Jean-Paul L. Garnier interviews James Machell

Jean-Paul L. Garnier: What inspired you to conduct the series of interviews in Human Voices, Alien Conversations, and how do you go about selecting interviewees?

James Machell: Several of the interviews had appeared in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and Electronic Brain. What I wanted to do with Human Voices, Alien Conversations was pull them together into one narrative, and additional interviews were conducted to fill what I perceived to be the gaps in the collection as an overview of SF in the 21^st Century. In order to show this with a bird’s eye, I couldn’t just focus on writing when there’s art, editing, performance, and adaptation. I also wanted to explore understated significance. Samuel R. Delany, for example, is nowhere near as well known as Andy Weir, but his influence, even at the time of composing his major works, has been much more profound. Similarly, Chris Moore, with his prog-rock styled art for the SF Masterworks Series, created some of the most recognisable images in the history of SF but did so quietly, never chasing awards or drawing attention to himself: he let his art speak. Cyberpunk, almost exclusively associated with William Gibson, was developed by a “team” of writers in the ‘80s: I thought it would be much more interesting to speak with Pat Cadigan, who is frequently dubbed the “queen” of the subgenre. But I couldn’t just focus on the legends when their contributions to SF are constantly evolving through their influence on younger writers. Interviewees, therefore, vary greatly in age, juxtaposing the perspectives of those blossoming into the SF landscape with those who loosened the soil. Bogi Takács, Samantha Mills, and Ai Jiang, also included in Human Voices, Alien Conversations, are writers we should be looking out for. The final interview is with Matthew Holness, co-writer, co-director, and star of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, which gets my vote as the most underappreciated use of SF in visual media. As Holness is now working on the third in a series of spin-off novels, he was ideal to pull everything together.

JPG: How do you go about researching your subjects in preparation for interviews?

JM: Most of the interviewees were selected because I’d been enjoying their work for years. The questions came easily. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, however, were excellent resources for pinning down dates and discovering aspects of their careers which may have eluded even the most die-hard fan.

JPG: What do you see as some of the main concerns and themes in early 21^st Century science fiction?

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Where do I send my story? Resources for SFF writers

Wondering where to send your latest short SFF masterpiece?

Ralan.com is a fantastic resource. Don’t be misled by that gorgeous 90s decor: it’s regularly and reliably updated (never change, Ralan!).

Locus is also a great source of industry news, and contains a lot of reviews of short SFF that might give you ideas of where to explore further. Locus also does a regular year-in-review of major SFF magazines.

Submission Grinder is a sort of crowdsourced tool where writers can collectively keep track of publication response times. Duotrope is the other big market listing / submission tracker.

This Facebook group is devoted to posting calls for submissions.

You might also be interested in the Science Fiction Writers’ Association’s list of “qualifying markets”. There’s a note that this list is slated to change in format soon. Qualifying markets must have circulations of 1000+ and pay 8c/word, and meet some other criteria.

And for just a few quick ideas, here’s a recent-ish listicle by Annie Neugebauer, ‘20 Places to Submit Your Speculative Short Stories.’

For the more academic side of things, the LSFRC (London Science Fiction Research Community) are currently doing an excellent job of scooping up relevant Calls for Papers, notices of conferences, etc.: the LSFRC Facebook group is the best place to follow them. And of course there is the ever-effervescent Science Fiction Research Association (founded way back in 1970).

Living Among Leviathans: An Interview with Stewart Hotston

A science fiction and fantasy author with a background in physics and finance, Stew Hotston is something of a Renaissance man (right down to the sword-wielding bit). Vector sent Robert S. Malan for a friendly duel of words …

Tell us a little about your work to date – are there distinct strands linking the stories you tell?

Yes, for sure. Despite moving around across SF, fantasy, horror and the just plain weird, there are a couple of themes which recur. One theme is family. Not always blood, but always who we choose to be vulnerable with, who we choose to have by our side when we’re facing challenging times. I think asking who those people are and what we’d do for them are interesting questions, no matter the setting.

The other recurring theme for me is worlds on the edge of collapse. I like returning to the idea of how times and places, which at first appear idyllic, have nearly always required bad decisions to get there, and these will lie in wait, festering until their time comes again. It’s a little of dealing with the past, but also about asking what price we are willing to pay in order to get what we want.

Finally, you’ll see a lot of dreams in my books. Not in an ‘it was all a dream’ kind of way! But as ways of characters processing what’s going on, as ways of communication and, even in the hardest SF, to remind us there’s more out there than we’ve dreamed of (literally).

What motivates you when it comes to storytelling, which can be a hard and lonely craft at times?

Continue reading “Living Among Leviathans: An Interview with Stewart Hotston” →

The Tea: An Interview with Emma Newman

Vector caught up with Emma Newman, author of the Split Worlds, Planetfall, and Industrial Magic series, and other excellent things, at BristolCon in October 2018.

Hello Emma Newman! What a delight and an honour. How has your BristolCon been so far?

Well, I actually arrived quite late, so I’ve really just got here.

So far it’s been, “ambushed for an interview.”

Yes! And looking at beautiful art, actually.

Now, you are much better at interviewing people than I am. But one person you never seem to interview is you. So if you were interviewing you, what would you ask you?

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

Would you like a cup of tea? Continue reading “The Tea: An Interview with Emma Newman” →

BSFA Orbiters

Do you know about the writing groups operated by the BSFA?

Maybe you’re gazing enviously at all those #NaNoWriMo scribblers on their way to a first draft, and a story is starting to stir inside you. Or maybe you’ve been looking around for a while for a community to support your writing.

The BSFA runs the Orbit groups, a series of online workshopping groups. You can pay a lot of money to sign up to online workshops or writing courses, but the Orbit groups are free to BSFA members. If you are a BSFA member and are interested in participating, get in touch with our Orbit Co-ordinator Terry Jackman. If you’re not yet a member, you can join here.

What is an Orbit group?

BSFA Orbit groups are made up of about five writers, who keep in touch via email. Each writer shares their work with the other members of the group and, in turn, reads and comments upon the stories of the others – offering comments and suggestions about how the writing might be made better.

All Orbit groups are open to writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories. There are separate groups for those concentrating on short fiction and those who are working on novels.

Members make their own decisions about how they’d like their particular Orbit groups to work, so groups are free to make decisions that suit their needs.

What do you do?

By becoming part of an Orbit group you’re committing to give other members’ work the same care and attention you’d like your own stories to receive. You commit to read carefully, and to comment thoughtfully, honestly, and constructively. And, even if you don’t include a story in every round, you commit to respond to every story and to stick to deadlines. Orbit groups are cooperative, and Orbiters tend to get out of the groups what they put in.

What do you get?

Most obviously you get different viewpoints on your work. You get the opinions of a group of unbiased readers who, like you, are interested in what makes a strong genre story. You get a range of ideas about what works in your writing and what does not. And, unlike some face-to-face writers’ groups, you get time to mull over the comments in private – so there’s no posturing or point-scoring, just writers working together to make their work better.

But it isn’t just the feedback you receive that helps you improve as a writer. The process of critiquing itself can nourish skills applicable to your own writing. By exploring what you think works (or doesn’t work) in someone else’s story, you can learn how to improve your own. Members can also share experiences, suggest markets, and offer more general advice and support about being a writer. And, of course, writing can be a lonely business, but in an Orbit you always have someone to share ideas with.

Who will be in my group?

The Orbit groups are open to writers of all levels. Orbit groups can be made up of writers at a wide variety of stages in their careers. Some may be unpublished and just starting out, others may have been published many, many times, there are even some orbiters who are editors or who work in publishing.

Do Orbits work?

They do, and Orbit groups include members who have been published professionally but who stay in the groups because they believe that they continue to benefit from sharing their work with other writers.

Orbit groups let you see your work through the eyes of others. They give you the kind of feedback most editors simply don’t have the time to provide and the honest feedback you won’t get from friends and family. Members are encouraged to be polite but honest even if, sometimes, the truth can hurt. Orbit groups don’t try to make you feel better; their goal is to make you a better writer.

How do I join?

If you are already a BSFA member, contact the Orbit coordinator Terry Jackman.

BSFA membership is £29 standard UK, £20 for students and unwaged, £31 joint and £45 international. You can join the BSFA here (and feel free to get in touch with Terry as soon as you have sent your membership fee).

History of the Orbits

The original Orbit groups operated by post. Members circulated an envelope containing printed manuscripts and in each “round” a member received comments on their previous story, read and commented on new material from the other authors, and added a new story. Until a few years ago, there were still groups that preferred this method. Nowadays, however, all the active Orbiters operate via email.

British Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Panel

As noted in the original post about the survey, one of the panel’s at last week’s BSFA/SFF AGM event was a discussion of some of the questions it raises. For those who weren’t able to attend (and indeed those who were), here’s a recording — you can download the mp3 direct from here, or listen to it on the BSFA site. The panelists were Nick Harkaway, Paul Kincaid, Paul McAuley, Juliet McKenna, and Kit Whitfield, with me moderating.

British Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Survey

Earlier this week, Liz posted the agenda for tomorrow’s BSFA/Science Fiction Foundation AGM event. Those of you who were paying attention may have had your curiosity piqued by this item:

10:05 BSFA Panel – Launch of the British Science Fiction and Fantasy Survey 2009: chaired by Niall Harrison, and featuring Nick Harkaway, Paul Kincaid, Juliet McKenna, Kit Whitfield, and Paul McAuley

This is entirely Mark Plummer’s fault. A little over a year ago, he posted me a copy of a fanzine he picked up at Orbital, produced for Mexicon III, a UK convention held so long ago (1989, to be precise) that information about it available online is limited to a few cryptic mentions in Ansible. Mark sent this ‘zine with a note:

Niall — I picked up the enclosed at Eastercon. I can’t remember if I’ve thrust a copy at you before [he hadn’t] but in case not I thought it might interest you. Also, I note — with no ulterior motive — that next year will be twenty years since Paul’s survey, a convenient round number for a suitable fan to contemplate updating…
Mark

I didn’t actually read the note all that closely when it arrived, and I put the fanzine on the Pile Of Stuff To Read without looking too closely at it, either. Skip forward a couple of months, and I pick it off the pile as my “something else to read in case I finish my book” for a Eurostar journey.

It turned out to be no normal convention ‘zine. It’s about a hundred pages long, for starters, and consists almost entirely of the results of a survey of working British sf and fantasy writers, orchestrated and analyzed by Paul. The questions were, as the introduction put it, deliberately broad — Do you consider yourself a writer of science fiction and/or fantasy? Do you consider there is anything distinctively British about your work, and if so, what is it? And so forth — with the answers to each considered in separate chapters of the ‘zine.

As Mark quite accurately predicted, the idea of repeating this survey, twenty years on, appealed to me. And now I am doing just that. The results will be turned into a standalone publication for BSFA members towards the end of this year. The plan is to include the original survey, as well, since obviously a large part of the aim is to see what, if anything, has changed.

So that’s what the panel tomorrow morning is about. We’re going to be talking about, essentially, writerly identity — how writers perceive their work; how others perceive it; how that changes, or doesn’t, over time and from place to place. Do come along! Only the AGMs are limited to BSFA and SFF members; the rest of the day’s panels and talks are open to all.

In the meantime, I’ve been sending out surveys to every active British writer of sf or fantasy that I can think of, and find contact details for. In keeping with the spirit of the original survey, I’m casting my net wide, to get as wide a spectrum of opinion as possible. So I’m including writers published within the genre, and writers published by mainstream houses (or as YA); writers from other countries resident in the UK, as well as UK-born writers resident in other countries. Because there has to be a threshold somewhere, my arbitrary definition of “active” is “has published at least one sf book, or more than three sf stories in semiprozine-or-higher-level publications, this decade”. If you meet these criteria, would like to participate, and I haven’t contacted you, please email me! I have a list of publishers to write to this weekend — I keep thinking of more — but as I say, I want as many responses as possible, from as broad a range of writers as possible.

SFF Masterclass, Day One

So, today was the first day of the long-anticipated Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass in SF Criticism, 2008 edition, at which several denizens of these parts were present. (And a bunch of other people too.) The format was straightforward: a morning session led by Geoff Ryman, structured as a writer’s close reading of Stand on Zanzibar, and an afternoon session led by Wendy Pearson, in which we discussed postmodernism, queer theory, and “The Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation”. It would be fair to say I’m still digesting many of the issues the day raised, but it was all thoroughly stimulating. As a teaser, here are Geoff Ryman’s four tests for judging whether formal innovation in fiction is successful:

It should not be confusing. The purpose of formal innovation is to provide greater insight into or access to either emotion or information; it should work without needing an instruction manual (or critics) to explain it.
It should be fun. To take form seriously is to overvalue it; formal innovation is (or should be) driven by wit, freedom, and playfulness.
It should be useful for something that couldn’t be achieved another way.
It should do more than one thing at a time (as should most elements of prose fiction)