James Alan Gardner 2009 Interview
James Alan Gardner is nominated for his novelette “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story”.
Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what’s the appeal of science fiction for you?
Science fiction seems to be the only genre interested in large-scale events. I don’t just mean intergalactic wars and blowing up suns (although that stuff can be fun); I mean anything that leads to substantial changes in the world.
Consider, for example, how conventional literature would treat Einstein. It might talk about his home life or his relationships with other scientists; it might try to analyze what made him so brilliant; it might examine the psychological consequences of being idolized as the smartest man on Earth. What conventional literature *can’t* do is say, “This guy changed the world! This guy significantly altered how we look at ourselves and the universe.” Other genres of literature ignore everything but the personal.
Science fiction can and does do the personal—not always with nuance—but it also has bigger fish to fry. Its perennial message is, “The world of today is fleeting; it wasn’t here yesterday and won’t be here tomorrow.” Science fiction says the world can and will be changed by individuals, by societies, and by impersonal forces. That’s an enormously important message that other genres barely seem to notice, let alone address.
How about your background in Applied Mathematics, does it have any impact on your fiction?
I wrote a story called “Kent State Descending the Gravity Well: An Analysis of the Observer” which I think is one of the best things I’ve done. It’s directly based on my Master’s thesis on black holes; it plays on the actual mathematical model of a black hole and draws out an analogy with the difficulties of how science fiction stories are framed.
I’ve already said that the great strength of science fiction is its willingness to address large-scale issues...but one of SF’s weaknesses is the tendency to tell a very limited range of stories. If, for example, we’re talking about technological change, there’s a great temptation to frame it in a way where technology goes disastrously wrong. We don’t have a lot of examples where someone invents something new and nothing bad happens at all. In “Kent State” I used mathematics to talk about the cheap-and-easy “you’ve seen it all before” stories that SF is often guilty of.
Apart from that, I like to throw in math where I can, but it’s an uphill slog to get equations past editors.
How have your experiences with Writers of the Future and Clarion West helped improve your writing? What were the valuable lessons you learned in each?
Both brought me into contact with other novice writers who were pretty much my peers. Many of us were all coming to the ends of our “apprenticeships” and about to break into the big leagues. It’s great to live with such people for a while and bask in the company of intelligent folks who think writing is a wonderful way to spend one’s time.
Of course, WotF and Clarion both taught me new ways of looking at stories. The WotF workshop was a week taught by Algis Budrys: a seasoned pro of the old school. Clarion West was six weeks long, instructed by Orson Scott Card, Karen Joy Fowler, Connie Willis, Lucius Shepard, Amy Stout, and Roger Zelazny—a tremendous line-up, each of whom gave me so many insights and tips I couldn’t possibly list them all. (But I still remember most of them and use them every day.)
What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome before getting published?
The biggest hurdle was really just getting serious. For years I wrote but didn’t make a systematic effort to put things in the mail. Admittedly, that was probably a good thing—I wrote a lot of the usual novice crap, and if by some miracle some of it had got published, I’d now be dying of shame. During those years, I spent much of my writing time on self-indulgences...including a number of plays that were good enough for small local theatre productions but had no higher ambitions.
In the year leading up to Writers of the Future and Clarion West, I got more disciplined in sending things out. By then I was close to being ready for prime time...so things began to sell within a few months. But my biggest hurdle was simply getting my act together and saying, “I really have to go about this in a business-like way, rather than remaining in my comfort zone as an amateur.”
Which are you more comfortable writing, short stories or novels? What in your opinion are the strengths of each?
Every story and novel is different. I’ve whipped off some stories in a few days; others have taken weeks and weeks. When a short story falls into a long slog, it’s *really* painful—I feel as if a short story shouldn’t be that much work. I can see the end of the story hanging out in sight, and for some reason, I just can’t get there. With novels, I expect to be a tortoise rather than a hare, so it’s not as frustrating when it feels like I’m not making progress.
My short stories are more idiosyncratic than my novels, and I like that about them...but novels pay better and something in the back of my head keeps saying that novels are more *important* than short stories. (Of course that’s nonsense, but who ever manages to make those voices in the back of their head shut up?)
One strength of a short story is that it doesn’t have to be sustainable for too long. “The Ray-Gun”, for example, has a tone of voice that wouldn’t really work at novel length—it’s too dry. A novel needs ups and downs and lots of variation, but a short story can do a single thing with full intensity.
The strength of a novel is, of course, the opposite: it *has* that variation. Of course, a novel also has the advantage of time; the reader lives with a novel’s characters for a lot longer and bonds with them in a different way. A story can deliver a short sharp shock, but a novel can become a long-time friend.
How did you end up writing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze? What’s your opinion of media tie-in fiction?
The easy answer is that I wrote it because I was asked...and I was asked because I’ve written a number of action-adventure books with strong female protagonists, so Lara was right up my alley.
I confess I’m also a video game addict, so I was delighted for the chance to play with one of the industry’s foremost heroes. Furthermore, the people behind the books were great; they let me write the book the way I wanted to, with practically no restrictions and a lot of helpful input.
So I had a blast writing Lara and I came up with plenty of fun scenes. How does that compare with media tie-in fiction in general? To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever read any other book of that type: no Star Trek, Star Wars, or the like. Oh wait...I read all “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” books back in the 1960’s. I was, of course, around 12 years old. I remember those as being fantastic (though I suspect I wouldn’t think the same today). They were the last media tie-in books I ever read.
When you wrote the first League of Peoples novels, did you originally plan it to stretch out this long? How did you initially come up with the concept?
If you’re going to write adventures with interstellar travel, you need to answer a fundamental question: “Why haven’t we met aliens yet?” Different writers have answered that in different ways: for example, that we *have* met aliens but didn’t realize it, or that interstellar travel is so expensive and difficult that aliens can’t be bothered. My initial answer wasn’t very original—that there’s an interstellar authority which forbids contact with “pristine” races like us—but then I dug deeper into the nature of that interstellar authority. If they wanted to protect untouched cultures, they must be reasonably benign...but I didn’t want them total goody-goodies. It was a small leap from there to the idea of, “Do what you like as long as you don’t bother your neighbors. If you cause trouble, you’re dead.”
Another important influence came from Samuel R. Delany. In one of his books (I believe it’s in “The Fall of the Towers” trilogy), he represents superior intelligence as the ability to predict events better than lesser intelligences. A human who wants to cross a street can look at cars in the distance and immediately judge how long it will take them to drive past...in other words, whether or not it’s safe to cross. A dog can’t do that; the dog’s eyesight is as good as a human’s, but its brain doesn’t have enough calculating power to assess the situation. Delany extrapolated from that to hyperintelligent non-humans; in his book, these non-humans can, for example, look at a coin spinning in the air and immediately judge whether it will land heads or tails. They’re amused that humans are too slow-witted to do the same.
I borrowed that concept: in the League of Peoples, the criterion of intelligence is the ability to predict the consequences of one’s actions. Humans are at the bottom of that totem pole, slowly evolving through the transition from animal ignorance to something higher. The best among us seriously care about the effects of what we do; the worst don’t.
All the League of Peoples stories grew from those two threads: “Don’t bother your neighbors” and “Intelligence is being able to predict the results of your actions.” Those threads have ramifications that haven’t yet come out in the stories; at some point, I’d like to do another League book or two to reveal more secrets.
What was the inspiration for “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story?”
When people ask me about science fiction, I always talk about the serious stuff (as in my answers to preceding questions). But I add that I also love SF because of spaceships and time machines and exploding planets and ray-guns. Despite the horrendous things that happen in science fiction and the grim importance of some subject matter, the genre also has a sense of exuberance that I’d hate to lose. Science fiction must always have a place for ray-guns. So I began to think about a ray-gun story for the twenty-first century: something that basked in the old gosh-wow but had the level of sophistication we now expect. “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” was the result.
Were there any difficulties in writing that novelette? What made you decide to make Jack’s love story run parallel with that of the ray-gun?
My approach was based on the idea of “stone soup” that Kirsten mentions in the final scene: that the novelette’s action arises from stories the human characters impose on the gun, and that the gun itself is simply an inert cipher. Thus the plot comes completely from Jack’s maturing narratives as he grows up. When he’s a kid, having a ray-gun makes him an action hero; when he discovers girls, the ray-gun turns into a symbol of how open he’s prepared to be; when he feels he’s been betrayed by Deana, the gun is about hurt and vengeance; when he’s finally ready for an adult love, the gun is the token of intimacy. (Of course, since this *is* a science fiction story, I turn everything on its head in the end...but still.)
What projects are you currently working on?
With the attention “The Ray-Gun” is getting, I’m preparing a number of pitches in the hope of catching an editor’s interest. Oddly enough, I’m looking at fantasy rather than science fiction… though in a science-fictional way.
I’ve always been interested in the concept of archetypes and the way that people so eagerly substitute mythology for reality. So I’m stirring together a lot of high archetypal ideas (including magic), but in light of the principle that you shouldn’t confuse myth with real life, *even if the myths have an element of truth*. We fill our heads with stories that were true once upon a time, but aren’t anymore; we treat the stories as real and ignore any experiences that conflict with them.
Not only is this a relevant topic for our current lives, I think it will become more important as time goes on. Technology has the potential to make us into beings akin to old myths. How do we still keep our heads straight?
So I’m looking at novels involving such ideas. I just hope the ideas don’t get lost in the usual complications of plot, action, character, etc., etc.
James Alan Gardner lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He has published eight science fiction novels and a collection of short stories. Gardner has won the Aurora award twice, and has been a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
