Judith Berman Interview
For those who aren’t familiar with your fiction, how would you best describe them?
All over the maps far as genre is concerned. My novel Bear Daughter is mythic fantasy, Awakening is high fantasy, but I’ve also written near future sf--e.g., The Fear Gun--and my most recent sale, Pelago (forthcoming in Asimov’s) is far future space-opera-ish sf.
I’m interested in character, but I like stories where things happen, and I’m always interested in ideas, especially about how human beings relate to nature--one part of nature being their own bodies. I’m often surprised when reviewers and critics find a strong political bent. It’s not that I don’t have political opinions; it’s just that I don’t usually think I’m writing about them.
What’s the appeal of speculative fiction (whether fantasy or science fiction) for you? How did you get your start (whether as a reader or as a writer) in the genre?
I started when I was young enough that I can’t now remember it. I think I probably first read the sf and fantasy that my older brother and sister were reading, but I also worked my way through the library independently of them. I also gravitated as a kid to fairy tales and myth.
Our local arts-and-culture radio host once made the comment, famous in our household, that she couldn’t get into a book in which things happened that couldn’t happen in real life. I think there is a kind of person at the opposite end of the spectrum that delights in contemplating things that couldn’t happen in real life. My 8-year old son is certainly one and so am I. I also value the forms of speculative fiction for the ways in which they lend themselves to exploring various social and intellectual issues. But the immediate appeal is that enjoyment.
Who are some of the writers or what are some of the books that have influenced you?
Russian fantastic writers, like Bulgakov and Sinyavsky. Le Guin, Crowley and Delany, definitely. But also “deeper” genre writers including early (Andre) Norton and Simak, and as a kid I read a large chunk of the Golden Age canon, which still lurks in my backbrain.
Having written both novels and short fiction, which are you more comfortable with? What in your opinion are your strengths in each format?
I just got back from the Sycamore Hill workshop, where I preserved my perfect record of never having workshopped a piece of short fiction about which some person in the circle didn’t say, “This really should be a novel.” Short fiction is not my forte. I persist because I have ideas that I don’t want to commit to at novel length, and it is also good discipline to be forced to say less than I want to.
What’s your writing process like? What are the elements that you prioritize?
At the beginning I make outlines, block out scenes, map conflicts, investigate characters’ backgrounds and motivations, but in the end there’s always a fair amount of groping blindly until I find the path through the woods to a working story.
One thing experience has taught me is not to fuss too much over the writing at the sentence level until the scenes and the character-action spine of the story are in place.
Is there a conscious distinction that you make when choosing whether to write fantasy or science fiction? For you, is there a big difference between the two genres?
Ideas come to me as one or the other. For me, the two genres have different conventions and somewhat different goals. Sf does feel more constrained by what we think we know about the “real world.” Those constraints can make it harder to write if the science is outside an area I know much about.
What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome as a professional author?
I’m really slow. I can write lots of words fairly fast, but I have to go through many drafts before the story starts to work. This is not a hurdle I have actually overcome.
How did the story of “Awakening” come about? Did you initially plot out the events before you started to write?
I had a dream in which I walled into a crypt without knowing who I was or why I had been entombed. On waking, I wrote down the dream and then set it aside for years. I have a hard time starting a story until I know the dramatic crux and its resolution, and in this case all I had was an intriguing initial scene. When I finally picked it up again, I again found myself in the protagonist’s situation--I had to escape from the tomb and set out into the world to discover what story she was part of. Eventually I realized that Aleya’s story was linked indirectly, via some pieces of a novel plotted but not written, to a story I had previously published in Black Gate, The Poison Well (issue #7). The two stories are entirely independent of each other, however.
Does your anthropology background have any impact on your writing? Will we be seeing more fiction along the lines of your novel, Bear Daughter, in the future?
At the moment I have no plans to write a sequel to Bear Daughter, and no story in the works set in that universe, though that could change.
An anthropological perspective does infuse everything I write, though, in one way or another. The far-future universe of my forthcoming novella, Pelago (and of what I hope will be my second novel) first germinated in a graduate school course on social organization that didn’t fully hold my attention. I would drift away into speculations about the application of various theories to the social and economic structures of space-faring societies.
I’d like to explore your synesthesia. Did it have any bearing on your interest in reading/writing literature? How has it aided you in your writing?
I’m curious about the neurophysiological basis of synaesthesia, but there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of research so far. Almost everyone in my family has some form of it. My mother’s is more like Baudelaire’s and takes the form of letters and numbers having colors. My own, which I share with my sister, is experiencing sound, and to a lesser extent other kinds of formal patterns, as tactile and topological.
Until recently it’s had little impact on my writing, more on my experience of music and on linguistic work I’ve done with Native American languages, some of which encode topological notions as grammatical categories. But I’ve been figuring out how to write about it since giving my form of synaesthesia to the protagonist of Pelago, who is a kind of math genius. I am not one, but topology is, perhaps not surprisingly, the area of math where I was the happiest.
“Awakening" and “The Fear Gun” are works of yours that have been nominated as finalists for awards. What does it feel like to have your stories acknowledged as such?
Very cool.
What other projects are you working on right now?
I mentioned a novel in progress, called Invisible House, of which Pelago is a sizable chunk. A couple of short fiction pieces. I’ve been reading a ton of middle-reader books with my son and have been considering something in that direction. I’ve also been working on a long-range nonfiction project, a narrative history about the very early contact period on the northwest coast. It will be based on Native oral histories and on the journals and logs kept by the early maritime fur traders.
JUDITH BERMAN’s latest story, “Pelago,” a far-future sf novella, is forthcoming in Asimov’s in 2009. Her short fiction has also appeared in Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, Best Short Novels 2005, and her chapbook Lord Stink and Other Stories (Small Beer Press, 2002). Her first novel, Bear Daughter (Ace, September 2005), was praised as “utterly absorbing, unforgettable...truly original and unique” (Booklist, Starred Review), “brilliant” (VOYA), and “a richly imaginative tour de force” (Locus). Her fiction has been short-listed for the Nebula, the Sturgeon, and the Crawford Awards, and her often-cited essay on current trends in the field, “Science Fiction Without the Future,” received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award in 2001. She is based in Philadelphia but at this moment is living in Dubai.
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.
