Joe Haldeman Interview
Joe Haldeman has been nominated for and received the Nebula, Hugo, Ditmar, World Fantasy, Galaxy, Rhysling and James Tipree Awards. The Accidental Time Machine
Tell us about The Accidental Time Machine
It’s the first humorous novel I’ve written in years, so the main thing I “hope readers will take from it” is amusement. I had fun playing with aspects of MIT, where I’ve taught for 24 years, and a certain kind of MIT student, the semi-genius slacker.
I’ve always wanted to write a time-travel novel, one that had a certain degree of mathematical sophistication without being unreadable. I loved doing the research about my institution in the nineteenth century.
Finally, I like love stories, but usually when I write about love it’s pretty complicated. It was fun to write a story about two likable characters who really fall for each other.
Which themes and ideas dominate the writing of Joe Haldeman? What do you think readers take from your work they get nowhere else?
Others have pointed out that my stories tend to be about the nature of identity and about the necessity for moral behavior in a godless universe. I wouldn’t disagree, but I don’t know many writers who start a novel from such an abstract notion.
What a reader gets from a particular writer is that writer’s perceptions and a slice of the writer’s personality—“style,” which is what the writer gets for free.
What is the story you’ve written you’re proudest of, and why?
If I were to pick up one of my books to read, it would probably be either The Hemingway Hoax
My current novel, Marsbound
Tell us a little about Marsbound
This is the Earth-girl-goes-to-Mars bildungsroman with a few differences. Like skinny-dipping and xeno-ontology gone mad and a Mr. Potato Head (TM) you can really identify with
The short story vs the novella vs the novel—what makes you decide to write an idea in one form over the other?
Sometimes I don’t decide—The Forever War
You do have to sell a novel before you write it, so of course most of my books start out as a deliberate outline or prospectus.
The Forever War
It’s not difficult to live up to its expectations, though I do get tired of “Why doesn’t he write another “Forever War”? I’m not 26 years old anymore.
The Forever War
I don’t believe it ever “hovered” over subsequent books. I’ve written other books about war, but that’s because I was a soldier, and nothing that dramatic ever happened to me again.
You sold your first novel, and had a dream start to your career. So, getting started was easy for you, but what about after? What about now? Any setbacks along the way, and how did you deal with them?
It’s not an easy way to make a living, but I knew that when I chose it. I deal with setbacks the way anybody else does—amplifying them way out of perspective, worrying more than I should, and so forth. Sooner or later I just sit down and write another book. Good advice that sometimes is hard to take.
How (if at all) has science fiction evolved/ changed in the time that you’ve been working in the field? Does it still have value in the present milieu? Relevance to the future?
The big change, mostly commercial but also critical, is that the influence of Tolkien and George Lucas have reduced actual science fiction to a small subgenre of the glut of titles under that aegis in the bookstore. It’s ironic in various ways, mainly because we do live in a science-fictional world; a world that’s not reluctant to acknowledge the importance of science fiction in its past. They just don’t buy the books.
Are the books therefore less relevant, now and in the future? I really don’t think that’s answerable. Almost no one would have foreseen that garish pulp sf would change the world, but it did.
As to whether science fiction has literary value nowadays, the answer is a shrug. The difference between mainstream writers who use science fiction tropes and plebeian science fiction writers is not as large as the mainstream writers and critics think.
The Commercial vs the Artistic in writing—is there a genuine difference between these two philosophies or are they artifical attributes? Are they in opposition, and if so, can they meet?
There’s nothing artificial about writing a book on assignment, purely for money. I’ve done that five times in my life, and don’t apologize for it, but don’t think any of them was a good idea. I needed money, but as it turned out, I would’ve made more money doing my own thing.
But if you were a serious painter and the rent was due, and someone wanted to hire you to paint a sign, would you say it was beneath you? It’s still pigments and brush strokes, and there’s a difference between a good sign and an indifferent one. You pay the rent and go back to the canvas.
Will you still be read in a 100 years? Does it matter? Should writers write for the present or the future?
I think most non-commercial writers write for themselves; commercial writers write more for a perceived “typical reader.” Of course there are states in between.
I hope that in a hundred years I will be such a hot-shot that whatever replaces PBS will do a series of my works and the New Yorker (nothing will replace it) will run a tired and supercilious article about why people still like me.
You were a soldier in Vietnam, a controversial war the American government got its people involved in. Today, the USA is involved in another controversial war, the Iraqi war. Do you think there are parallels here and would you like to share some thoughts on the matter?
In both cases the American government betrayed the American people in favor of people with lots of money. In both cases we were sent into war because of deliberate lies that should have resulted in impeachment and imprisonment.
The differences are as important to me as the similarities. This war is being fought by volunteers, much better trained and motivated than we draftees were. They’re getting screwed even worse.
I never would have thought that I would be glad for having fought in the jungle. But compared to fighting people who look just like civilians in a city environment, it was pretty easy. Always something to get under or hide behind.
What does the future hold for Joe Haldeman, the writer?
I was born a little too early to have an alternative to death, which makes me unhappy. Otherwise the future looks like more, and I hope better, books. Maybe a movie and a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Or a new kidney.
JOE HALDEMAN was born in Oklahoma 9 June 1943. Grew up in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D. C., and Alaska. Currently lives in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Gay Haldeman. As of August, 2008, they will have been married 43 years. He teaches a science fiction writing workshop at MIT and (in alternate years) Reading and Writing Longer Fiction and Reading and Writing Genre Fiction. He likes to travel, cooks for daily relaxation and has won a poker tournament, in Nassau 1989. Pastimes include: Amateur astronomy, drawing and painting, guitar playing; a lot of bicycling and a little fishing, canoeing, swimming, and snorkeling.
His new novel, Marsbound
DAVID DE BEER was born in South Africa and mostly raised in Johannesburg, where he daily strives to perfect the art of dodging lions, zebras, tigers, bears and crazed taxi drivers. His short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in markets such as Chizine, Alienskin and Courting Morpheus.
