We spoke with him recently about his distinguished career, his memories of the past and thoughts of the future, his long love affair with alternate history, and cannibalism.
Q: What was it like to be an SF writer in the ’40s and ’50s? The Hydra Club, John W. Campbell, Jr., and Astounding — was there a sense among the people involved that you were creating something special and important, making up the golden age as you went along?
A: I grew up as an SF fan in the golden age of the ’30s. The war interrupted. Back in NY after the war I was not sure if I wanted to draw or write. I chose art. But I was also deeply involved in SF. I drew comics, illustrated magazines, including SF, and did a cover for two Lewis Padgett novels for Marty Greenberg of Gnome Press. He took me to a meeting of the Hydra Club — the group of professional SF people in NY. I was right at home there. I did artwork for Damon Knight’s World Beyond, Horace Gold’s Galaxy, and Danny Keyes’s Marvel. (Danny went on to write Flowers for Algernon, among others.) I was so much at home with the SF professionals that I eventually became chairman of the club. I slid from illustrating comics to editing, writing for, and publishing, comics. When the comics died in the late ’40s, I slid sideways into editing SF and other pulps. These were the golden years of SF. Every writer either lived in NYC or came through there. We all knew each other, and there was plenty of cross-fertilization. The money wasn’t much, rates were low, but we were inventing a whole new world.
I grew up reading Astounding, and John Campbell was like a god to me. The greatest pleasure was to work with him, have lunch with him, hear his ideas. And sell him stories. My first six novels were done as serials for Astounding, then sold for books later on. John and I differed greatly on many things, mostly politics. But he respected my views. So much so that he asked me to edit a volume of his editorials. Which I did, but not without a good deal of infighting. Only by threatening to take my name off the cover did I finally convince him that I would not permit inclusion of his far right, exaggerated anti-Communist pieces. I shall miss him.
Q: How has science fiction, and its audience, changed since the Golden Age?
A: Well. Yes, major changes. None for the better, I am sorry to say. Today’s reading audience is pretty dumb and unknowledgeable about SF. (And too prone to read abysmal fantasy.) But the same can be said for the editors, and the writers. The writers of the ’40s are snuffing out one by one and no one is replacing them. I shall keep the flag flying and go down with all guns still firing.
Q: Damn the torpedoes…! The New York SF scene that you describe was a major literary movement that has yet to receive its due — from mainstream critics, at least — although the influence of those writers/editors began to make itself increasingly felt outside the SF community from the ’60s on, until today it’s permeated much of popular culture.
A: That old devil, Kingsley Amis, once described science fiction as going from “Beowulf to Finnegan’s Wake in fifty years.” That is, from the first crude, barely literate pulps to writers getting more involved in form than content. This is true, but a simplification. This kind of writing is but one rivulet in the estuary that SF has now become. From the broad, mighty river of the Campbellian Astounding years, the river has now branched into countless separate streams. Just look at the diversity: not only the academic forms favored by the Chip Delaneys, but fantasy, horror, alternate history, future war, heroic fantasy, Arthurian legendry, female fantasy, and more. This is good in that new writers can explore tempting fields of endeavor, bad in that so much is produced that good new writers can easily be ignored. Not to mention established writers who see their sales diminish as more and more titles are loaded into the field. Or fields. I don’t think this growth rate is sustainable. With too many titles chasing too few slots, there will be a night of long knives — or a slow hemorrhaging to death — someday soon.
Q: As someone whose career has stretched from the Golden Age to the end of the millennium, what kind of future do you see for SF?
A: SF is filled with false predictions; I will not attempt to join mine to their number.
Q: Tell us how Slippery Jim DiGriz, a.k.a. the Stainless Steel Rat, got his start.
A: I was writing narrative hooks for practice. The term goes back to the pulp magazines. You started your short story manuscript over halfway down the double-spaced first page. A “narrative hook” was something so intriguing that you “hooked” the editor into turning the page. At that, he would buy the story since he rarely read that much of a submitted manuscript. (The first four paragraphs of the first Rat book is that hook.) I was intrigued by my hook, so I wrote a story to explain it. And another. Amplified into a book. Then a sequel. Then on. It was never planned that way. I have just finished the tenth and last Rat book. Even good things have to end.
Q: Do you have a favorite opening line or hook among all your books?
A: No, because an opening line is a thing of flux for me. Years ago I copied out fifty opening lines of books I admired. I found out an interesting fact. They were all different. Since then I have simply started my novels. Then, when finished, in the light of what was to come, I have gone back and rewritten the opening page. Polishing it well in the light of the shadows cast by coming events.
Q: You’ve worked with two of the most influential editors in SF — John W. Campbell, Jr., and Brian Aldiss — men with very different, one might almost say antithetical, editorial sensibilities and conceptions of what SF could or should encompass. Can you describe what effect your experiences with them had on your writing?
A: Brian and I met and became close friends. We are very different kinds of writers but very much in agreement as editors and critics. We started the first critical SF magazine, SF Horizons. And did fifty anthologies together. In the very beginning we agreed not to differ. That is, we both liked every story we printed. If one of us had reservations, the story was out. Working with Brian was a revelation. In our constant examination and evaluation of other writers, there must have been some effect on our works.
Q: Did you ever collaborate as writers?
A: We did try once. Brian had started a story where, I don’t remember how, all the oceans dry up. I carried on with it and it died a natural death. It wasn’t his novel, or mine, and just didn’t work.
Q: Two words: Soylent Green.