Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [44]
The anti-intellectual tradition and the over-intellectualized tradition are both a bit depressing.
The tendency to live in enclaves concerns me. But the language of the South and Southwest gave me some good music for books like Blood.
Do you see anything stirring in contemporary SF outside the English language (United States and England)?
Not really. French SF and Indian SF are at last beginning to establish their own idioms, which is encouraging.
Some would say SF, like rock ‘n’ roll, has aged and is no longer the province of youth. Do you agree? Can this be reversed? Should it be?
It depends on what youth finds in it. I don’t think you can bring the ‘60s/’70s back. I know, however, that if I was sixteen in this world I wouldn’t be looking to SF or contemporary pop music for inspiration.
My first novel, Wyrldmaker, was a Moorcock (Corum) imitation. Do I owe you an apology, or him? Or do you owe me one?
You owe me one (for that ‘y’ in world). I loved your second novel, the one about the South. One of my absolute favourites.
Wow. Let’s leave that in. How many projects do you generally have going at once? Is this a plan or lack of same?
Usually one novel or sequence of novels at a time, sometimes two or three (three at the moment). A short story or two. I’m usually writing a feature of some kind—a review, article or “diary” (I do a few a year for English newspapers, primarily the Guardian or the Financial Times. Maybe a comic, a memoir, an introduction and so on. Usually at least one music project.
Does SF have a future? Or is it just reworking of old tropes? What writers do you see today as more forward-looking, i.e., is there any new ground to break? This is a trick question.
That depends entirely on the individual whose imagination is sparked by a form. I know one intensely modernist intellectual writer, who used to be part of a well-known Oxford literary crew, who taught himself physics because he felt he should know about such stuff. Who then wrote an excellent and convincing time travel story, which appeared in Asimov’s.
SF definitely has a canon, and your works are embedded in it. Is there anyone left out or overlooked that you would add?
I’m not sure. I have read very little SF since, say, 1964. If Harness isn’t in the canon I think he should be.
Delete?
Oh, well. There’s always some you feel are overrated. I’ve never understood the appeal of most “Golden Age” writers. In the end a good stylist will remain included, I’d guess—like Bradbury—while the clunkier writers will slowly disappear. Style tends to last, even when at first rejected (Hammett, Faulkner, Peake, Ballard) by the lit establishment.
Have you ever “taught” (academically) SF as literature?
I have never taught anything directly (oh—I taught my daughters to punch and to shoot!) but editing is a bit like teaching in that you try to find out precisely what the author’s wanting to say and help them say it. But I don’t believe I can teach, except by example.
I was asked to write a book on technique a few years ago and said I don’t know any rules for writing. All I could do was tell someone how I’d solved a problem in the hope it would be of some use to them.
If you taught a survey course on SF that covered four novels and five short stories, what would they be?
Bring the Jubilee, maybe, The Drowned World, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine. Short stories by Fritz Leiber, Bradbury, Wells, M. J. Harrison’s, Forster …
Any regrets so far?
What about? This interview?
I sometimes wish I hadn’t written quite so many fantasy novels and spent a bit more time on stuff I took more seriously, like Mother London.
I let obsession with work affect relationships too much, I think.
The fantasy sequence I’m writing now is about the romantic lure of the exotic and how it can sometimes take your attention away from more important stuff, like politics and people.