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Overview
In The Land Across, Gene Wolfe's engrossing fantasy novel, readers are kept guessing until the very end, and long after.
An American writer of travel guides in need of a new location chooses to travel to a small and obscure Eastern European country. The moment Grafton crosses the border he is in trouble, much more than he could have imagined. His passport is taken by guards, and then he is detained for not having it. He is released into the custody of a family, but is again detained. It becomes evident that there are supernatural agencies at work, but they are not in some ways as threatening as the brute forces of bureaucracy and corruption in that country. Is our hero in fact a spy for the CIA? Or is he an innocent citizen caught in a Kafkaesque trap?
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466826359 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/26/2013 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 580 KB |
About the Author
Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.
A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.
Gene Wolfe (1931-2019) was the Nebula Award-winning author of The Book of the New Sun tetralogy in the Solar Cycle, as well as the World Fantasy Award winners The Shadow of the Torturer and Soldier of Sidon. He was also a prolific writer of distinguished short fiction, which has been collected in such award-winning volumes as Storeys from the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.
A recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and six Locus Awards, among many other honors, Wolfe was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2007, and named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2012.
Read an Excerpt
The Land Across
By Gene Wolfe
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2013 Gene WolfeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-2635-9
CHAPTER 1
THE LAND ACROSS
Like most countries it is accessible by road or railroad, air or sea. Even though all those are possible, they are all tough. Visitors who try to drive get into a tangle of unmarked mountain roads, roads with zits and potholes and lots of landslides. Most drivers who make it through (I talked about it with two of them in New York and another one in London) get turned back at the border. There is something wrong with their passports, or their cars, or their luggage. They have not got visas, which everybody told them they would not need. Some are arrested and their cars impounded. A few of the ones who are arrested never get out. Or anyhow, that is how it seems.
It just made me more determined than ever. There are no travel books about the land across the mountains. NONE! Not in any language I could find. I was going to be the first, and maybe I still will be. Only this book you are holding comes before my travel book. You would not believe how long I have been writing and rewriting this one in my head, especially when I was a prisoner of the Legion of the Light and when I was in prison, sitting around in a cell with Russ Rathaus. I was lucky, I cannot even tell you how lucky, that I was never taken prisoner by the Unholy Way. Thank God for that!
At first I tried to get in by air. Lufthansa has service, but there are only two flights a week. I booked twice and had both canceled. The third did not land at the capital, saying bad weather. It went straight on to Ankara.
I decided to go by train and flew to Vienna, a real knockout city where there are lots of first-rate clubs. (See my first book, Dreaming on the Danube.) After some swell evenings dancing in the clubs and okay nights at the good old Hotel Sacher, I caught the Orient Express headed for Slovakia. For the rest of the day our train wound its way through hills and woods.
A lot of Americans think all of Europe is like Rouen or Cologne, crawling with people. It is not really like that. There is a whole lot more wilderness in Europe than foreigners like us imagine, and there is more and more as you go east. I hardly ever saw a house among the hills I saw from the Orient Express. Where there were a few, they were half-timbered and had those high sharp roofs you get where there is lots of snow.
A porter who would not talk to me made the bed in my compartment. When he had gone, I stripped and washed the way I generally do on trains, with a washcloth I dunked in a hand basin of water. Now it seems to me that I must have been asleep a long time before I got into bed.
* * *
I woke up during the night, and I will never forget it. We had stopped where they had fields of some kind of grain that grew a lot taller than a man. Silent men walked up and down the train, men I could just barely make out by starlight. They looked small, but I think they were really big men. They carried what I figured were dark lanterns, boxy black gadgets that shed floods of light you did not expect when they were opened. I had read about those but I had never seen any before. The train jolted and jolted again. I think it was probably the first of those jolts that woke me up.
One of the men stopped at my window to look up at me. I stared out at him through the dirty glass. He held up his lantern, which scared hell out of me. I do not know why. Anyway, I ducked down and backed away as far as I could without leaving my little compartment.
I was naked, and I decided right then that when I got back home I was going to buy pajamas as soon as I could. If I only had pajamas or a robe, both would have been better; I could have gone into the corridor outside where I might have found the porter and gotten him to talk to me. Traveling the way he did from Calais to Cairo and from Cairo back to Calais, he would have a lot of interesting stuff to tell if I could get him to tell it.
As it was, I stayed flat against the steel door of my compartment until the train got moving again, rattling and swaying along tracks that went up and down while they were turning left and right.
Everybody interested enough to read this book knows about the High Tatras and the Transylvanian Alps. Let me just say that the mountains I saw next morning were not particularly high, but rugged and dotted here and there with fir trees the wind had tortured. It was early spring, and the water spilling down their cliffs made me think of a certain type of girl, the tall cold blondes that knock your eyes out. Later I met Rosalee Rathaus, and she was a blond knockout even if she hardly came up to my chin in heels. I bet she would not weigh eighty pounds soaking wet. She was a good dancer, too. She promised me but I never collected. We will get into that in one of the later chapters.
After breakfast in the dining car, I went back to my compartment. I read until I got bored, then I had a look at the observation car. It was the double-decked kind, which I have always liked. I climbed the little stair to the upper deck and sat in one of the very cool swiveling red-leather seats there and watched the scenery whiz past until I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the train was going faster than ever, rattling and swaying as it crossed a big wasteland scarred with gullies.
Three border guards in uniforms were standing around me, and the biggest of the three was shaking my shoulder. Then the boss border guard, a skinny guy a lot shorter than me, started yelling questions in a language I did not know. The car was empty except for the four of us.
I got my passport out of my jacket and showed it to him. He passed it to the third border guard without looking at it. After that, they made me stand up, patted me down, took my iPhone, and tied my hands behind me. I guess I was scared, but mostly I was stunned.
The boss border guard marched along the upper deck of the observation car, motioning for me to follow. I did, noticing that the railing (which I knew darn well had been there when I had climbed to the upper deck) had been taken down. Steep little steps led from the upper deck to the main floor. The boss border guard trotted down them and I did my best to follow him. I was about halfway down when somebody pushed me. I fell, bumping into the boss border guard. I believe he must have landed on the lower steps. I rolled over him all the way to the bottom. He got up cursing and kicking. I could not understand his curses, but I knew what they were all right. I had never been kicked before and had not really known how bad it is. I think I must have blacked out.
The next thing I remember is being taken off the train, trying to walk and stumbling a lot while someone with strong hands held my arm.
The train had not slowed down but was roaring along beside a narrow black conveyer belt that was going even faster than it was, so that the shiny steel bands the sections were joined with looked like they were crawling slowly past us. We were waiting for the other two, or that was what it seemed like. When they joined us, the big guy who held me stepped from the train onto the belt, dragging me with him. Like I said, the belt went faster than the train had. It ran smoother, too. Beside it grass, brush, and dust pointed the way, blown by a howling wind. For us on the belt, it seemed like there was no wind at all. I noticed then that the train's diesel engine was gone, and there was a big steam engine up front. It was twice as big but looked old. It seemed to be trying to outrun its own smoke, but it could not do it.
If I had thought at all, I would have thought that we would be thrown off the end of the belt and die. It was not like that. Another, wider belt appeared to our right. This new belt was white, and moving slower than the black one. I fell when I tried to step onto it.
The boss border guard helped me up. His dark gray uniform cap had been mashed, and his scarlet-trimmed tunic was more than half-unbuttoned. (I think it was because three or four of the buttons had torn off.) Still he murmured, "Auanactain! Profasis!" like he was sorry I had been hurt. A minute later he helped me onto a red belt. I never did figure him out, only back then I thought maybe I could. My dad used to say foreigners' values were not the same as ours. Then he would dope them out anyway.
The red belt slowed down, I could feel the wind, and the biggest of the three helped me get off, lifting me like he would have picked up a little kid.
There was a car and a driver waiting for us. The biggest border guard, the boss, and I got into the backseat, with me pinned between them.
The third border guard took the front seat beside the driver. This third border guard was older than the other two. He had a black mustache, and in a lot of ways he looked like my father. Sometimes it seemed to me that the other two did not know he was there the same way I did. He never did talk, and nobody ever talked to him, except me. I did one time.
I asked whether we were going to the capital, at first in English, and then (when I was pretty sure neither of them understood it) in German. "No," the boss border guard told me in German. "We go to Puraustays."
I tried to remember a map I had seen. "Puraustays is a long way from the capital."
"No. It is near."
"Two hundred kilometers?"
The boss border guard just shrugged, reached into the pocket sewn onto the back of the seat in front of him, and took out a map. He opened it for me.
It was small and looked like it had been drawn for kids, with little pictures scattered here and there. I remember a miner and a wild ox. Looking up from it, I said, "This says three hundred and twenty kilometers."
The boss border guard chuckled. "All maps are wrong. If the Turks come, they will be lost."
We crossed a river that may have been the same river my train had roared across the day before. The little map called it the Taxus. Factories lined its bank, ugly gray buildings with tall chimneys of yellow brick. I asked what they made in there. The boss border guard shrugged, but the biggest of the three told me, "Fertilizer."
The city on the other side of the river was laid out in a way I have never seen anywhere else and had not known they used anywhere. Whether it was a big one or a little one, every building stood on its own block, with narrow streets on all four sides. A lot of these narrow, crooked streets could be called alleys. Some were not even paved. I am going to call them all streets because they use the same word for all of them. The size of the blocks varied depending on the size of the buildings. Large or small, they were mostly square or rectangular. There was always a strip of grass, trees, and shrubs around each building. That seemed to be the law, and it must have been the law there for a long time.
The variations in size meant that our car (and the wagons and so forth) could not go fast, turning left or right almost at the end of each block. Left turns were followed by rights, and the other way. When we had made half a dozen turns or so, it hit me that all the turns must make it hard to follow a particular street. After that, I watched for street signs, but there were not any. Pretty soon I asked the big man the name of the street we were on. He just shrugged and the boss border guard told me, "Our streets do not have names."
Then I stuck my neck out, saying that no street names must make it hard to find somebody's house. The boss border guard asked me, "Why do you want to find somebody's house in Puraustays?"
For a while we threaded our way among old buildings of three, four, or five stories, all of some dark stone. They said the biggest one, with gargoyles and lots of balconies, was the seat of the city's government. The trees around it were so tall I could not see a thing below a story that could have been the fourth or the third. This story, like the ones above it, was impressive and pretty interesting. I remember plants that looked an awful lot like jellyfish, and people who looked a lot like flowers.
Beyond that was a long yellow brick building with three stories. It was the first building I had seen that looked busy, and it seemed a whole lot busier than just about any building in America, with people hurrying in and out all the time. I asked what it was, and the big guy who had lifted me said, "The Mounted Guard."
I know I must have looked dumb. There were a lot of big doors, but I had seen no horses and no soldiers. The boss border guard told me, "They are on duty in the East."
After a while we got into a suburb or something like that. The streets there were more like those in American towns. The houses were all pretty much the same size, and that meant the blocks were pretty much the same size, too. So the streets were nearly straight except when they bent around.
Finally we stopped in front of a house that was not quite as big as the others, a little square house of dirty white concrete blocks. Our driver got out and trotted around to open the door for the third border guard. The sky was overcast, there was not a lot of time, and I could not be sure. But it seemed to me that the driver looked like the porter who had made my bed on the train. They could not have been the same guy. Still, they looked a lot alike.
There was no walk to the front door, only a little path among trees. Except for the driver, we trooped along it, the boss border guard, then the biggest and the third border guard. I limped along behind them, thinking I ought to run away but knowing I would be a darned fool to get separated from my passport. The boss border guard knocked with the barrel of his pistol.
A short, stocky man maybe thirty or so answered it, opening the door a crack then closing it again to unfasten a security chain before opening it wide. He had on a clean gray undershirt and gray wool pants that looked too big.
We crowded in and he talked. I think he was trying to get the boss border guard to sit down in the biggest chair. The boss border guard would not do it and lectured him. After a lot of that, the boss border guard asked me, "In Amerika, you build prisons for your prisoners, yes?" His German was not even as good as mine, but I understood him and nodded.
"Here we save." The boss border guard chuckled. "You are this man's prisoner."
I said I had not done anything.
"You come without visa, with no passport. These things are sufficient."
"You took my passport," I reminded him. "Give it back, please."
"It has been sent to the capital. I cannot give back. Until it is sent back, you have none. You must stay here. You see this man?" The boss border guard indicated the short man in the undershirt. "Do you like him?"
"I don't know him."
"So you like him. When you know him better, you do not like him so much, I think." The boss border guard shut one eye and pointed his pistol at the short man's head. "When you escape, him we shoot."
The short man gave me a sad glance.
"You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too."
I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.
"You are to sleep here." Holstering his pistol, the boss border guard took a folded paper and a pen from a pocket of his uniform jacket and shoved them into the short man's hand. "Grafote!"
The short man signed, and the border guards trooped out.
I apologized to the short man in English, and then in German. He could not understand that either.
The girl who had peeped in before smiled. She was a cute girl, with lots of curves and bouncy amber curls. "I must help." She talked to the short man. It seemed to me she was translating what I said, so I thanked her.
"It is nothing. I am most happy to be of use. I am Martya. My husband is Kleon. They do not like us."
Her husband spoke.
"He too says they do not like us. They will kill him if you escape. He says we could tie you up and keep you a prisoner in that way, which many would do. He says please do you not escape, or take us with you if you do."
I told her I would not escape.
"Kleon does not understand, but learns from our faces. Has mine told you what I think?"
I said it had not.
"See that you do as I."
I nodded.
"What you just did he understands. For us it might be most fortunate if you were to remember this. Try also to make long answers to my short questions, long, long answers to my long questions. In this way he will know only what I tell him. It is good for you and me, I think."
"I have a great many questions to ask you," I said, "questions about your country, this city, this house, your husband, and yourself, lovely lady. Where can I telephone the American embassy and a bunch of other stuff. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'll have long questions as well as long answers."
"Here no one has the telephones you seek. In the capital, perhaps." She talked to her husband for two or three minutes. He shook his head, said a few words, and spat into the fireplace.
"He will answer none of your questions." She smiled. "He thinks you are a JAKA spy. He did not say this, but he thinks it."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Land Across by Gene Wolfe. Copyright © 2013 Gene Wolfe. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
1. The Land Across,
2. The Story,
3. The Willows,
4. The Man from the Ministry,
5. A Man in Black,
6. Night, and Night's Denizens,
7. The Legion of the Light,
8. The Capital,
9. Free Almost,
10. Naala,
11. No Torture,
12. Worth a Thousand Words,
13. Left-Hand Magic,
14. Finding Rosalee,
15. Revisiting,
16. A Long Day's End,
17. From Their Dark Places,
18. Getting Ahead,
19. Old Friends and New,
20. That Cruel Look,
21. The Coven,
22. The Undead Dragon,
23. The Dead Dragon,
24. Back to Puraustays,
25. Homeward Bound!,
Appendix,
By Gene Wolfe from Tom Doherty Associates,
About the Author,
Copyright,
Interviews
Barnes & Noble Review Interview with Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe easily admits to being a supernatural being. How else to explain his famous comment that editor Damon Knight, whose ORBIT series of anthologies helped launch Wolfe's career, "grew me from a bean..."? And so, with revealed knowledge of this uncanny birth, we finally get a sense of how Wolfe came to gift the world of literature with an unprecedented oeuvre of majestic novels and stunning short stories, utterly unlike those of any other writer.
But maybe a fabulous origin story is not strictly necessary to explain Wolfe's immense talent and accomplishments. Those might just derive from a well-examined life, hard work, deep pondering, compassion, empathy, and an innate imagination and skill with words superior to that of most mortals.
Whatever the source of his virtues, Wolfe has produced many landmark works that have thrilled and entertained thousands and thousands of readers. His storytelling ranges from the historical past to the far future, from odd niches on Earth to the environments of strange planets. Unless furthering a series, he strives not to repeat himself, especially of late, when each new novel (and they arrive yearly, a praiseworthy pace even for a young writer, which Wolfe no longer is) plumbs unpredictable fresh themes and territories.
Whether you subscribe to the theory that Wolfe is some kind of hothouse-cultivated Ent, or "merely" a human genius, you'll want to read The Land Across. The author graciously took the time to speak with me via email about the genesis of his typically inventive new work, the state of twenty-first-century SF, and many other subjects. An edited transcript of our conversation follows, below. -- Paul Di Filippo The Barnes & Noble Review: The Land Across is a multivalent novel, insofar as it's a detective story, a ghost story, a Ruritanian romance, and so on. It just now dawns on me that's it's also a kind of Grimm's fairytale, which is particularly appropriate for its Mitteleuropan setting. Do you find ancient folk narratives of this sort particularly inspiring?
Gene Wolfe: Yes, I find folk narratives deeply appealing. Grimm's fairy tales, don't qualify, though. Most of them were written by the brothers. (Largely Wilhelm, I believe.)
BNR: Do you have one tale that's a favorite that you'd like to share with the audience?
GW: One favorite folktale? (I think that's what you're asking.) The legend of the king of the cats. Shall I tell it?
A troubled man and his wife once sat at their fireside, with no other company than their big black tomcat. After an hour or more of silence, the wife asks her man what's bothering him. The man explains that as he walked to his work that morning, the rustling of the trees seemed words. Nonsense of course. And while he was at his work, an old woman came to him, lean close, and whispered. He could not really understand what it was she said, but it seemed to him that it was the same thing -- or almost the same thing -- that the trees had said. And as he walked home, it seemed to him that he heard a bird speak, those same words.
"What were they?" his wife asked.
"Just foolishness," her man answered.
"Well, tell me! I'd like to know."
"You women want to know everything."
"If you tell me, you'll feel better. It will stop bothering you so. Try it and see."
"All right. All right!" her man said. "But please don't ask me what it means, because I don't know. Trees, old woman, and bird all said the king of the cats is dead."
At this, their cat rose upon his hind legs, shouted, "Then I am King of the Cats!" and vanished up the chimney.
BNR: It seems to me that The Land Across aligns nicely with the "New Weird" movement of recent vintage. In fact, to my eyes, you are an influential ancestor of this movement. Yet I don't find much critical linkage between your books and, say, those of China Miéville. Do you feel any particular kinship with writers of this school, such as M. John Harrison and Jeff VanderMeer?
GW: I should read all three much more than I have.
BNR: The novel deftly conjures up the voice of a protagonist, Grafton, who's much younger than you are, yet who also happens to be a writer, albeit of nonfiction. Did you channel your younger self to bring Grafton to life? Was the young Gene Wolfe a daring if somewhat bull-headed adventurer?
GW: The younger Gene Wolfe thought himself rather timid and cowardly. Thinking back now, I'm astonished. God only knows how he stayed alive.
BNR: Along those lines, do you feel that the necessity for a day job helped or hindered your work? Do you recommend having a paying, non-literary occupation for other writers?
GW: Writers must live, and work is a big part of that. In the book I'm writing now (I'd better tell you, since it may never sell) the hero watches a movie as he sit in a bus terminal. It's about a love affair between an editor and a writer, but neither of them ever seems to work. The editor does not edit and the writer does not write.
A good writer needs to know what it's like, and "it" can be just about anything. We have far too many writers today who have never ridden a horse, or fired a gun, or sharpened a knife, or fought with their fists, or been shot at. And so on and so on. They are like those professors who get a Ph.D. and a job teaching. Clearly nobody can try everything, but it's possible to try a lot. I've sailed on a small boat, for example. Also a troopship, and a luxury liner. I've been a waiter, worked in a factory, and flown in a light plane. (No, I was not the pilot, but I wish I had been.)
BNR: How much of a role did any of your own foreign travels play in the creation of your imaginary country in The Land Across? Did you blend any real-life observations, or was the place created through sheer invention? Did you have some literary models perhaps? Whatever its genesis, it holds up as an organic whole quite well.
GW: Much of it was from foreign travel, as you say. Much too was from reading. I was with another, better known, writer in London once when he remarked that everything was foreign and alien. I was stunned. It was, as I tried to explain, wonderfully homey and domestic. My gosh, Big Ben! Windsor Castle! Piccadilly Circus! Trafalgar Square. I felt almost that I been born there. Everybody spoke English. It was no more alien than Canada. The difference was, I think, that I had been in Japan, where one meets a sumo wrestler on the street and wizards practice on street corners. Also in devastated Seoul, where two thirds of the buildings downtown lay in ruins and the cops were lovely young girls with carbines slung across their backs. Little boy: "Where you from, GI? Brooklyn? Texas? Want meet my sister?"
BNR: Your military service seems a secret subtext to much of your work. Do you regard that period as an essential part of the formation of your adult sensibilities?
GW: "An essential part of the formation of your adult sensibilities" is way outside my range. That's for others to judge, if they're qualified. I know that I am not. Certainly I would be a different writer if I had not been a soldier and actually taken part in a war.
BNR: I don't think anyone has ever characterized you as a polemical or social-activist writer. In fact, your works could be seen on the surface to be almost the antithesis of any kind of Dreiserian or Zola-esque template. Yet you do deal with issues of power and social justice in many of your books, and your afterword to the latest is explicit about the challenges of maintaining a democracy. Do you feel fiction is a good mode for exploring such issues if such matters are not blatantly foregrounded?
GW: Yes, certainly. Fiction, and science fiction particularly, allows us to explore every sort of thing.
BNR: Your opinion on Dickens and the other great Victorian social commentator-type novelists, please. I find your own work highly Dickensian.
GW: I've read a good deal of Dickens, but not much of the other. When Dickens consciously tried to reform society, he was at his worst. When he simply told a story, he did a lot to improve society.
BNR: Your newest books -- the last five novels since 2007 -- have been unconnected singletons. Yet you remain best known for a massive series of some twelve volumes, beginning with The Shadow of the Torturer. Do you prefer one mode to the other? Any more linked works on your horizon?
GW: No, I have no preference. The matter dictates.
BNR: Practically speaking, are you still psyched for the long haul effort that another series would necessarily involve?
GW: I'm not sure that I could write another series, but it certainly would not bother me to try.
BNR: On an allied note, I would observe that your latest work seems more streamlined and less densely involuted than much of your earlier work. Do you feel this to be true? If so, was the change a conscious one, or simply a gradual maturing of style and paring away of any formalistic excess?
GW: It results from choice of subject matter. Suppose I wanted to deal with the conception, first failures, eventual triumph, inevitable decay, and demise of a political party. Clearly that would take a series of books.
BNR: Would you say that writing has gotten easier for you, or harder, or the degree of difficulty remains unchanged? I look at the recent work by two of your Grandmaster peers, Brian Aldiss and Michael Moorcock, and get the impression that they now write with an almost unconscious, instinctive facility born of decades of achievement -- much like you.
GW: Both. I write more readily now, but I'm harder on myself and on what I write.
BNR: Let's talk a bit about life in the twenty-first century. As a venerable gentleman of some eighty-two years, you've seen a lot of history. Even approaching sixty, I myself sometimes feel swamped by experiences and the sheer passage of time. First off, what are the biggest changes you've noted in the literary world since the publication of your early story "The Dead Man" in 1965?
GW: The emergence of e-publishing, certainly.
BNR: Do you think the state-of-the-art in fantastika -- to use John Clute's all-embracing term -- has improved or deteriorated or not significantly changed? Are we living in a new Golden Age of SF/F/H, or has real storytelling died? Is it silly perhaps even to try to compare average books or masterpieces across generations? Do you see the same passions and ambitions among young writers as you shared with your peers?
GW: Comparisons are always odious. It's not our business to decide whether this is a high point. We are to make it as good as we can.
BNR: And what about the world at large? Are you optimistic or pessimistic or just realistic about the future of humanity? You continue to write science fiction, a genre which, I think, always assumes at least that mankind will endure in some manner, however challenged.
GW: Optimistic, really. We made it through the Cold War without the deaths of billions. This is a brighter age.
BNR: Are you a fan of the Singularity, with its promises of a post-scarcity era of miracles just around the corner? Or do you see this as typical pie-in-the-sky thinking?
GW: No, I'm no fan of the Singularity. If I said more I would anger a good many good people.
BNR: What new technologies appeal to you? Are you a big user of social media, for instance? I think of Fred Pohl taking so readily to blogging as an example of a writer adapting eagerly to new forums and means of communicating.
GW: I wish my life were interesting enough for me to blog. If it were half as interesting as Neil Gaiman's, I would do it. I'm just an old guy cooking for himself and trying to find time in which to write.
BNR: Just last year you received the Grandmaster Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America, placing you on an honor roll that includes such luminaries as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, and Ursula K. Le Guin. How did it feel to join that pantheon? Did you ever envision this happening during your wildest dreams of literary success? Has the benediction proven stimulating to your work, or perhaps a little nerve-wracking, in the sense of having to meet new expectations?
GW: I felt unworthy, and I still do. No, I have never envisioned one tenth of the success I've had. If you had been at the party at which I received the Fuller Award, you'd understand. Fantasy can be much more realistic than science fiction.
BNR: Which of your books do you predict will still find an audience one hundred years from now? And does your prediction tally with the books you wish would endure?
GW: The first is easy. The Shadow of the Torturer. The second...I won't tell you. The critics would ignore everything else here to snipe at my choice.
And that's it. Excuse me while I make lunch.
December 19, 2013