Robin Wayne Bailey | The Nebula Awards

Robin Wayne Bailey Interview

Interviewed by Leslie What on July 16 2008

Robin Wayne Bailey is a nominee in the Best Novellete Category for 2007 with his story, The Children’s Crusade, published in the Heroes In Training anthology. This is Mr. Bailey’s first Nebula nomination. He is one of only eight recipients of the SFWA Service Award.

In the pie chart that is your life, with generous slices carved out for fandom, reading, writing, service to SFWA and the SF Hall of Fame, music, activism, family, and martial arts, which slices claim the biggest holds on your life, and how do you manage to keep your life and writing in perspective?

That’s kind of like asking which of your children is most important to you! Writing and family are, of course, paramount. Writing keeps me sane. It’s a cheap form of therapy, and almost anyone will tell you that I need lots of therapy. My family says they keep me sane, too, but mostly I suspect they’re the reason I need lots of cheap therapy, particularly the members of my extended family, who drive me crazy.

Bodybuilding and martial arts are my passion. I’ve earned black belts in karate and judo, and studied Yoshinkan Aikido, along with various forms of kobudo. I currently study Shindo Jinen Ryu. But bodybuilding is my true passion these days, and the gym is my second home. My therapist said I needed to get off the couch.

Why do you write? What was your path to becoming a writer, and what are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

Does any artist really know why they do what they do? I write for lots of reasons, and probably none of them are right. I write to discover myself and to come to some sort of peace with who I am. At its core, isn’t all art – writing, painting, music – a form of therapy for the artist? We struggle, not just to express ourselves, but to make someone listen. And I write to clarify the world around me, to come to some sort of understanding of the angels and monsters inside all of us. And I write for money – that’s important, too. Art’s important, but sometimes you have to pay the rent.

I sold my first short story when I was eighteen and a freshman in a college creative writing course. I’ve been writing more or less full time for twenty-five years. I’ve had some great mentors along the way – Wilson Tucker, Carolyn Cherryh, Frank Robinson, to name the important ones. I’ve had a few bestsellers and a few books that solidly tanked, but mostly been happy in the midlist twilight zone of the “working writer.” They don’t tell you in classes and workshops, but writing is one gigantic gamble. You roll the dice, and sometimes you win the big money, sometimes you crap out. Some of us wake up one day and kind of realize we’ve been suckered, that we’ve won just enough over and over again to keep us playing and hoping. I’m addicted to the gambling.

What themes tend to recur in your work? How are ways the world might be healed besides magically? And how do writers influence the everyday world through their work?

It’s a bit of a start to read this question, and my answer might be too strong for this forum. But what the hell. This past year brought me to the proverbial “dark place” where you either put the noose around your neck or seek professional help. A lot of forces coalesced to bring me to that point, among them, post-traumatic stress from my adventure seven years ago with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’m cancer-free right now, but you don’t quite get beyond the fear of recurrence. Every time you catch a cold the first thought is “it’s back.” There were other issues, too. Childhood sexual abuse issues that resurged with a vengeance.

With the help of people close to me I got help, and during the course of beginning therapy, I reread almost my entire body of work. I discovered that from story to story and book to book, I was having the same dialog with myself. Themes of child abuse, broken families, distant parents, children essentially on their own emerged over and over again. Even in the comedies. Even in the serious works, novels or stories. No matter how fantastic the story or otherworldly the setting. Sometimes it was overt, as in the Frost novels. Sometimes it was more subtle, even encoded, as in my novella, Toy Soldiers. It was as if I was leaving messages to myself.

Sometimes, readers also pick up on these messages. After Shadowdance was published a young gay man wrote to tell me the book had saved his life. Maybe that’s the only way we can influence the world with our writing - one reader at a time. The Children’s Crusade won’t get us out of Iraq or erase the shame that foolish adventurism has brought on our country, but writing does give me a voice, and it’s important to me what I do with that voice.

Still, I don’t know how to heal the world. I’m not certain the world wants to be healed. Right now, I’m working on healing myself.

What are the risks you take personally or professionally when exploring religion and politics in your writing?

Any writer that worries about risk-taking is in the wrong line of work.
If you’ve got something to say and it’s worth saying, then you risk pissing someone off - a reader, an editor, a buyer, whoever. And if you don’t have anything to say, why are you writing?

Who were some of the greatest influences on your writing, and would that list of writers differ from the authors of your favorite books?

I mentioned Tucker, Cherryh and Robinson earlier. I’ve learned invaluable lessons from all three, and all three have influenced, not just my writing, but my career choices at some point. In the sf/f arena, there are almost too many influences to list - C. L. Moore, Philip Jose Farmer, Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison -- these are all writers whose work admire and who I’ve sometimes tried to emulate.

In the broader literary sphere, I love the great Greek playwrights and the Romantic poets. Steinbeck is a favorite. So is Flannery O’Connor and lots of others. I’ve got a master’s degree in literature, and I think the diploma says that entitles me to lots of pretensions.

What might Fritz Leiber think about your novel Swords Against the Shadowland (inspired by his The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser novels)?

Fritz Leiber was unique. I met him on several occasions. Call it charisma or personal magnetism - he cast an aura of magic. To say I was stunned would be an understatement when I was invited to collaborate on a new Lankhmar novel. I’d read everything by him, not just the Lankhmar works, and revered his writing. And I was no less stunned when he died before the ink was dry on the contracts. Patrick Nielsen Hayden took me aside just before the Hugo ceremonies at some Worldcon and gave me the news. I remember nothing of that ceremony.

Contrary to the promotional material, I wrote Swords Against the Shadowland on my own, honoring Fritz’s material as best I could, but bringing my own voice to it. I expected to get killed by the critics, but they were kind. Science Fiction Chronicle named it one of the seven best fantasy books the year of its publication. And the book will be re-published by Dark Horse Books later this year. I hope Fritz is smiling – I think he is.

Science Fiction or Fantasy? Where’s the place for realistic writing?

Why choose? Both have strengths and advantages, and in terms of techniques, they have more in common than not. Most of my novels have been fantasies, but lots of my shorter works have been science fiction. My collection, Turn Left to Tomorrow , is all science fiction.

The place for realistic writing is in the characters. No matter how fantastic the setting or the situation, if the characters aren’t real then everything falls apart. And that’s true no matter the genre.

Your novelette, The Children’s Crusade was a Nebula nominee. What’s your favorite piece and is it different than what you think of as your strongest piece and why? What one piece would you want a reader unfamiliar with your work to read as an introduction to your work?

Ah, back to the “choose your favorite child” tactic! Okay, I’m extremely proud of The Children’s Crusade but I’m also very proud of Keepers of Earth which was selected for Silverberg’s first Best SF of the Year anthology. Also of The Terminal Solution an alternate-history story about the emergence of AIDS into Victorian England with David Livingstone as Patient Zero, Drs. Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph Bell as medical investigators, and Jack the Ripper thrown in for good measure. I did more research on that story than I’ve done on some of my books. I’d throw in Toy Soldiers as a very favorite child, too. These are all available in my collection.

For novels, Shadowdance is my crown jewel. It’s a very dark fantasy novel and earned a mention in the massive coffee table book, Art Of The Imagination. And in a very different vein, my young adult Dragonkin books. Those were immense fun to write.

What are you working on now and what can we expect to see soon?

I just set aside the Big Honking Fantasy novel I’ve been working on for the past year. Too dark and lacked humor, my agent said. I’ll rework it later. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing in other genres. I’ve done a western story and a fantasy romance, and I’m umpty-chapters into a mystery novel that’s proving great fun. Particularly in the current market climate, I’m a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one genre basket. As Heinlein said, “Specialization is for insects.”

ROBIN WAYNE BAILEY is the best-selling author of the Dragonkin books and the Frost series (Frost, Skull Gate, and Bloodsongs) along with numerous other novels and shorter works. He has served on the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Board of Directors as a regional Director and also as president. In conjunction with the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society and James Gunn and the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, Robin founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Hall of Fame. In 2004, the Hall of Fame merged with Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Enterprises in Seattle and became part of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Robin continues to chair the Hall of Fame’s induction committee.

LESLIE WHAT’s new collection, Crazy Love received both Publishers Weekly and Booklist starred reviews. She teaches writing at UCLA Extension the Writers’ Program and is still looking for the perfect pair of shoes. She previously won a Nebula for her short story The Cost of Doing Business

4 comments so far.

1. M John Robinson on 17th July 2008 at 12:18 am

As a long time reader of science fiction, to escape the stress of every day work, I admire your writing. Thanks for sharing this interview with me. M John

2. Robin Wayne Bailey on 18th July 2008 at 2:56 am

You’re welcome, M. John. Thank -you- for your note, and glad you enjoyed the interview.

3. Robin Wayne Bailey on 13th August 2008 at 7:20 pm

That’s very zen. I think. But maybe not. Hinayana school, maybe. I’m mahayana, myself.

Best,
Robin

4. David de Beer on 14th August 2008 at 12:35 am

Robin, I’ve closed comment #3, Aug 14 @2:35 that you were responding to. Could be a real website there, but still too bizarre.
If not spam, then it’s probably some kind of linkfarming activity.

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2009 Nebula Award Novel Nominees

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Love We Share Without Knowingby Christopher Barzak
Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman
The City & The Cityby China Miéville
Bone Shakerby Cherie Priest
Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" ( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.

About the Author

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. It has been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for a Nebula and four Hugo awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year.

The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak

In this haunting, richly woven novel of modern life in Japan, the author of the acclaimed debut One for Sorrow explores the ties that bind humanity across the deepest divides. Here is a Murakamiesque jewel box of intertwined narratives in which the lives of several strangers are gently linked through love, loss, and fate.

On a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.

From the neon colors of Tokyo, with its game centers and karaoke bars, to the bamboo groves and hidden shrines of the countryside, these souls and others mingle, revealing a profound tale of connection—uncovering the love we share without knowing.

Exquisitely perceptive and deeply affecting, Barzak’s artful storytelling deftly illuminates the inner lives of those attempting to find—or lose—themselves in an often incomprehensible world.

About the Author

Christopher Barzak grew up in rural Ohio, went to university in a decaying post-industrial city in Ohio, and has lived in a Southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, where he taught English in rural junior high and elementary schools. His stories have appeared in a many venues, including Nerve.com, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Strange Horizons, Salon Fantastique, Interfictions, Asimov’s, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. His first novel, One for Sorrow, was published by Bantam Books in Fall of 2007, and won the Crawford Award that same year. He is the co-editor (with Delia Sherman) of Interfictions 2, and has done Japanese-English translation on Kant: For Eternal Peace, a peace theory book published in Japan for Japanese teens. Currently he lives in Youngstown, Ohio, where he teaches writing at Youngstown State University.

Flesh and Fire by Laura Anne Gilman

Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power.

But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within -- magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed.

In Flesh and Fire, first in a spellbinding new trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman conjures a story as powerful as magic itself, as intoxicating as the finest of wines, and as timeless as the greatest legends ever told.

About the Author

Born in the late 1960’s in suburban New Jersey, Laura Anne endured only moderate trauma - and some good times - before escaping to Skidmore College. After graduation, given the choice between grad school and employment, the lure of a paycheck took her to NYC and a career in publishing, while working nights and weekends to get her writing career started. In 2004, she and corporate America decided they needed a break from each other. Her first original novel contract in-hand, Laura Anne became a full-time freelancer, and never looked back. She is the author of the Cosa Nostradamus books for Luna (the “Retrievers” and “Paranormal Scene Investigations” series), a YA trilogy for HarperCollins, and the forthcoming Vineart War books from Pocket, while continuing to write and sell short fiction. She also writes paranormal romances for Nocturne as Anna Leonard. Laura Anne is also an amateur chef, oenophile, and cat-servant. She lives in New York City, where she also runs d.y.m.k. productions.

The City & The City by China Miéville

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What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

About the Author

China Miéville is the author of King Rat; Perdido Street Station, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Fantasy Award; The Scar, winner of the Locus Award and the British Fantasy Award; Iron Council, winner of the Locus Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Looking for Jake, a collection of short stories; and Un Lun Dun, his New York Times bestselling book for younger readers. He lives and works in London.

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But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

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Cherie Priest made her debut with the Eden Moore series of Southern Gothic ghost stories that began with Four and Twenty Blackbirds. She lives in Seattle, Washington, and keeps a popular blog at cmpriest.livejournal.com.

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

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Award-winning writer Jeff VanderMeer's final novel in his Ambergris Cycle, Finch, has just been published in the US, and will appear in the UK from Atlantic's Corvus imprint. His writer guide Booklife and associated Booklifenow website focus on sustainable creativity. With his wife, he recently edited the charity anthology Last Drink Bird Head. His short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Library of America's American Fantastic Tales, and several year's best anthologies. He writes nonfiction for The Washington Post Book World, Omnivoracious, The New York Times Book Review, the B&N Review, and many others. Murder by Death recently completed a CD soundtrack based on Finch./.