Uh-oh. I was afraid someone would ask this question.
I'm pretty much a materialist. Before I believe in something I want to be
able to pinch it, rub it between my fingers, smear it on my jeans, okay? I
don't get vibrations and personally, I'm not religious.
But there's something I don't really understand about naming my characters
that is kinda ... well ... mystical. Of course, I use the phone book and
NAME YOUR BABY and all the other standard name sources. But I can spend
hours -- days, sometime -- reading through lists of names before I settle
on the right one for a character. And I can't write a character into a
story until I know her/his exact right name.
My favorite characters' names are Philip Wing, Wynne Cage, Rat, Mr. Boy,
Mister Jimmy, Space Cowboy and Peter Fancy. The hardest I ever worked on
naming characters was in a story called "Faith."
Q: I've noticed lately that several new SF/fantasy writers are now being promoted as mainstream. (For example, see John Lethem's _As_She_Climbed_Across_the_Table_ and Elizabeth Hand's _Waking_the_Moon_, both of which could just as well have been categorized as traditional SF.) I'm wondering whether you see that mostly as an attempt to push those authors in a more mainstream direction a la Kurt Vonnegut, or as a marketing tactic designed to expose new talent to a wider audience. Is this a new trend in SF marketing? -- Mike Van Wie
Kelly: Gosh, Mike I thought everyone knew that sf publishing is a shambles.
People are casting around desperately to find ways to move product and I
don't blame them. Of course, we write what we have to write -- marketing
is almost always an afterthought, especially with writers as focussed as
Liz and Jonathan. While I haven't yet read Liz's book, I'm almost done
with Jonathan's and I don't think it's all that much of a stretch to nudge
it toward the mainstream. They've even invented a new niche for it: they
call it slipstream. Certainly AS SHE CLIMBED ACROSS THE TABLE is more
accessible to the non-sf fans of the world than my own WILDLIFE or LOOK
INTO THE SUN, no? Let's not forget that the market for books is readers.
A well-published book is one that it finds as big an audience as possible.
Q: Any thoughts on this year's Tiptree Award nominees/winners? Are you on next year's panel? Have you started reading nominated work yet? -- cynthia zender
Kelly: Cynthia, Some folks might not know that the James Tiptree,Jr. Award is
given every year to a work that explores or expands our understanding of
gender. This year the award was split between THE SPARROW by Mary Doria
Russell and "Mountain Ways," by Ursula K. Le Guin. I haven't read the
Russell but I have read "Mountain Ways," which (surprise!) is excellent.
LeGuin has always been a major influence on me, and I think that "Mountain
Ways" is one of the highlights of her "return" to the genre in the last few
years. I am on the jury for this year and am actively reading, although I
must say that I usually do at least 60% of my year's reading over the
summer which, up here in the frozen north, has just started.
Q: Does writing come naturally to you, or do you have to "force" yourself to sit down and write? How much time a week do you devote solely to writing? -- John
Kelly: Well, John, that's more complicated than it might at first appear. Sure,
when I started out, writing came naturally. I would slam anydamnthing onto
the page to see whether it worked. Sometimes it did, sometimes not. Now
that I have a little better idea of what I'm doing, it's harder. I don't
necessarily have to force myself, but I do tend to play little mind games
to make the work more interesting and challenging. For example, in
"Breakaway, Backdown," and "Why the Bridge Stopped Singing," I experimented
with seeing how much I could leave out and still make a story. In
"Monsters," I changed the plot's direction in midstream. Recently I've
been trying to crank out stories lickety-split to postpone the depredations
of my inner critic. The first draft of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" was written in
five days. I must confess that I do have to force myself sometimes to work
on the novels, but only because the effort required is so daunting.
However, finishing a novel is one of the great rushes in writing, in my
experience, and I often put in effortless ten or twelve hour days at the
end, as opposed to my usual regime of five or six hours a day at the
keyboard, five days a week.
Q: Of everything you've written, does anything stand out as being particularly memorable -- especially hard or fun or time-consuming? -- Susan Franzblau
Kelly: Susan, I usually enjoy what I' m writing a lot but works that stand out
include: "Rat," most of which I wrote in a white heat at the first Sycamore
Hill; "Mr. Boy" during which I felt ... well ... inspired; the last part of
WILDLIFE, especially the trial scene, which kept surprising the hell out of
me; and "The First Law of Thermodynamics" which I had tried to write for a
long time and then, suddenly and for no particular reason, happened exactly
the way I wanted it.
Q: Jim, congratulations on the new collection, which I'm looking forward to reading.
I read somewhere (Year's Best SF?) that your title story was more or less a reasoned response to the use or abuse of the matter transmitter concept on a certain popular tv show.
Q: Will we see more stories dissecting sf media cliches? Isn't it fascinating to watch people line up for, oh, this summer's movies & then say, "Well, I'm not into sci-fi." Any hope for a crossover audience actually starting to read some book that are NOT movie or tv tie-ins? -- Tom Marcinko
Kelly: So many questions, so little time! Well, Tom, I agree that it is odd that
there is so much anti-sf sentiment out there and yet the lines for THE
FIFTH ELEMENT, JURASSIC PARK and (probably) MEN IN BLACK snake around the
block and out into the street. But I think that there is, alas, very
little crossover between media skiffy fans and skiffy-lit fans. Now don't
misunderstand me, very little, when we're talking the kinds of numbers
these movies do, is still quite a few folks. But they're not enough to
replace the potential audience skiffy-lit has lost to media and media
tie-ins. It seems to me that the difference between skiffy media and
literature is that media tend to repeat experience, where literature tries
to explore new territory. Each has its perils: when you explore, you often
stumble into deserts and swamps; when you revisit, you risk staleness. But
the great charm of skiffy media is that even as it recycles and simplifies,
it has the look and feel of complexity and exploration (boldly going where
no man etc. etc.). So lots of people who might otherwise read sf, watch it
instead. Meanwhile, the magazines and the midlist, once the great strength
of the written sf, are in serious trouble. So no, I'm afraid I'm not all
that hopeful. But I'm going to keep plugging away, and so should you!
Q: I've heard that you feel strongly that Sci Fi writers should not base their space going military on the navy. Could you elaborant on that please? -- Rudy
Kelly: Jeez, Rudy, I wasn't aware that I had voiced that particular opinion so
publically. But it's true, except that the Navy I had in mind was the one
that existed in WWII. By the same token, I don't see why we should be
writing galatic political structures based on the Roman Empire. But to
return to the old Navy model: I think that the vast distances in space
would completely change the command and control structures we're familiar
with, even in the unlikely eventuality that we develop FTL drive. Not only
that, but the military weapons of future will almost certainly be highly
computerized and may even possess an AI capable in independant action. The
human element will, I think, be minimized to varying degrees, both at the
tactical and strategic levels.
Q: Jim-- Did you always know from an early age that you wanted to be a science fiction writer? -- Rosie
Kelly: No, Rosie. I didn't think that being a science fiction writer was a
reasonable profession to aspire to. And I was right!
Seriously, I liked sf quite a bit, but I thought I was as likely to end up
writing the stuff as I was to be an astronaut or quarterback in the NFL or
President of the U. S. of A. These seemed like possibilities for other
folks, but not me.
