Mary Turzillo Interview
Mary Turzillo received the Nebula for her novelette, Mars is No Place for Children, in 1999. In 2007, she was a nominee in the short fiction category for her story, Pride.
First, congratulations on your Nebula nomination. Could you tell us about when you got that news?
Geoff was sitting across the room with a cat and a laptop, and he said, “The final Nebula ballot is out.” And my story was there. I felt very proud. There’s a lot of me in that story, and a lot of Trumbull County, where I taught for years.
My real surprises came when Lou Anders started e-mailing his authors links to our reviews. I got my first Publisher’s Weekly review, and a positive one. And others followed.
Writers seldom know they’ve written something good until they hear public reaction. At the 2000 Nebs, the applause as they announced each story was polite and enthusiastic, but the people at my table realized something different was about to happen when the applause for Mars is No Place for Children was appreciably louder and more enthusiastic.
Anyway, with Pride after getting a lot of good reviews, I started to really believe in the story, and reading it at cons. I used to be part of an amateur Shakespeare company and I loved reading Pride, which starts out quirky and funny and ends with blood. People said “You have to kill the tiger,” and I said, no, this is about two colliding value systems: human justice versus nature. Human life was already lost but that sacrifice could have transcendent meaning. Audiences really responded. People came back to hear it for a second and third time.
There’s a podcast of Pride, read by the amazing Paul Cole of WRFR of Rockland Maine.
It was a great year for science fiction, and a strong field. Lots of good stuff didn’t make the final ballot.
What were the most memorable moments for you during the Nebula Award weekend?
You mean aside from that heart-stopping moment when the name “Karen Joy Fowler” rang out instead of mine?
Uh. Well, meeting Michael Chabon. I always act like an idiot when I meet a celebrity, so I stupidly blathered how much I love his books (which was true), but then discovered I’d blocked on the titles of all of them, including The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
The Dell magazine breakfast. Brilliant people all holding forth, both editors and writers.
Having a cool dress.
Walks Geoff and I took. Salt Lick Barbecue with Scott Edelman and Connie Willis. Austin is a great city.
This is your second nomination (and we wish second win). Any difference how you took the nomination news between the two?
I was more nervous this time. The first time it never occurred to me that I had a chance. This time I panicked. Lost five pounds between the final ballot announcement and the evening of the ceremony. Gained it all back, alas.
This was an “always the bridesmaid” year for me. I made the preliminary Stoker ballot with Your Cat & Other Space Aliens
I did win a competition called “Moving Minds” to have one of my poems illustrated and posted on Cleveland RTA busses. Pretty cool.
My year of near-misses: fun, but nerve-jangling.
If you could give new writers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Figure out what you want: money or the applause of connoisseurs. Maybe you can’t have either, but at least you won’t be straddling the fence.
Try not to bore yourself. Make it fresh.
Write every, every day. Accept criticism and rejection without killing yourself. Crying and screaming are okay, killing yourself is going too far.
Read, read, read. Read quality, read stuff you enjoy, but stretch your tastes. Join a good book club. Keep a journal of techniques used by writers you admire. Read age-old classics; they are around for a reason, and it isn’t to keep English profs in their underpaid and overworked jobs.
Whose books do you look for when shopping for reading material?
Oh, wow. Cuyahoga County Public Library system is ranked tops in the US, and I have 50 books out now—their limit.
As well as print, I read audio books while cooking, exercising, or running errands. I belong to a book club started by Maureen McHugh. We started by reading only non-genre. Since Maureen moved to Austin, we cheat and do some SF.
My favorites include James Morrow, Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, Joe Hill, Toni Morrison, Annie Proulx, Junot D’az, Michael Bishop, Jonathan Lethem, Haruki Murakami, George Saunders, Connie Willis, Gene Wolfe, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, James Patrick Kelly, Kelly Link, Rick Bowes, and yes, Stephen King. I ration my King because his voice creeps into whatever I’m working on. I’m trying to learn to like Roberto Bola–o. I try to stretch my tastes, look for something new.
Some newcomers I watch: William Shunn, Toby Buckell, Ellen Klages (she’s won all sorts of prizes, but she’s only started to take the literary scene by storm), S. Andrew Swann (also not yet broken out—yet), Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Erin O’Brien, Paul Melko, Gavin Grant, Resa Nelson (her The Dragonslayer’s Sword
just came out). I loved the bits I’ve heard of Charles Oberndorf’s next novel. John Straley is not a newcomer, but he’s under exposed. Try The Woman Who Married a Bear
.
Authors I read for pure enjoyment, like feeding a sugar high: James Grippando, PT Deutermann, Harlan Coben, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Michael Crichton. Though I learn craft from these writers, they also entertain me while I load the dishwasher or pay bills. (Ever listen to fiction while paying bills?)
I read the New Yorker, Science News, the Tuesday New York Times science section. I buy Poetry magazine and other lit zines sporadically. Right now I’m reading the Rhysling Anthology, Vera Nazarian’s The Duke In His Castle
Our house is a book-and-magazine mess. We have thirty magazine subscriptions. If I can’t find a book under the magazines and fruit bowls, I start another. I don’t finish a book if I suddenly hate it. I once stopped reading a bestseller forty pages from the end.
Where can the readers snag a copy of your work?
It’s on Fictionwise.
Not only your Nebula-nominated story, Pride but where are others available in Internetland?
Also on Fictionwise. Three books are available from Sam’s Dot Publishing and VanZeno Press. Or email me. My address is on my website.
Do you have a full bibliography of your work?
Um, yeah. I should really put that on my website.
A couple months ago my husband decided it would be good for my character to maintain my own website. Unfortunately, my character is crappy. So, yeah, some evening when I have a lot of time and haven’t spent the day battling robots on the net (the modern version of purgatory), I’ll update that.
Mary, you’ve already had a successful career in science fiction/fantasy. What works-in-progress can we scoop?
I have a cats-on-Mars story coming out in Analog: “Steak Tartare and the Cats of Gari Babakin Station.” I’m working on a story about the god of Pachinko. And I’m working on my Mars colonization novel, Heart’s Journey, Mars Quest.
I’ve heard tell that you spent your academic time on Science Fiction pursuits. Could you tell us about that?
I used science fiction to teach writing and critical thinking. Alas, some girlie girl in the class (sorry to stereotype) would always raise her hand and say “Eeuw. I hate science fiction.” So I gave students a choice between science fiction and something else.
Interviewing for my first job, I told one hiring committee that I’d love to teach Milton as a fantasy writer. The chairman of the department got up and walked out of the room.
But interviewing at Kent State, I noticed a copy of Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny on Professor Carl Yoke’s office bookshelf. I asked to see it; it was autographed, and it turned out Carl was Zelazny’s high school best friend and had collaborated with him on some juvenalia. That was why I took that job.
Though I loved teaching, it wore me out. One time some research group sent us each a 20-page questionnaire with obscure questions, such as detailing all the courses we had ever taken. It would have taken entire day to complete. We were giving exams, so we wrote back as a group and refused. The researchers actually telephoned and tried to bully us into doing it.
(Later I wondered if those researchers actually published the results they got from the few under-worked profs they had managed to strong-arm into responding.)
My students were original, bright, innovative, idiosyncratic—several have become college professors and/or nationally recognized authors. A few were a pain in the neck. Some were all of the above.
I wrote, delivered, and published papers on SF and fantasy. I wrote critical biographies of Anne McCaffrey and Philip Josė Farmer. Both geniuses were so kind. How did I deserve such generosity from those giants of the field?
Prizes and prestige aside, what is the work that you’re most proud of and what makes it stand out for you?
I have some dark fantasy I’m really happy about: “Bottle Babies,” because Maureen McHugh liked it. “Eat or Be Eaten: A Love Story” because it’s over the top.
But mainly the Mars stories. I’m inspired by my husband’s research into Mars atmosphere and the feasibility of human Mars exploration. I’m a member of the Mars Society. “Steak Tartare” is my current favorite. I like annoying, edgy women characters, and Lucile infuriates many people.
What are you trying to accomplish in your writing? What are you trying to say?
Last month, I went to a wedding at Lily Dale, the spiritualist community, and standing at Inspiration Stump, I realized we’re all looking for meaning. My search is toward the stars. We’ll find out our place in the universe as we push outward.
I think people should look carefully at the mass hallucinations of our society, such as the necessity of debt and the almost totalitarian medical establishment. I think people should listen to children more, not because they are right, but because when they hurt, somebody should do something about it. I believe that the great standardization of our educational system will not necessarily lead to smarter grownups. I think most women should be more self-confident, and some women should be less so. I think when we are confronted with a great religious leader with a universal message, we should ask what’s in it for him.
I think we are “ridden by things” as Thoreau had it, things being pieces of paper and internet forms we have to fill out. I think it’s sick that we have to pay to watch ads on TV. I think insurance companies and banks are taking the place of government. I think sugar is a drug. I think Asimov’s laws of robotics were ignored when the Press-One-to-Hear-More-Options machine was invented.
I think if you ask the right question just about anybody will tell you an interesting story. I think civilization without art is impossible. I think music and fiction are spiritual nutrition. I think movies are getting better and better every year. I think we are living in the greatest age of storytelling the world has ever known.
I think we are supposed to go to the stars. (Who decided this? I don’t know, but I’m all for it.)
I think fiction exists to give delight. It’s like food and sex, and just as dangerous.
I think I am an opinionated bitch. I don’t know why my husband puts up with me; it must have something to do with cats.
These are the ideas you will find in my fiction.
After a career as a professor of English at Kent State University, Dr. MARY A. TURZILLO is now a full-time writer. In 2000, her story “Mars Is No Place for Children” won SFWA’s Nebula award for best novelette. Her novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl was serialized in Analog in July-Nov 2004.
Mary’s Pushcart-nominated collection of poetry, Your Cat & Other Space Aliens
Marva Dasef was born in Eugene, Oregon. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Technical Communications. She spent the next umpteen years working as a technical writer and programmer/analyst. In 2005, she gave up all that glamour for the solitary life of a fiction writer.
She has a series of chapbooks being published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. The first of the Cadida’s Adventures, Cadida and the Djinn, was released in December 2006. The second chapbook, Cadida and the Cave Demon, came out in June 2007. In 2008, all seven of the Cadida tales will be published together in one volume titled “The Seven Adventures of Cadida.” Also in 2008, her science fiction novella, First Duty will be published by by Sam’s Dot Publishing.
Her big project is putting together twenty-some stories based on her father’s boyhood growing up in West Texas, Tales of a Texas Boy
