Lisa Goldstein 2009 Interview
Lisa Goldstein is nominated for the novelette “Dark Rooms.”
Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. What’s the appeal of science fiction for you? How about fantasy?
I like getting lost in different worlds, both in fantasy and science fiction. I like seeing how people build worlds, and how they make them consistent. I like them both for showing possibilities, the future in science fiction, and anything at all in fantasy. (People keep saying that fantasy is about the past, and a lot of it is, but there are amazing possibilities there—you can write about anywhere and anywhen.)
What made you decide that you wanted to be a writer? At what point did you consider yourself an actual writer?
I always wanted to be a writer, ever since I could read. I loved the idea of being able to create stories like the ones I enjoyed reading, of trying to do something as good as my favorite authors. I didn’t think of myself as a writer until I got my first book published, though.
How would you describe your writing?
That’s a hard one, because I’m not really sure. I’ve written lots of different things, fantasy and science fiction and mainstream. I mostly write fantasy, but even there I’ve done all kinds of sub-genres, urban fantasy and historical fantasy and magic realism and some stuff I wouldn’t know how to categorize. My favorite description of what I do is that I try to write about magic in everyday life.
Which medium are you more comfortable with, short stories or novels?
I like writing in both. Novels are great for spreading out and getting lost in, and short stories are fun because they focus down on one or two specific things.
What’s the biggest challenge you had to overcome before getting published?
Rejection, like almost everyone else. Also, at the beginning I had a hard time making myself sit down and actually work—there always seemed to be something more fun or more important to do. Okay, that’s two biggest challenges.
Who were the writers that influenced you back then? How about now?
Then and now I like Ursula Le Guin. When I first read her there weren’t a lot of women writing sf, and I was so thrilled to find a woman who could not only play by the rules of science fiction but who did it better than anyone else. Now I think she’s amazing for the breadth of things she can write well—science fiction and fantasy and mainstream and poetry. I can’t write half the things she does, but I learned a lot from her. Back then I also read writers who were part of what was called the New Wave—Samuel Delany and Roger Zelazny and Carol Emshwiller (another woman!), and I liked the way they expanded the possibilities of science fiction and fantasy. These days my favorite book is Possession by A. S. Byatt, which is about parallel stories—two writers in Victorian England, two literary critics in the present—and the way they echo and re-echo each other, and is just amazingly constructed—I find something new in it every time I read it. It isn’t fantasy, but there is a woman in it who writes fantasy and fairy tales. I also like Neil Gaiman—he’s definitely one of the people who takes advantage of the possibilities of fantasy.
How different is the field back in the 1980s compared to today? Do you think the industry is faring better or worse?
When I started out it was almost possible to read every fantasy and science fiction novel that got published, so you could have a conversation about the field and everyone would know what you were talking about. Now the field’s split off into dozens of different sub-genres, and no one could possibly keep up with it. I keep seeing books by new writers I’ve never heard of. With so much being published, it’s much harder for new writers to get noticed—I know it would be harder for me if I had to start now. Also, it seems to me that publishers are less willing to take chances now, especially with the economy so bad, so there are too many books all about the same thing.
On the other hand, there are more small presses these days, and people are taking them more seriously. So if you have something no big publisher would want to take a chance on, something quirky or different, there’s always a possibility a small press might pick it up. Of course you still have the problem of getting noticed ...
What was the inspiration for “Dark Rooms?”
It came from a book about movies called The Invisible Art, which had a picture of Georges Méliès, a pioneer of film, selling toys in a Paris train station. This seemed almost unbearable poignant, and I was sure there was a story there somewhere. In fact, I liked this image so much that for a couple of days I just circled it, the way a sculptor would circle a good piece of marble, hoping I could do it justice.
What kind of research did you have to do for the story?
Quite a lot. I read books on Méliès and saw his movie Voyage to the Moon, and I read books on the early history of film, and some books, on Hollywood for example, that turned out to have nothing to do with the story except for some touches in the background. And I got distracted by the history of magic lanterns and a Jesuit priest named Athanasius Kircher, who was supposed to have invented the magic lantern (pictures painted on glass and projected onto a wall) in the seventeenth century, and who will probably someday be the subject of another story.
To those unfamiliar with your work, which of your novels would you recommend?
I like Dark Cities Underground, because it worked out nearly as well as I wanted it too. I wanted to take unrelated subjects—subways and children’s books and Egyptian gods—and put them all together in a sort of grand secret history, with some steampunk thrown in. I’ve never been able to come up with another conspiracy theory that worked as well. I’d also recommend The Red Magician, which got lots of attention and is my most personal novel, a book based on stories my mother told me about growing up in a small town in Eastern Europe.
What is it like writing under a pseudonym?
It was strange, and I don’t know if I’d recommend it. (It was the publisher’s idea, because they thought those books were very different from anything I’d written before.) I was essentially starting over, and, as I said above, it’s hard for a new writer to get attention in this climate. Also, at the beginning I wasn’t allowed to let the secret out, and so I was unable to publicize the books at all—though finally I just said the hell with it and began to tell people. On the other hand, there’s something really fun about having a secret identity. My fondest hope was that I would hear something about my books (something good, of course) from someone who didn’t know I’d written them, but unfortunately that never happened.
What projects are you currently working on?
I’m mostly writing short stories. Actually right now I’m writing another story inspired by The Invisible Art, this one about a huge set that D. W. Griffith constructed on Hollywood Boulevard that was supposed to represent ancient Babylon. (I have to say, that book was a very fortuitous find.) I also have an idea for a novel set in the early 1970s and based in part on some college friends, but that one will have to settle in my brain a little more.
Lisa Goldstein lives in a 90-year-old house in Oakland with her husband Doug and her cute dog Spark.
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.
