Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [38]
I was using a Selectric II for years. I still have it. I still have an Imperial 50/60 produced during World War II and a Smith
Corona portable (should electricity fail). All my work from the age of nine was done on the Imperial.
Soon after I got to Texas in 1994, I was asked by ORIGIN, a game company, to write an original game that could also be a movie and a book. I wasn’t sure of the scheme, but I liked the challenge.
At one point they asked me what kind of computer I was using. I told them I didn’t have one. At this, an embarrassed silence fell across the room. At last the guy running the firm cleared his throat and asked, “Would you mind if we got you one?”
“You can get me one,” I said, “but I can’t say I’d use it.”
So it duly arrived and within twenty-four hours, I’d taken to it like a duck to water. They were delighted. I wrote my first story on the computer within two days of getting it (a Cornelius short). They’d gotten me the top of the line, of course, and asked me what I thought of it. I said it was like a non-driver being given a Rolls-Royce and then being asked what he thought of it.
Mandelbrot supplied me with a map of my brain. Word supplied me with new applications.
What’s your relationship to the very lively Austin music scene? Who do you hang out with in Texas? Writers? Rednecks? Ex-prezzes? Out-of-work musicians?
A few of my friends are musicians. Most of the people I know here I met through local politics and suchlike. Leftist activists in Texas really know the score. One of my best friends, Jewell Hodges, is ninety-two and has been involved in civil rights most of her life. She started life working in fields at the age of twelve, shoving cotton into sacks longer than she was tall.
Almost as soon as we got here, Linda was co-opted onto the local Family Crisis Centre board, and with another woman set about transforming it, with accommodation for threatened spouses and children, outreach, education, and so on; and I supported her in that, being an active pro-feminist.
We also got involved with the local food pantry, which Jewell was running when we got here. She asked me how we fedour hungry poor in the UK. I thought for a bit until I realized that we didn’t actually have poverty in the UK of the kind she was battling in Texas.
Texas has no income tax and you feel obliged to involve yourself in activities which, as a European, you believe should be supported by taxes. So I self-tithe to balance that out. I know a few others who do.
Most of my musician friends in Austin start their gigs too late for an old man like me who has a long drive home afterwards! I did perform once or twice with pals in Austin.
I know a few writers—Howard Waldrop, for instance— whom I get on with. Though I have a few friends who are writers, I don’t hang out with them much. It was the same in the UK and in France. I tend to be very loyal to my friends and maybe for that reason I don’t have many close friends. But they’re mostly from different walks of life. I enjoy company but am essentially a loner.
Do you ever go back and loot your works for ideas? Do you read your early stuff at all?
Very rarely. I almost never reread a book. I riff off the fundamental ideas underlying my books—multiverse, eternal champions, context defining characters, and so on. In the old days I’d write one draft in three days and have a friend read it for typos, possible inconsistencies, and I’ve never reread those. I’ve made a few revisions when readers point out plot errors or loopy inconsistencies, of course. A few of those early fantasies got to the bookstores without anyone having read them—me, editors, publicists.
I tend to have a good memory for books I’ve done, as if they were memories of my real life, though; so when it comes to sequels I seem to be able to take up a sequel pretty much where I left off. I have a terrible memory yet seem to remember books pretty easily.
Reading my own work is a fast cure for insomnia. Linda will confirm this. When I can’t