The Nebula Awards

David Levine Interview

Interviewed by Charles Tan on September 30 2008

David D. Levine received his first Nebula nomination for his short story, Titanium Mike Saves the Day, published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction April 2007. 

Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. For unfamiliar readers, can you tell us about some of the stories included in your latest collection, Space Magic?

My goal for this collection was to show that I can write everything from hard SF to medieval fantasy.  That’s why it’s called Space Magic (well, it’s also a Jetsons reference).  It includes my best-known stories, such as Hugo winner Tk’Tk’Tk and Hugo nominee Tale of the Golden Eagle, as well as some of my least-known stories, such as At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco’s Homebrew Gravitics Club which was first published in a convention program book.  Every one of these stories is significant to me in some way and it was really hard to pare the collection down to the 80,000 words the publisher wanted.

How did the book end up getting published with Wheatland Press?

I was thinking that I wouldn’t have a collection of my own stories until some publisher asked me for one.  But then fellow Portlander M. K. Hobson (who just sold her brilliant first novel The Native Star, by the way) told me I shouldn’t just wait by the phone.  So I talked with Deborah Layne of Wheatland Press, also in Portland, who asked me to put together a proposal.  I did, and she bought it.

What made you decide to write short stories?

I’ve been an SF reader since the 1960s, and my dad was a reader starting in the 1930s, so I’ve read a lot of SF short stories and I know that the traditional career path in this field has always been to make a name in short stories before tackling a novel.  Now, when I started getting serious about writing, in the late 1990s, this concept was already obsolete, but I didn’t know that then.  So I started by writing short stories, and I went to Clarion West which focuses on short stories, and then I started selling them.  And it turns out I’m pretty good at short stories.  I find them enjoyable to write because I can put the whole thing together in as little as a few days, and then get immediate feedback from my critique group, and sometimes sell it in a matter of weeks.

Is Remembrance Day your first attempt at a novel? What’s its current status?

Yes, Remembrance Day was my very first attempt at a novel, unless you count a two-volume epic I wrote in fourth grade (well, it filled two spiral notebooks, anyway… probably a novelette by word count). It got very good reactions from people who saw it in development, and it got me an agent (Jack Byrne of the Sternig & Byrne agency), but it’s been on the market for about three years now and I’m trying to reconcile myself to the idea that it might not sell in its current form.  I put what I learned from writing it into my second novel, The Dark Behind the Stars, which is complete but still needs one more editing pass before I begin submitting it.

What does it feel like to have your stories nominated for various awards?

I’m constantly amazed when I see my own name on the same ballot as people I idolized in my youth, and realize that even being nominated means that my story will always be listed with classics like Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” and George R. R. Martin’s “The Way of Cross and Dragon.” It’s one of the best possible validations that I actually know what I’m doing in this crazy business.

What was the inspiration behind Titanium Mike Saves the Day?

At the time I wrote it, I believed that Paul Bunyan was originally an advertisement for wood products, but he grew up to be something more. I wanted to explore the idea that some ideas are bigger than the people who come up with them, and that some stories are more valuable than the impulses that produce them.  (Later I learned that Paul Bunyan may actually have been invented by real lumberjacks, but he was definitely popularized by advertisers.)

Did you always know you wanted to be a science fiction/fantasy writer? At what point did you start taking it seriously?

I guess I always wanted to be an SF writer, because I remember my teachers in grade school asking me to write something else for a change.  I took an SF writing class in college and was encouraged to submit my work for publication.  But when I graduated from college I found work as a technical writer, and I didn’t write a lick of fiction for 15 years because it was too much like the day job.  It was only after I changed careers, to software engineering, that I got my writing brain back.  But I didn’t really start getting serious about writing until 1998, when I knew I would have a sabbatical in 2000 and decided I wanted to spend it at Clarion.  I wrote short stories for a couple of years with the goal of becoming good enough to get into Clarion.  It worked.  I made my first sale the year after Clarion and have been selling about 4-5 stories per year since, plus numerous reprints.

Your writing style tends to be short and accessible. Was this a conscious choice on your part?

I wouldn’t exactly say that, but my writing definitely reflects the kind of stories I like to read.  I hate stories where nothing happens or it’s not clear what has happened.  I like stories with clear plots, where a person has a problem and overcomes it, or fails to overcome it in a surprising and entertaining way.  I don’t insist on a happy ending but I do insist that there be some kind of action, some kind of change.  I know that some writers start with a character, and refer to their stories as “Jackie’s story” or what have you, and may not know what happens to that character until the story’s gone through several drafts.  As for me, I generally start with a plot, and I always have an ending in mind (although I don’t always stick with it), which I think does tend to make my stories clear and accessible.

What’s the appeal of the genre for you?

As far as I’m concerned, a story in which you know from the beginning that only ordinary, mundane things can happen is inherently boring. When I read a story I want to know that the possibilities are limited only by the author’s imagination.

Who are some of your favorite authors or what are some of your favorite books?

My favorite authors include Iain M. Banks, Cordwainer Smith, and Larry Niven. China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station knocked me out with its thoroughly realized setting, as did Ringworld.  When I was a kid I fell in love with a book called The Godwhale, which is pretty much forgotten today; another long-time favorite is Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin, which I re-read every five years or so.

How has the various workshops you’ve attended affected your writing?

There are really only about a dozen things you need to do to write a great story: create believable, sympathetic characters; create an intriguing setting; put the characters in trouble; that sort of thing.  But there are dozens and dozens of tricks, or tools, you can use to perform these tasks.  I’ve learned plenty of these tricks at workshops (one example: give characters something to do with their hands, which can be used to reveal their inner emotional state), but even more important is simply to be reminded of the basics.  Sometimes you have to hear a basic idea like “you need to put your characters in trouble” dozens of times before it sticks—until it’s said in just the right way at just the moment you’re ready to receive it, you hear it but you don’t really get it.  Even once you’ve gotten it, you may gain a new insight if you hear it again in a different way.  Workshops give the opportunity to hear these eternal truths and the time to really think about them, away from your daily life.  I’ve also met people at workshops who are among my best friends today.

What’s the greatest hurdle/challenge you’ve had to face so far?

Because my writing process starts with the plot, one of my biggest challenges is creating characters who act according to their own history and motivations rather than doing what the plot requires of them.  (Here’s a confession: my characters still do what the plot requires, but I’ve gotten better at knitting the plot and the characters together so that the plot appears to be character-driven… it’s one of those tricks I mentioned above.) Another challenge is making the time to write. Even though I retired from the day job last year, I still have to struggle to make myself write every day.  I know that I am not alone in this, though.

Your website has some interesting photos of various costumes, props, and artwork. Do you still work on them these days? What conventions/events did you bring them to?

I do artwork for the fanzine, Bento, that my wife and I publish (we do one issue a year, usually for the Worldcon), and I do still occasionally make and wear costumes to conventions such as OryCon and at Halloween.  But I’m putting most of my creative energy into writing these days, and attending conventions like Potlatch and World Fantasy that don’t emphasize costumes.

What are some of the projects you’re currently working on?

I recently completed the second draft of my second novel, and now it needs one more editing pass (I want to cut it down to 100,000 words to make it more salable). I wrote two short stories at the Taos Toolbox workshop, which need to be brushed up and sent out.  And I just this week received an anthology invitation and a rewrite request.  Plenty of stuff on my plate for the foreseeable future.  And, although I do love short stories, If I know me, I’ll want to start in on another novel before the end of this year.  I have several possible ideas but they all require some research and planning.

DAVID D. LEVINE is a lifelong SF reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000.  It seems to have worked.  He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006 (Best Short Story, for “Tk’Tk’Tk").  His “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2008, and a collection of his short stories, Space Magic, is available from Wheatland Press.  He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine Bento.
Apart from his website, David can be found online at his blog.

CHARLES TAN is a speculative fiction fan from the Philippines. He has lots of online doppelgangers, including a Singaporean politician and a Filipino basketball player, but people should be warned that the “real” Charles Tan is a bibliophile who stalks his favorite authors. His blog, Bibliophile Stalker is updated with daily content including book reviews, interviews, and essays. He is also a contributor for SFF Audio.

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