Jason Sanford 2010 Interview
Jason Sanford was nominated for his novella “Sublimation Angels”.
Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, what’s the appeal of science fiction for you?
For me, science fiction is the literary genre best suited to exploring today’s ever-changing world. You have to remember that most humans hate change, even if they won’t admit it. Our species came of age in extremely small hunter-gatherer groups, where technological and societal change was measured across millennia. Now we’re dealing with more social change in a single day than our ancestors experienced in a lifetime. That’s why science fiction is so important. At its best, the genre explores the intellectual and emotional needs of humans in the face of such massive upheaval. As such, science fiction is very much the literature of today’s world.
Of course, this flies in the face of the general public’s view of science fiction, which is that it’s only about the future--and specifically about predicting the future. Which is totally silly because if you look at science fiction’s track record on predictions the genre performs rather poorly, having missed major events like the Civil Rights, Equal Rights and Decolonization movements, the Green Revolution, the creation of the Internet, the beginnings of an information economy, and the slow speed at which humanity is reaching into space. Instead of being about predicting the future, I see science fiction as humanity’s dream of the future. How we go about creating our future. How we go about surviving and processing the incredible changes facing us, and dealing with the consequences of such change.
Since you founded storySouth and run the Million Writers Award, do you see a significant difference between genre fiction and non-genre fiction?
One difference is that non-genre or “literary” fiction has largely abdicated its role of understanding large-scale societal issues, replacing that with concern about the mind-numbing minutia of individual life. In fact, genre and non-genre fiction have essentially traded places over the last half century. Initially genre fiction was criticized for cardboard characters and poor prose--although that stereotype was hardly true of all genre writings--while literary fiction was where readers turned for true-life characters, quality writing, and a deeper understanding of life.
Now, literary fiction has become a joke, endlessly examining the fluff in each author’s navel and overlooking the bigger issues in life, while the best genre writers have merged great writing and dead-on characterization with larger-picture insight. This has been so successful that many of the biggest literary writers--people like Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Michael Chabon--now dive full-force into genre archetypes and ideas within their works.
What made you decide you wanted to become a writer?
Stories. I love stories. The personal stories we whisper to each other. The self-told stories our minds create to make sense of life. The big stories we write in books and show in films and pass on to our children so we can all understand existence. Sometimes I feel like that damn kid in The Sixth Sense because I see stories everywhere. If I didn’t write them down I’d probably go crazy.
What were the hurdles you ran into before getting published? How did you overcome them?
The biggest hurdle was created by my own idiocy as I initially wrote the stories I thought other people wanted to read, instead of the stories I wanted to read. I’m sure many writers go through this phase, but it’s still an ugly thing to behold. I was lucky to nip this idiocy before it became terminal.
Another hurdle I encountered is the difficulty in publishing short genre fiction in today’s market. For new writers, it is often easier to publish a first novel than a first short story. The reason for this is simple: There are only a few professional-level speculative fiction magazines, while the marketplace supports a much larger number of book publishers. But that said, the short fiction market has some great editors who are willing to take chances on new writers, so if you love short stories you must keep writing and submitting until you start landing acceptances.
How has your experience as an editor affected your fiction?
My editorial experience causes me to rewrite my stories over and over. I’ve heard some authors say they hate revisions--me, I love the process. Every time I rewrite a story I improve it. In fact, the biggest problem I have is letting go of rewriting, to finally realize the story is good enough to put out there.
How about your experiences in Thailand and the Peace Corps: have they made an impact on your writing?
I loved my Peace Corps experience, even if there were days when I wondered what the hell I was doing there. Living and working in another culture is a tough experience, especially in a situation where you’re not around other expatriates and able to recreate a simulacrum of your culture. In fact, among Peace Corps Volunteers it is the cultural adaptation that is always hardest. Being outside your culture makes you a true outsider, and forces you to reexamine all of the beliefs and ideas you once took for granted. Many people don’t like having such experiences, which is why there’s a high drop-out rate among Peace Corps Volunteers.
It’s hard to state how the experience influenced my writings. I feel I’m better at understanding my own cultural biases and beliefs, and am also able to express this understanding in the stories and characters I create. And being immersed in another language really opened my eyes to how the words we use help create the realities we experience. I sometimes wonder if humanity might get along better if more people in the world--and especially more people in the United States--were bilingual.
What’s the appeal of the short story format for you?
I believe the short story format is the purest form of storytelling in our current literary tradition. By their nature, novels flow and ramble as they pull in extra characters and plot events to reach their longer length. But with short stories, the author must focus on the story’s essential elements. If a novel digresses, no harm done. If a short story does that, it’s dead.
That said, there are also many great things you can do with novels that are impossible to attempt with short stories. But I do love the short story form.
When you started writing “Sublimation Angels,” did you know it was going to be the length of a novella? Was it difficult finding someone to publish it?
I started the story with certain characters and ideas in mind, but didn’t realize how long it would take to capture these aspects until I began banging into novella length. And the story still isn’t done. I intend to continue the story from where the novella ended, with the overall story ending up as a novel. One complaint I’ve heard from some readers is that the novella didn’t answer all of the questions it raised. Very true. The following parts of the story will do that.
As for publishing “Sublimation Angels,” I was indeed worried about finding a publisher. Luckily, Andy Cox and the Interzone editors immediately loved the novella and wanted to publish it. Without Interzone, the novella would still be sitting on my computer’s hard drive, twiddling its digital thumbs and wishing it could find a home.
“Sublimation Angels” is both character-driven and concept-driven, at least from my reading of it. What was the inspiration for the story and do you begin your stories with a concept in mind or does that develop with the writing?
I usually begin with the concept first, often expressed in the language of how the story opens. I then look for characters to populate the story, and ideas to explore, and go from there. In many ways I see fiction writing as a form of experimentation, as the author investigates the causal relationships among variables such as plot, character, insight, and language.
“Sublimation Angels” was inspired by Fritz Leiber’s classic story “A Pail of Air.” I first read the story in one of my grandfather’s pulp magazines. The idea of the main character surviving on a frozen earth resonated with me, especially since I grew up in the subtropical heat of Alabama, where I rarely saw any snow. When I reread “A Pail of Air” a few years ago, all my childhood memories of how I’d loved Leiber’s story came spilling back. So I wrote “Sublimation Angels” to create my own frozen world where people struggle to survive and understand life.
What projects are you currently working on?
I’m working on a mystery novel, which I plan to finish in the next few months. I then plan to complete the story of “Sublimation Angels.” I’ve also been working on a number of short stories. Finally, I’m right in the middle of this year’s Million Writers Award. Once the notable stories of the year are released in early April, I have approximately a month to read all of them and pick my 10 favorites. So I foresee a lot of reading in the weeks ahead.
Jason Sanford was born and raised in Alabama, where he majored in anthropology at Auburn University and worked as an archeologist. After serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, he worked as an editor for a Minneapolis book publisher. He now lives in Ohio with his wife and two sons.
Jason’s fiction has appeared regularly in Interzone, where he won their 2008 Readers’ Poll. His stories have also been published in Year’s Best SF 14, Analog, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, The Mississippi Review, Diagram, Pindeldyboz, and other places. He has won a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and been nominated in the best short fiction category for both the BSFA and British Fantasy Awards. He also co-founded the literary journal storySouth, through which he runs the annual Million Writers Award for best online fiction. His critical essays and reviews have been published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Pedestal Magazine, The Fix Short Fiction Review, and SF Signal.
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, the editor of Best Philippine Speculative Fiction, and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Philippine Speculative Fiction, and The Dragon and the Stars (edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi).. 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. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
