Question 7: What suggestions can you offer to the beginning writer concerning the development of “realistic” characters and writing effective dialogue?
Read modern “quality” writing, especially the short pieces of Algren, Styron, Herb Gold, the so-called New School writers. And the fine left-wing writers of the thirties, such as Dos Passes, Richard Wright, and go back as far as Dreiser and Hawthorne — try to stick to American writers (including, of course, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein) because it is among the American writers that realistic dialogue has developed. Try the French realistics, such as Flaubert, for plot and characterization. Avoid Proust and other subjective-type writers. And by all means intently study James Joyce; everything from his early short stories to The Wake.
Question 8: Do you believe that an effective novel requires a message or moral? Please comment.
Absolutely not! The notion that a novel needs a moral or message is a bourgeois concept. In the days of the aristocracy it was recognized that art did not need to instruct or elevate; it could be a success by merely entertaining. One should never look down on entertainment; Mozart string quartets do not instruct — show me a moral or message in, say, the late Beethoven. Music is pure; literature can be, too; it becomes more pure as it drops its intention of improving and instructing the audience. The writer is not a bit superior in morals than his audience anyway — and frequently he’s inferior to them. What moral can he really teach them? What he has to offer is his ideas.
Question 9: To what extent do you think it possible to detect a writer’s viewpoints as to politics, religion, or moral problems through examination of his stories?
If the writer is a good one, it’s impossible. Only a bad writer details his personal viewpoints in his fiction. However, it is always possible that some good writing may be found in an “instructive” work. But at the moment I can’t think of any (e.g., Ray Bradbury. There is no way, in reading his work, to tell really what his personal views are; the writer in this case disappears entirely, and his story reveals itself on its own. This is the way it ought to be.). It is one of the cardinal errors of literary criticism to believe that the author’s own views can be inferred from his writing; Freud, for instance, makes this really ugly error again and again. A successful writer can adopt any viewpoint that his characters must needs possess in order to function; this is the measure of his craft, this ability to free his work of his own prejudices.
Question 10: During your formative writings, what one author influenced you the most? What other factors such as background, education, etc., were important influences?
Van Vogt influenced me the most. Also Tony Boucher (i.e., his critical views, not his fiction). Also my interest in the Japanese novelists in the French Department of Tokyo University, who wrote after World War Two. And my interest in Depth Psychology and drugs. And in “stream of consciousness” writing, as with James Joyce. And — but I wouldn’t recommend this for the would-be writer — my own “nervous breakdown,” which I experienced at nineteen and then again at twenty-four and at thirty-three. Suffering of this sort educates your viewpoint, but at the expense of your creature-comfort principle; it may make you a better writer but the cost is far too great.
Question 11: What do you consider the greatest weakness of science fiction today?
Its inability to explore the subtle, intricate relationships that exist between the sexes. Men, in their relationship with women, get themselves into the most goddamn difficult circumstances, and SF ignores — or is unable to deal with — this fundamental aspect of adult life. Therefore SF remains preadult, and therefore appeals — more or less — to preadults. If SF explored the man-woman aspect of life it would not lose its readers as those readers reach maturity. SF simply must learn to do this or it will always be retarded — as it is now. The novel Player Piano is an exception to this, and I suggest that every SF fan and especially every would-be writer study again and again the details of this superb novel, which deal specifically with the relationship of the protagonist and his wife.
“That Moon Plaque” (1969)
In no way should problems here on Earth detract from the glory of the Apollo 11 moon flight. Similar problems led to the colonization of the New World back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: poverty, lack of opportunity, even starvation. Sometimes the presence of grave social problems is a stimulus to exploration; man searches relentlessly for a way out of his problems, and in doing so he presses at every door, hoping to find one that will lead him somewhere that is new and different. And it must be recognized that the moon flight has acted and will continue to act as a flare lighting up the powerful abilities of man, his capacity to do what has never been done before. It is an indication of what can be done, and should make, by its existence, a new awareness grow in us as to what we can do. We should, because of it, be more optimistic as to what we can do here on Earth; it is proof of our strength and tenacity, not an indication that we are forgetting domestic goals. And, in addition, it was essential that we send a man to the moon; exploration is natural to man; it is virtually an instinct. It is, at least, a force in man so powerful that it cannot be denied. The moon flight was inevitable and is a new measure of ourselves.
“Who Is an SF Writer?” (1974)
The delight which SF writers show when encountering one another personally, at conventions or on panels or during lectures, indicates some common element shared by them, novices and old pros alike. There always emerges a psychological rapport, even if the ideas and politics in their respective works clash head-on; it is as if absolutely opposite themes in their published work — which might be expected to create a personal barrier when the writers meet face to face — this barrier is never there, and a feeling when a group of SF writers gathers is always one of a family rejoined, lost friends refound or new friends made — friends among whom there is a fundamental basis of outlook or at least of personality structure. Nearly always it is characterized by a mutual respect, and this respect on the part of each writer is for the others as persons, not merely a respect for their work. We are linked as if scattered members of a once tightly knit ethnic group which has been scattered, but then momentarily reunited. I have felt this with no other group of people: Something special is there in us, that not only is common but which binds us rather than separates us as one finds, say, in the social gatherings of the so-called “New York literary writers,” in which chronic jealousy and envy and sour carping impede personal contact. To my knowledge, this camraderie and rapport is at least currently unique in the arts; and it means something; it tells something about us.
On meeting a new SF writer who has just gotten into print, we never feel crowded or insecure; we feel strangely happy, and tell him so and encourage him: We welcome him. And I think this is because we know that the very fact that he has chosen to write SF rather than other types of fiction — or other careers in general — tells us something about him already. I know one element that allows us to prejudge favorably any new pro SF writer to our midst: There just cannot be a profit motive as this person’s working dynamism because there is no profit financially in writing SF; the average high school teacher, to name another underpaid group, makes almost twice what I make, and all my income comes from writing SF. So we know this to start with: Facing a new young pro SF writer I know first of all what he is not driven by; he is out of the hands of one of the great corrupting drives, that for great wealth — and I might add great fame and prestige as well, because we don’t get those either. I know, when I meet a new pro writer, that he must in some sense truly love to write SF, at all costs, or he would be in other, greener pastures.
But what is the positive motivation and personality that I feel, say, that Geo. Effinger, a new SF writer whom I met in August of last year, can be assumed to have? “I know where your head is,” is what I think when I meet a man or woman who has just published his first SF piece. I know you don’t want fame, power, the big best seller, fortune — and therefore I know that you must want to or even need to write SF. One SF writer said to me one day, “I’d write it even if they paid nothing.” Vanity to see your name in print? No, just an awareness that this is a chosen field, and chosen by him; he is not being forced to live out the ambitions of his thwarted parents and their aspirations that their son “amount to something,” as, for example, by becoming a doctor or a lawyer — all those good, classy, well-paying professions. His drive must be intrinsic; it is impossible to imagine one’s mother saying, “I hope my son will grow up to be an SF writer.” What is there in the SF writer, old pro like myself (twenty-two years of selling) or a new one after his initial sale, is a belief in the value of science fiction. Not necessarily a belief in his own ability to write the Great American SF Novel and be remembered forever — novice pros are very shy and unpushy and humble — but his belief in the significant meaning of his field. And he would not see this specific field as a high-value field unless he had read SF by other authors, previous authors, and had some sense of the nature of what SF is, can do, will be.