, and that led to the monumentally unfair perception that genres are crass, commercial hackwork. That said, I should note that the quote you’ve taken from Books in Canada dates back quite some time. I’ve actually managed to prove myself wrong. Most of my science fiction is set in the present day or near future, and in Canada I’ve become very successful, hitting the national mainstream bestsellers lists, and being read by lots of people who don’t read any other science fiction. The secret to that success has been combining accessible writing with interesting characters in identifiable locales. So much SF, particularly hard SF, which is what I write, is absolutely opaque to outsiders, who don’t know what FTL means, what an ansible is, and so on; likewise, much of it has cardboard characterization. My alma mater, Ryerson University in Toronto, just named me a “Distinguished Alumnus” specifically because of my science-fiction writing, and I was one of six “Distinguished Canadians” invited to speak in 2000 at the Canadian embassy in Tokyo (the others included Margaret Atwood and architect Raymond Moriyama). So, to my astonishment but also to my absolute delight, I’ve managed to climb out of the ghetto.
Q6. What separates a talented amateur writer from a professional? Is it just getting paid, or is there more to it?
A6. It’s not just getting paid - but that is one of the few objective criteria that can be brought to bear on the question. None of “I think I’m good,” “My mother thinks I’m good,” “My teacher thinks I’m good,” or my “My spouse thinks I’m good” count for anything. The editor has no vested interest in making you happy, and so can be objective about your work. That said, I do believe there’s a mindset associated with professionalism that can be adopted prior to actually getting paid. I had a friend some years ago who kept saying he wanted to get into movie-making, but whenever we went to a film, as soon as the credits start rolling, he was the first one out the theater’s door. That’s when I realized one of Rob’s rules: Anyone who doesn’t want to watch the credits on a movie will never make it in filmmaking. I think that one does stand up, but the sort of literary corollaries that might seem intuitively obvious often hold no weight. I know all sorts of people who subscribe to Writer’s Digest, or attend all the business-of-publishing panels at conventions, or belong to real or virtual writers’ workshops who nonetheless have no hope of ever getting published. More than anything, being a professional writer is not about joining, it’s about not joining. You have become professional in mindset not when you say I will join a workshop, but rather when you say I won’t join my friends going out for pizza and instead will stay home and write.
Q7. Contrary to the expectations of most mid-twentieth century SF writers, nobody has a moon or Mars colony in 2002. However, we (by which I mean humanity in general, not North America) have made a lot of progress in the areas of medicine and computing. Any thoughts on how space exploration and development got left behind-or how medicine and computing got so far ahead?
A7. Oh, I think that’s an easy one. Space exploration directly benefits only those who go into space. The twelve men who walked on the moon had a blast. Some of the rest of us had a vicarious blast watching them. But everybody benefits from medicine and computing. An example: I have acid-reflux disease, and it frankly made my life fairly miserable for about a decade before it was diagnosed. Now one little Losec tablet each day takes care of that. Secondarily, I think there’s great truth in something Heinlein said: only NASA - only a government bureaucracy - could make a grand adventure like space exploration boring. But it most certainly did, for most people. The public lost interest not because the public is inherently indifferent to science and technology, but because NASA managed to bore the pants off everybody. In a way, they behaved like George Lucas has of late: they had all the money in the world to spend, but somehow forgot about putting on a good show.
Q8. What did you enjoy most about working on the Discovery Channel Canada’s 2020 Vision project?
A8. Definitely the role-playing. Each 2020 Vision segment began with me being interviewed in character as a person from the year 2020, and then we followed that up with roundtable discussions with scientists, a theologian, and others. I got to play a pregnant man, an android, and the astronomer who made first contact with aliens by SETI. It was an absolute hoot.
Q9. Did you attend science fiction conventions before you were published? Can you actually take the time to enjoy the convention when you’re there to work?
A9. Absolutely! I’ve been going to science-fiction conventions since I was 13, and have always loved them. I’d still be going today, even if I didn’t work in this industry. These days, I am awfully busy at conventions, with panels, signings, readings, and meetings with editors and agents, but I still have a blast. Mike Resnick has said his definition of heaven is a Worldcon that never ends. I’d say he’s got that about right.
Q10. What do you read when you’re not writing? Does it differ from what you read when you are working on a novel or story?
A10. Well, I’m always working on a story or a novel. But I don’t read nearly as much science fiction as I used to, although I just finished David Brin’s Kiln People, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I voraciously read nonfiction and I love reading classic fiction. I just finished Indian Summer of a Forsyte by John Galsworthy, which was exquisite, and am just getting into Uncle Tom’s Cabin - I imagine most Americans read that in school, but it’s not on many syllabuses here in Canada. Plus I’ve got two autobiographies on the go - Michael J. Fox’s Lucky Man and Nelson Mandela’s Long Road to Freedom. Those, plus a stack of science nonfiction.
Q11. What’s your opinion of Dr. Severino Antinori’s attempt at human cloning? Do think that once we have the technology to do something, it’s inevitable that someone will try it?
A11. Sadly, yes, I do think it’s inevitable that someone will try it. I don’t know that cloning is inherently a bad thing, but I do know that the vacillation on the part of so many governments has left it open for mavericks like Antinori to be the pioneers, instead of well-funded, well-regulated government institutions.
Q12. Hominids is newly published; what do we have to look forward to next?
A12. Hominids is the first book in my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. I’ve already finished the second, Humans, which will be out in February 2003, and I’m hard at work on the concluding volume, Hybrids. After that, who knows? I’ve got several novel-length projects I’d like to tackle. It’s just a question of deciding which one to do next.
Author Profile
Website: http://www.sfwriter.com
Born: Ottawa, April 29, 1960
Education: Bachelor of Applied Arts, Radio and Television Arts, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto, ON
AKA: “The Dean of Canadian Science Fiction”
Family: Married to poet Caroline Clink.
——————————————————————————–
We’d like to thank RJ Sawyer for taking the time to speak with Li and the Mighty Shotgun.
