Gene Wolfe interview in Locus

Brian McElhinney · 30 May 1991, 23:33 · from rec.arts.sf-lovers.1991.mbox

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From: mce at tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Subject: Gene Wolfe interview in Locus
Date: 30 May 91 23:33:26 GMT
Message-ID: <1991May30.233326.5041 at tc.fluke.COM>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers

The latest issue of Locus (6/91) has an interesting interview with Gene
Wolfe.  Some of the better tidbits:

	"What I see is that evil has a place in every human being.  I don't
	mean it holds that place by rights, but it's in occupation.  The
	hero at some point is at least capable of acting badly, and the
	villain at least capable of acting well."  [Pretty obvious from his
	novels, but I like the way he puts it]

	The inspiration for the "Soldier" books came from an article about
	a certain type of brain injury that produces the kind of memory
	loss that Latro has.  [Glad he stumbled upon that article!]

	Wolfe frequently writes two books at the same time.  During "The
	Book of the New Sun" he was also writing FREE LIVE FREE.  [Talk
	about a contrast; my most and least favorites]

	FREE LIVE FREE was an attempt to get away from "Severian, Severian,
	Severian" and create "one character that everyone likes, but what I
	actually seem to have done is give everybody one character to
	dislike."

	"The one I like the best is THERE ARE DOORS.  I wrote exactly the
	book that I wanted to write, and I think I was touching on things
	that have been very little touched on in general in fiction."  [He
	goes on to mention "the Casper Hauser phenomenon -- the people that
	who appear and disappear tracelessly."  Anyone know what he's
	talking about?]

	On the difference between science fiction and and fantasy:

	    "Science fiction is stuff that the average reader feels is
	    possible, and fantasy is stuff that the average reader feels is
	    impossible.  He doesn't really know what's possible any more
	    than I do, or a nuclear physicist does.  When we get out into
	    speculative areas, we certainly do not know."

SPOILER warning.  The best stuff was last, talking about his present work,
"a large science fiction novel called NIGHT SIDE OF THE LONG SUN" and how
the stories themselves set the length of his novels/series.


	NIGHT SIDE OF THE LONG SUN is a generation ship novel.  "What I was
	really fascinated with was computer worship.  It seemed to me that
	if we took the kind of reverence that people today have for the
	computer as an almighty thinking machine -- all of which I think is
	nonsense at this point -- suppose we put the computer in a sense in
	which it could do truly godlike things, and we gave it a
	personality, which need not even be conscious.  We don't have to
	say the computer has a soul, whatever a soul is.  We don't have to
	say it is self-conscious.  We only need for it to act in that way.
	I ended up with the self-contained world, a hollowed-out asteroid,
	run by Mainframe, the big computer, with terminals scattered around
	various places.  This was built by a future tyrant who took his
	personality and the personalities of his wife and his children
	and certain favorites of his, and put them into Mainframe.  He set
	things up in such a way that he and his wife and the others are the
	gods of this generation ship.  I'm dealing with that situation."

	"It's now looking like it's going to be a trilogy or series.  The
	original novel has just grown by leaps and bounds, out of all
	proportion.  I hate it when people say, 'All that you write are
	these endless series.'  I hate it mostly because it's not true.
	When I wrote SHADOW OF A TORTURER, it was originally intended as a
	novella.  It grew to the point where it was a novel, and then by
	that time I really had my feet into it.  Then I got definite -- it
	was going to be a trilogy.  The problem was that I ended up with a
	third volume that was about twice as thick as the first two.   So
	it became a tetrology."  His editor, David Hartwell, convinced him
	to add something about Severian going offworld and saving Earth.
	"So I ended up with this pentalogy in which the fifth volume was
	published by a different publisher."

	"I like to write every story at the length at which it seems to me
	it should be told.  PANDORA was almost a novella, and that's fine.
	Presumably, I will eventually hit something that requires 25
	million words, and I will spend the rest of my life writing Chapter
	One."

So we have another major science fiction series coming from Wolfe.  Best news
I've heard in a long time!
 
 
Brian McElhinney    "Defining the line where art becomes a subset of
mce at tc.fluke.com     entertainment is so intensely personal that I'm not at
		     all sure what use it is to others.  Rather like opinions
about the nature of God, favorite sexual positions, and whether or not to have
that piece of pecan pie after a bowl of Gumbo Creole."    --Jeff Meyer

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