Journeyman: Interview with Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster is famous for his original Science Fiction novels, series and movie scripts, including Star Trek and Star Wars’s tie-ins and novelizations.

He was once in Brazil, back in 2000, when we had the luck to watch and hear him talking about his experiences as a pro writer and as an amateur explorer (Alan is a compulsive jorneyman and had travelled to the four corners of the planet).

Now he’s with us to a small interview, answering to five questions raised by our staff (thanks to Luiz Felipe Vasques, Eduardo Torres and Carlos Orsi Martinho), talking about the earlier days of his career, his gigs for Hollywood and how other cultures could inspire his writings.

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Octavio Aragão – Hello, Alan. Please, talk a little about your career as professional writer, your literary influences (inside and outside the SF&F field) and the books that were a real pleasure to write.

Alan Dean Foster – I was born in New York City, 1946, but was raised in Los Angeles. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA (1968, l969), I spent two years as a copywriter for a small advertising and public relations firm, in California.

My writing career began when publisher August Derleth bought a long Lovecraftian letter I wrote in 1968 and published it as a short story in Derleth's bi-annual magazine, The Arkham Collector. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. My first attempt at a novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, was published by Ballantine Books, in 1972. It incorporates a number of suggestions from John W. Campbell, the editor who published the first works of great writers like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

Since then, my short fiction has appeared in all the major SF magazines, as well as in original anthologies and several "Best of the Year" compendiums. Six collections of my short form work have been published.

My work to date includes excursions into hard science-fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western.. As to literary influences, the three primary ones were Herman Melville, Eric Frank Russell (British SF writer), and Carl Barks, the creator of the best Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books. From Barks I got the ability to deal realistically with older characters, and also a portion of my desire to travel and see the world.

Carlos Orsi Martinho – You write lots of media fiction, and you keep a few ongoing series of your own. Besides the obvious question of how those experiences compare, and feel, to you, did do you ever considered a media project about one of your own series? A movie, comic book version or TV serial, perhaps? And, how would you feel if another writer would come to write a novelization of a movie based upon one of your universes? Would you try to talk to the guy? Give him advice? Or just keep away...?

ADF – Every writer prefers writing their own material to working with that originated by others. I'm no exception. As to a media project based on my own work, I did have one story (OUR LADY OF THE MACHINE) done on the SF Channel in the U.S., as the opening episode of a series called WELCOME TO PARADOX. Unfortunately, the series lasted only one season, and the adaptation was not what it could have been.

I have a number of books under option for development as motion pictures. All it takes is lots of money.

As to someone writing in my universes, I have no objection to fan writing. But professionally, unless a writer is desperate for money, I think it's best to keep control over your own work. The one exception I made is for a series of games (not video) that are based on the Commonwealth.

Eduardo Torres e Luiz Felipe Vasques – How do you feel in writing the book version of RIDDICK before the release of the film? How will you deal with possible changes of script during film-making? And what should we expect from the Humanx Space project?

ADF – I can't speak to the Humanx Space project, but as to RIDDICK, I always write the book version before the release of the film. That was true of STAR WARS, the ALIEN films, and every other novelization I have done. As to changes of script while I am writing the book, I do my best to incorporate any such changes while I am writing... when and where possible, and provided, of course, that the studio supplies me with the details of such changes.

Octavio Aragão e Eduardo Torres – Different from the vast majority of the SF writers, you travel a lot all over the world, including "wild places" like Brazil. How does it contribute to your novels and scripting gigs? There was any particular situation that you witnessed in those voyages that was later translated into books or movie scripts?

ADF – I don't understand how writers can write about other cultures and places without wanting to experience them for themselves. All I ever wanted to do was see as much of the universe (in this case, restricted to one planet) as I possibly could. I am still trying to do so. I just returned from Kiribati, and will be in Venezuela, Guyana, and Trinidad in January (Señor Chavez permitting).

Not only do my travels provide me with ideas and characters to incorporate into stories, I often am inspired to write an entire book by a visit to a particular country. INTO THE OUT OF comes from time I spent in Tanzania and Kenya. CACHALOT derives from the summer I lived in French Polynesia. CATALYST was inspired by my visit to Peru. And I owe the idea behind my most recently published novel, DROWNING WORLD, to the political situation I saw in Fiji and the ecology of Mamiraua...in that little, out-of-the-way, South America country they call Brazil.

Octavio Aragão – There’s an increasing interest in France for the SF&F produced in South America and in other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish. This is producing a growing trade of information, data and publications among authors and scholars all around the world, with Portuguese and Brazilian writers publishing in European SF anthologies and vice-versa. How do you see the chances of the non-anglophone Science Fiction and Fantasy in a market that was, till now, mostly North-American?

ADF – It's a development that is long, long overdue. SF is a world literature not only in the sense that it is written and read everywhere, but that SF readers have a connection readers of other fiction do not. You do not need to explain what a star drive is to a reader in Russia, or Australia, or China. Or robotics, or cryogenics. All SF readers have the same basic reading foundation for the genre.

American publishers have a disagreeable bias against SF from elsewhere, although this may slowly (very slowly) be changing. A Japanese author recently sold the U.S. rights to three of his SF books. The Indian government published an anthology of SF by Indian writers that I am trying to get published in the U.S. The other problem is, of course, economics. Translation work costs money. It will be a very SF solution when translation software allows for faster and easier translation work of SF stories.

Now you must excuse me. My wife and I are going to a concert tonight. DIO and IRON MAIDEN. Very soothing.

Steampunk em Paris: Entrevista com Pedro Mota

Pedro Mota é um historiador português que atualmente reside na França.

Graças a seus projetos editoriais e admiração pela Ficção Científica – especialmente o subgênero chamado “História Alternativa” – vem promovendo um intercâmbio bastante salutar e inédito entre autores de língua portuguesa e de origem francesa.


Octavio Aragão – Olá, Pedro! Obrigado por aceitar ceder esta entrevista. Vamos, então, àquela apresentação básica:
Qual seu nome completo, idade, profissão e trabalhos mais importantes no gênero da FC até agora?


Pedro Mota – Olá, Octavio. Me chamo Pedro Jorge Ferreira Mota, nasci en Lisboa, em dezembro 1969, e fui para a França aos 4 anos de idade, uns dias antes do 25 de Abril, 1974. Desde então, moro em Estrasburgo, na Alsacia, uma bela região francesa, mas que fica demasiado longe do elemento essencial para os portugas: o Oceano!

Tenho 33 anos e sou fà de FC desde que comecei a ler. A principio, com os quadrinhos da Marvel (mas não os da DC !!) e, depois, com livros. Quando tinha uns 13/14 anos de idade, comecei a ler romances: minhas primeiras descobertas foram com Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Júlio Verne, Tolkien, Arthur C. Clarke. Nessa altura também li muitos romances policiais entre os quais Agatha Christie.

Depois houve um periodo em que tive que pôr de lado as minhas leituras de lazer para dedicar-me aos estudos, mas sempre continuei com um olho sobre a FC durante esse período, que durou uns dez anos.

Foi nessa altura mais ou menos que me apaixonei por um gênero em particular: as Historias Alternativas. Depois de terminar o meu curso de historia, tive mais tempo para a FC e voltei aos meus primeiros amores. Foi a partir daí que devorei num frenesi o máximo de livros de FC.

Em 1995/96 descobri o site Uchronia, the alternate history list, e foi nessa altura que me pus a procura de todos as ucronias disponíveis em francês.

Em 1998, decidi lançar o site La Porte des Mondes, que tenta reunir o máximo de ucronias disponíveis em francês, sejam originais ou traduzidas. A realização do site permitiu-me conhecer vários autores franceses e estrangeiros e, assim, fazer algumas entrevistas de autores como Silverberg, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson e autores franceses como Johan Heliot ou Xavier Mauméjean.

O A – Como está a situação da FC literária na França?

PM – Não sei se tenho os elementos suficientes para falar da FC francesa. E não vou fazer um histórico da FC francesa desde Verne até hoje. Mas posso dizer que, desde a altura em que voltei a ler FC, em meados dos anos 90, descobri e li com muito mais prazer autores franceses. Creio que hoje a maioria dos leitores da França partilham essa visão.

Na minha opinião, a FC francesa esta cada vez mais interessante. Estes últimos anos descobri autores como Pierre Bordage, Johan Héliot, Thomas Day, Ugo Bellagamba, Xavier Mauméjean, Fabrice Colin, Mathieu Gaborit. Redescobri autores com mais fama como R. C. Wagner, J. C. Dunyach, P. Pagel, Ayerdhal, Serge Lehman, J. P. Andrevon, C. Grenier. São muitos mais os autores que poderia ainda pôr nesta lista, e isso sem falar da riqueza e do potencialidade da FC do Quebec.

Creio que temos um número considerável de autores franceses que poderiam ser traduzidos e rivalizar sem dificuldades e sem vergonha com os autores anglófonos. O problema principal é a fraqueza do mercado francês internacional, e, possivelmente, a dificuldade para um brasileiro, português ou até mesmo um americano de encontrar um livro francês fora da França.

Participo da lista de discussão portuguesa "Ficcao-Cientifica · Ficção Científica e Fantástico" e raremente vejo leitores lusófonos falarem de autores franceses. A culpa também pode ser minha (riso) porque até agora não pensei em escrever um "review" dos livros franceses, mas creio que vou tentar fazê-lo o mais rápido possivel.

Na França, temos a sorte de ter varias editoras, grandes e pequenas, que propõem coleções de FC (sendo que as pequenas são mais empreendedoras que as grandes, aceitando enfrentar riscos), permitindo assim a descoberta de autores novos. Temos tambem várias revistas profissionais como Galaxies, Bifrost e Phénix.

No tocante à produção de livros, a FC francesa possui um grande potencial, mas é uma pena que as grandes editoras não dêem importância ao gênero. Porque, apesar de tudo, a FC em geral não tem muito boa fama na França fora do círculo dos leitores e dos fãs (apesar do fato de eu ter notado que os temas da FC são cada vez mais utilizados pela publicidade).

O A – Você é um entusiasta da FC em geral, mas tem se dedicado a difundir autores de língua lusófona e castelhana no mercado francês. Como foi seu primeiro contato com os autores portugueses e brasileiros?

P M – Sim gosto de FC. De toda FC.
Não posso dizer que difundi a FC castelhana na França. Foi a Sylvie Miller quem permitiu a difusão e traduziu muita da FC castelhana disponivel. Aliás, Bruno Della Chiesa, francês apesar do nome italiano, fez muito com o festival Utopiales em Nantes, sendo um dos primeiros a tentar abrir a FC francesa ao resto do mundo.

Aproveito o momento para agradecer à Sylvie Miller por duas razões: primeiro porque graças ao seu trabalho descobri autores espanhóis, e de outro lado porque, com sua ajuda, estou tentando fazer com a FC lusofona o que ela fez com a FC castelhana.

Eis a razão que me leva a ler os livros de Juan Miguel Aguilera, um autor espanhol. Gosto mesmo do que ele faz, também como gosto de Yoss, um autor cubano . E tive a possibilidade de conhecê-los durante um festival, aqui na França.

Com a ajuda da Sylvie Miller, vamos tentar abrir ainda mais o mercado francês a outras sensibilidades e a outras FC, como a portuguesa e a brasileira.

Foi graças à internet que comecei a descobrir os autores lusófonos e pude entrar em contato com eles. Agora tento partilhar minhas descobertas com os leitores franceses. Estou frente a uma montanha e só agora comecei a galgá-la. Tenho que subir com calma para poder chegar ao topo (riso)...

O A – Você acredita que há a possibilidade do desenvolvimento de um mercado de literatura de FC de cunho mundial, fora do universo editorial anglófono?

P M – Sinceramente, creio que sim. Porque penso que pode haver outros modos de escrever FC, outras sensibilidades além daquela dos anglo-saxônicos. A pouco, tive uma conversa com a Sylvie Miller, onde ela me disse que a FC americana é, por vezes, demasiado maniqueísta e um tanto redutora. Enquanto que a FC espanhola ou lusófona aparece mais colorida e mais diversa.

Na França, os leitores puderam descobrir nestes últimos anos, autores alemães, espanhóis, italianos, cubanos, jamaicanos. Todos eles propõem visões e alternativas diferentes da FC anglo-saxônica. Não quero dizer que a FC não-anglosaxônica seja melhor, mas é diferente, e desenvolve outras maneiras de escrever temas clássicos como space-opera, hard-science, cyberpunk, steampunk e outros.

Pegamos, por exemplo, o steampunk, que conheço bem: a princípio, trata-se de uma nova corrente que se iniciou nos EUA e na Inglaterra, com os livros de Powers, Blaylock, Gibson e demais. Mas, por volta de 1995, reparamos que vários autores francos souberam recuperar esse tema e adaptá-lo ao público francês. Em vez de situar a ação em Londres dos finais do século XIX, transpuseram as suas historias à Paris, mas na mesma época, com personagens (verdadeiros ou imaginarios) bem conhecidos, como Arsène Lupin, Jules Verne, Vidocq etc... Acho que o steampunk “à francesa” não deve nada ao anglófono, e até pode interessar o público português, espanhol ou brasileiro. Mas será que esses públicos alguma vez ouviram falar desses livros? Julgo que não, e acho uma pena.

Ademais, a FC estrangeira pode contar histórias com temas bem diferentes dos habituais, temas usados na França, tal como Eu matei Paolo Rossi, de Octavio Aragão. Nesse conto, um dos pontos focais é a paixão pelo futebol que existe no Brasil, o que soa um pouco "exótico" na França.

É preciso saber se as editoras portuguesas, brasileiras e as outras, podem ter vontade de buscar e traduzir contos franceses, e realizar um trabalho similar ao de alguns editores franceses.

Se ninguém der o primeiro passo, todo o trabalho realizado por várias pessoas para tentar descobrir essa "outra" FC pode não ser mais do que un coup d'épée dans l'eau (un golpe de espada na água) e as várias FC existentes no resto do mundo continuarão a ignorar-se, medindo forças com a FC anglófona.


O A – Seria o advento da Internet um elemento indispensável para essa unificação, esse reconhecimento mundial?

P M – Creio que a Internet têm sido um meio fantástico para promover e descobrir a FC de vários países, seja com os diversos sites, seja pelas listas e grupos de discussão. É so ver o número de sites dedicados à FC existindo na rede, é simplesmente incrível!

Foi a minha descuberta da Internet que me levou a criar o site sobre Ucronias, e sei que é regularmente visitado por internautas oriundos do Canadá, Nova Zelandia, Japão, Tahiti, Brasil, USA, sem falar dos países europeus. E trata-se de um site modesto, dedicado às ucronias em francês. Fico espantado!

A Internet abre uma janela maior sobre o nosso mundo, permintindo-nos saber realmente o que habitantes de vários países podem pensar de tal ou tal aspecto ou acontecimento. Ainda mais quando se trata de pessoas que partilham uma paixão para a FC.


O A – Em que ponto estão seus vários projetos editoriais?

P M – Estou finalizando a tradução de um autor brasileiro para uma revista francesa. Disseram-me que existe possibilidade para propor contos lusófonos na França, e eis o meu principal objetivo nos próximos meses: fazer que alguns autores de língua portuguesa sejam publicados aqui.

Mas também gostaria fazer a mesma coisa no sentido contrário: apresentar autores franceses aos leitores de Brasil e Portugal.

Estou finalizando para breve uma antologia de contos ucrônicos cujo tema é a França, com histórias inéditas de autores americanos, cubanos, brasileiros e franceses, e que se chamará Douze Frances – um "piscar de olhos" à canção de Charles Trenet, Douce France –, e também estou trabalhando para realizar outro do meus sonhos: abrir uma pequena livraria e trabalhar com o que eu mais gosto: os livros.

A New Hard SF: Interview with Edward M. Lerner

Edward M. Lerner is part of the new generation of the American hard Science Fiction writers, with works published in the prestigious magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and in a lot of sites in the Internet.
Here he will talk about his stories – with a mix of Physics, Space Engineering, History and Sociology –, his time in NASA and the state of American Science Fiction nowadays.

With you, Edward M. Lerner.

Octavio Aragão – Hello, Edward. Glad to have you here, in the Intempol site.

You have a degree in Physics and a masters in Computer Science. But, you also have a heavy and clear interest in Sociology, as we can see in some of your short stories (By The Rules, published in Analog, in June, 2003) and novelettes (the serialized Moonstruck, Analog, to be finished in December, 2003), where we can see Alien races studying - or manipulating - Earth just like anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss used to do with other cultures in the early XX century. Do you use to research Sociology and Anthropology to build your stories of "alien contact"? If so, who are your favorite authors in this field?

Edward M. Lerner – By The Rules concludes with the acknowledgment: With thanks (and apologies) to Jenn. Jenn is my daughter and an ABD (all but dissertation) grad student of sociology. I did use her as a resource on that story – after which I exercised authorial privilege to ignore any inconvenient details. A case can be made that the apologies owed are for more than any poetic license I exercised. You see, the household rules in that story were mine, inflicted on Jenn and her brother Jeremy.

Moonstruck (and most of my fiction) was developed without Jenn’s help. I do draw upon a longstanding interest in history, however, in this serial and many other stories. In my mind, there’s a significant overlap between historical analysis and sociology.

OA – Your passion for, in your own words, "rocket science" is very deep and you claim that your experience working for NASA helped built and write a more realistic background to your stories, producing "a stockpile of source material for future stories". What, when and where did you used from the "NASA experience"? You just used the "good things" or you tend to show the ugly side of the great corporations in your work?

EML – Moonstruck draws heavily upon that NASA-contracting experience. (That said, allow me to be a bit general, since the final installment of the serial remains to be published. I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone.) The space-shuttle scenes certainly benefit from my having ‘flown’ the shuttle training simulator. The fact that I ‘crashed’ every time has no bearing on the story. The years I spent working on NASA’s ‘mission to planet Earth’ also proved useful – although I twisted that knowledge into a scenario no practicing climatologist would ever expect to encounter.

Do I use the ugly side of corporate life? Absolutely! Consider my novelette Creative Destruction (first appearing in Analog, March 2001, and later included in Year’s Best SF 7 [David G. Hartwell, editor]). That story revolves around radio-based interstellar trade in intellectual property -- and a vast corporate conspiracy to circumvent the UN’s import/export controls. My imagined chicanery is certainly much uglier than anything Iíve experienced in the real corporate world – I know of no corporate-sanctioned murders! – but it reflects the many years I’ve spent in the corporate trenches.


Another example: my first novel, Probe, opens with a first-contact scenario and also involves corporate malfeasance. This time, however, the corporate plotters are as much in the dark as anyone else.

OA – You are part of a "new new wave" of SF writers that appeared in the last years in the pages of the magazines writing short stories. But we also can notice a huge amount of "trilogies" and famous authors doing their best to write the hugest books, full of sequels and prequels that smell a lot like just "moneymakers". How do you see the actual state of the literary SF as a viable media in US? Is it growing, is it stagnant or in plain flight upwards?

EML – I’m part of a wave? Who knew?

Yes, novels are getting longer, and series are becoming more prevalent. There are good and bad aspects to that state of affairs. I’m all for a series when the scale of an idea is bigger than one book can accommodate. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings would provide a far poorer experience if it were compressed/scaled-back to one book. The same would be true of the original Asimov Foudation trilogy or Brin’s first Uplift trilogy. That said, some series have continued longer than (in my opinion) the core idea required. Honesty requires an admission: some of the ideas I’m working with support (again, just my opinion) a two- or three-book short series.

More broadly, what’s the state of SF in the US? Not entirely to my taste. My particular preference is for technically sound (“hard”) SF and a steady stream of big/bold new ideas. The many fantasy, media tie-in (such as Star Trek and Star Wars), and past-their-prime series books don’t leave much room for what I’d like to see. That’s too bad, because SF, of all genres, needs a steady stream of innovations.

OA – Let's talk a little about your process of work: your stories are very hard-science driven, with lots of data and references to your scientific knowledge (computer science or space flight engineering). With these characteristics, how do you do revision? All by yourself? Or are you like Stephen King, with a small group of colleagues that knows the same topics you do and helps you with the small typos and eventual factual/scientific inconsistencies? Do you use to discuss your ideas before begin writing? If so, with whom?

EML – Writing hard SF motivates me to learn esoteric topics – science and technology change so rapidly I can’t rely on what I retained from college. There are also plenty of exciting ideas too new to have studied in college, like nanotech and proteimics (protein engineering). The research I do is fun, and because it deals with strange, plot-centric needs, has a focus unlike general study.

I’ve discussed some plot ideas with colleagues, but that’s the exception. The one time I gave an early section draft to a colleague, she lost it!

My wife Ruth is my first reader. She’s an avid SF fan but not a technologist – her review is invaluable. She’s excellent at finding where Iíve said too much or too little about technology, or where the connection between the plot and the technology isn’t clear.

None of this is to say inaccuracies can’t creep into my writing. Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, is a PhD physicist and has saved me from myself a couple of times.

OA – Your series Moonstruck is full of details - a true, credible Universe -, and we can see the roots of a novel between it's pages. Any plans for a future book? What the future brings? Any other projects?

EML – Thanks for the kind words about that story. Moonstruck (like most four-part Analog serials) is actually novel-length, and I hope to interest a publisher in releasing it in book form.

Long-time Analog readers will also recognize some of my other near-term projects. Interstellarnet is a novel that expands upon several novelettes published in 2000 and 2001 (including the above-mentioned Creative Destruction). Interstellarnet Conspiracy is a (pardon the irony) follow-on – not a sequel, but set in the same universe. Finally, Fools’ Experiments is a novel that expands upon two 2002 Internet-centric Analog contributions, a novella (Presence of Mind) and a two-part serial (Survival Instinct).


Edward M. Lerner

Awe and Humility: Interview with Robert Charles Wilson

He is a collector of prizes and awards and is gaining recognition all around the world with his novels that mixes the drama of Human evolution and hard Science Fiction. In an exclusive interview for the Intempol site, the author of Darwinia and The Chronolits, Robert Charles Wilson, talks about religion, mainstream novels and the future.

Octavio Aragão - Hello, Mr Wilson. Glad to have you here!
You won - or was finalist of - practically all the Science Fiction & Fantasy literary awards in USA (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell Memorial, Sunburst and Aurora). How did they influenced your career?

Robert Charles Wilson - Anything that brings your name to the attention of people is a good thing, and I suppose the awards helped attract a larger audience for my work. But I suspect what really matters about awards (or at least nominations) is, for most writers, the sense of acknowledgment. Writing is lonely and often dispiriting work. No matter how skewed or arbitrary the award process may be, the occasional nomination is a reminder that someone out there values what you do.


OA - I know you love the "fantastic-plot driven literary genre" since you was a kid, but your characters are all very well built (I personally like very much Guilford Law, the protagonist of Darwinia). With all that care about human relations and emotions, did you ever wanted to do the crossing and write a mainstream novel?

RCW - I admire many things about the contemporary mainstream novel, especially the attention to detail and mood, and I try to bring these things to my own writing. But I'm in love with genre sf. The task of creating good science fiction -- projecting a shadow of our known world and then imaginatively inhabiting it as if it were real -- is absolutely fascinating to me. It's a genuine artistic challenge, and I think it's revealing that when mainstream writers attempt the crossing in the other direction (Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake is the current example) they often fall embarrassingly short.

Will I ever write a mainstream novel? I might, but I would want it to address the same esthetic sensibility that attracted me to sf in the first place: the intuition that the universe is a much stranger place than it appears.


OA - Your works are very "hard" in some ways - specially Bios and the timetravel related ones -, sometimes filled with tiny small scientific details in the backgrounds that shows your knowledge and scientific approach. Don't you ever wanted to write a "non-fiction" book about, for instance, Quantum Physics?

RCW - No. I make a valiant attempt to get the details right, but those "small scientific details in the background" are, at best, a fiction writer's interpretation of what other (much smarter) people have written. Some sf writers (Isaac Asimov, Robert Sawyer) are natural-born explainers. They can explain a tough scientific concept clearly, correctly, and entertainingly. I wasn't born with that particular talent.


OA - You seem fascinated by the concept of "God" or entities so above the Human understanding that we could see them as deities. Are you a religious man or your scientific background avoids you from the simple feeling of "awe", tempting you to try a rationalization of "God" inside your stories (please, notice that I'm not a religious guy, just very curious. You can say here whatever you want! :-D)?

RCW - As I child I was exposed to a variety of Baptist fundamentalism by way of my paternal grandmother – beliefs to which my parents generally deferred, although they weren't especially devout or observant. As a bright if slightly literal-minded child, these beliefs simultaneous interested me (they were, after all, Big Ideas) and repelled me (I figured you had to be either ignorant or willfully stupid to argue with the concept of evolution).

I do believe that the appropriate spiritual response to the universe in which we find ourselves living is awe and humility. This, it seems to me, is what religion ought to foster; and this, it seems to me, is what religious doctrine too often strives to ignore or refute. By claiming that the universe is 6,000 years old, by making some particular human ethnicity the centerpiece of creation, by suggesting that God is offended by, say, homosexuality, religion belittles the Creator it claims to exalt.


OA - Once, yet in the late XX Century, you said that the years ahead of us would be far from the "Mad Max future". Well, didn't the events in 09/11 and the recent "war against terrorism" changed your predictions? If so, how do you see the future from now on? What expect us right ahead?

RCW - In the eighties and nineties it seemed as if the "Mad Max" future was the only one people could imagine – it was our collective default setting for the word "future." And yet no one really believed in it, or acted as if they did. It was a cinematic fantasyland, like Middle Earth or Hogwort's College. Good for a couple of hours in a darkened movie-house, irrelevant to your life.

9/11 may have made that glamorously ruined wonderland a little less inviting... may actually have brought it back into the realm of genuinely speculative sf, a place in which, if we're not careful, our children may actually have to live.

But my main complaint is that, barring total ecological collapse, the future is inevitably going to be more complicated than that. To take one example, biological engineering will give us designer plagues -and- a cure for cancer. Both. Perhaps simultaneously.


OA - Since you are very interested in the "transcendental" side of Humanity, - even in your more "Hard" novels -, what should we expect from your next book, Spin?

RCW - Since Spin is a work-in-progress, I don't want to give too much away. But I can say that Spin addresses both the next forty years of human civilization and the next 4 billion years in the evolution of the solar system.

What makes SF so interesting right now is that writers are beginning to confront two scenarios pressed upon us by contemporary science. One alternative is that humanity, as a species, might abort itself in a planet-wide ecological collapse. The other is that we'll survive the difficult next century and expand beyond our planet... in a form that our ancestors might not even recognize as human.


OA - Last question: Do you like "great sagas"? Seems that the American Market urges for this kind of books with more than 400 pages and cliffhanger endings that suggests endless continuations or trilogies. If so, is Darwinia becoming a "trilogy" or something like that?

RCW - I'm often asked about sequels, especially to Darwinia and Bios. The answer: not impossible, but no immediate plans. I'm not opposed to the concept of trilogies or massive kilopage blockbusters; I just don't think they should be obligatory.

There will be a sequel to Spin, however. Spin is a stand-alone novel utterly complete in itself, but it ends with the Earth (and the universe at large) in a relationship that fascinates me and one I wanted to spend more time exploring.

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You can find more about Robert Charles Wilson and his novels here.

A mystery author: Interview with Brendan DuBois

Being compared with such writers like Robert Harris and Philip K. Dick, Brendan DuBois built his career wirting detective stories and thrillers, but also won the prestigious Sidewise Award with the breathtaking novel RESURRECTION DAY, where the USA are bombed by the Cuban missiles, back in the 60¨s.

Now he talks a little about his writings, alternative futures of America if Kennedy had survived or John Kerry had won the 2004 Elections and Vikings in the New World.


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Octavio Aragão — Back in 2000, your short story "The Dark Snow" was published in the "Best American Mystery Stories of the Century" anthology alongside Chandler, O. Henry and Steinbeck among others. But, beside the fact that you have a career as a mystery writer, you also wrote political thrillers and even an award winner Alternate History novel, RESURRECTION DAY. Which genre is your favorite and why?

Brendan DuBois — A great question and usually the most popular one I receive. I tend to consider myself both a mystery and a suspense/thriller author, yet when I was younger, I really wanted to become a science fiction author. I wrote dozens and dozens of science fiction short stories, none of which got published. One day, a number of years ago, I had a short story rejected by several science fiction magazines. I rather liked this story, and since it had a mysterious theme to it, I sent it off to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and they published it! That’s how I became a mystery author.

Of my eight published novels, five are traditional first-person mysteries, while the other three are suspense thrillers. I’ve just completed a new suspense-thriller, and I have started the sixth novel in my Lewis Cole mystery series. As to which genre is my favorite... it depends! When I’m writing a complicated suspense-thriller, I yearn for the simplicity of a first-person mystery novel. And yet when I’m writing a first-person mystery novel, I’m thinking ahead of writing another big, sprawling suspense-thriller. But whatever the type of book or short story I’m writing, I consider myself fortunate that I do love writing so.


OA — RESURRECTION DAY is set in an alternate world where the Cuban missiles actually hit the USA. Your characterization of John F. Kennedy is, to say the least, “iconic”. Do you believe that if Kennedy had survived, America would have been a better place in the sixties/seventies? And how topics like Vietnam and the Cold War would have happened in a “Kennedy Alive” scenario?

BDB — A tough question to answer. There’s a school of thought that if JFK had not been assassinated, that the 1960’s would have been a better time, without the Vietnam war, without the social upheaval in the United States, without a generation of protesters and protests that still echo to this day. But who really knows? JFK was a very conservative, Cold War Democrat. One recalls his inauguration speech, when he told about “paying any price, bearing any burden” The 1960’s might have been a more peaceful decade. But JFK may have gotten the United States involved in other military adventures during his terms in office. Yet there were some stirrings, just before his assassination, of a detente between his administration and Nikita Khrushchev.

An intriguing question that we’ll never know the answer to.


OA — Is there any kind of influence of Harris' FATHERLAND or Dick's MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in the plot of RD? I ask because of the “hidden-plans-within-hidden-plans” structure that runs through the novel.

BDB — While I’ve read both novels, I’d like to think that there wasn’t much in the way of influence in how I came to write RESURRECTION DAY. When doing an alternative history novel, one challenge is to tell the story of this alternative universe without having a character sit down and dictate the history of this particular universe to the reader. There has to be a narrative hook,something that moves the reader along while also informing him. That particular hook in RESURRECTION DAY was the hunt for the secrets of how the Cuban War came about and who was responsible.


OA — Your newest book, BURIED DREAMS, deals with the possibility of the existence of Vikings in American territory more than a thousand years ago and is also a murder mystery novel. How much of Historical research you had to do before begin the writings and how did it merged with the traditional “crime” narrative?

BDB — I’ve always been fascinated with the history of New England and its early settlers, and I have always had interest in tales of explorers who came to these shores prior to the English in the late 1500’s.

The idea of Vikings traveling here all the way from Iceland and Greenland was just irresistible to me, and was the key for my fifth Lewis Cole novel, BURIED DREAMS The amount of research was not that much -- I had a folder that I would occasionally place articles about Vikings and archaeology, plus I did some Internet research -- but I made sure that the facts were accurate. In terms of merging with the traditional crime narrative, the story was about the hunt for missing Viking artifacts and the killer of the amateur archaeologist that was a friend of my narrator, Lewis Cole. It didn’t have to be Viking artifacts; it could have been Colonial artifacts or priceless treasure from the American Civil War or something else. But for me and for the story, Vikings worked.


OA — The background scenario built for RD is minuciously detailled and very well built in political therms. Based in your accurate eye for details, causes and conseqüences, how do you see the USA politics today and how would have been the future if George W. Bush had lost the last American election?

BDB — There’s been a lot of discussion that the United States is in a terrible state, that never have politics been so vicious, and that we are a bitterly divided country Perhaps, but as one who loves history, I know that politics in this country have always been hard-fought, with lots of negative comments and advertisements. For example, Abraham Lincoln today is one of most loved and revered presidents, but at the time, when he was president, he was bitterly criticized in the press, called an ape and a baboon, and even worse.

John F. Kennedy is memorialized in museums and has airports, highways and schools named after him, but at the time of his presidency, he was criticized for being a lightweight, someone who was all glamour and no substance.

These are just two examples. There was the turmoil in the late 1800’s, as the United States shifted from an agrarian to an industrial society. During the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, there were calls for revolution. And the 1960’s were certainly a time of riots in the streets and political assassinations.

So no, I don’t think there’s anything too different about today’s politics.

Regarding the future if George W. Bush had lost the election... again, I’m not sure how much difference would have taken place if John F. Kerry had won election. A President John Kerry would still have a Republican-dominated Congress to deal with, a Congress that would have been hostile to any major changes in policy, so I don’t think there would have been much difference. Of course, this is just my opinion; I’m sure many others would disagree, and that’s the beauty of our political system.

About regular folks: Interview with Poppy Z. Brite

Miss Brite is a writer with an attitude. Her characters are full of personality and life, more and more human and real, even when she deals with the depresive undead, avenging zombies or gay self-destructive popstars.

She claims that is not interested in genres and that her last two novels are much more about the so called real world than the books that gave her some notoriety in the Gothic fandom, but even so is possible for the careful reader to notice some fantastic flavor under the placid streets of New Orleans.

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Octavio Aragão - Your work is very consistent when focuses the so called "men´s world", as seen in Liquor, Prime and even Plastic Jesus. The voice of your male characters are very believable, which is not an easy task since some famous authors like Anne Rice and Marion Zimmer Bradley fails terribly when they try to write down convincing men. What´s your secret to build such a strong cast?

Poppy Z. Brite - I guess it's that I have never felt like a female, or like a female author. I admire some female authors tremendously, but in every sense except the strictly biological, I identify as a male author.


OA - You wrote vampire tales (Lost Souls), some kind of apocryphal Alternate History (Plastic Jesus) and even a Holmesian crime story (The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone). Are you a genre writer or just a pro writer who travel through genres? I mean, how do the things work? You think "now I want to write a Conan Doyle crime story" or you just write it to fill some editorial need?

PZB - The Holmes/Lovecraft story was co-written with David Ferguson for Shadows Over Baker Street, an anthology of fiction that blended the traditions of Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft. It would never have occurred to me to write such a story otherwise (and I should say that "Violet Stone" is more David's story than mine – I think I wrote the first six pages). I'm not very interested in genre; I just write about what interests me most. Right now that's the New Orleans restaurant world, a pair of young chefs, and their large Irish-Italian-Catholic family, all featured in my recent novels Liquor and Prime and my novel-in-progress Soul Kitchen.


Octavio Aragão & Carlos Fernandes Machado - I said that you wrote some "apocryphal" Alternate History. I was refering to Plastic Jesus, since it is a clear reference to Lennon and McCartney if they were lovers, not just working partners. Why not using their real names since it is a fiction work, turning it into a *real* Alternate History piece? Were you afraid of a bad reaction by the surviving Beatles or their legal representatives (lawyers, wives, sons, etc)?

PZB -No, but I wasn't interested in writing fanfiction either. That's a genre I disdain pretty seriously. I'm not entirely happy with the way Plastic Jesus turned out, but in the end, I hope I did manage to make the characters my own rather than pallid versions of Lennon and McCartney.


OA - You were not a fan of James O´Barr´s great comic/gothic creation, The Crow, but even so, you did wrote Lazarus Heart, a great novel (of two?) about the character. I believe this kind of answers my second question, but here we go anyway... :-) Why did you dislike The Crow and how did you find a way to like it that made you capable to write a novel about him?

PZB - First, I didn't write two Crow novels; just one, The Lazarus Heart. Second, I wouldn't say I disliked the comic -- it just didn't particularly interest me. The first movie did, though. I thought the script was well-done (by David J. Schow and John Shirley) and the thing was beautifully filmed. When publisher Harper Collins asked me to write a novel set in the world of The Crow, once I had as certained that I would be able to use my own characters and storyline, it didn't seem that different from writing any other novel – after all, the concept of someone returning from the dead to seek revenge is an old horror concept, not original to these stories.


OA - Seems clear to me that New Orleans is as much a character in your books as each guy named "Nothing" or "Seth". How much inspiratin do you *drain* from your relatives and the places you like? if you really do that - in order to build a character? And which one of your creations is the most like you?

PZB - The most wonderful thing about New Orleans (out of so many) is the voices you hear on the street every day. I love the way people talk, and I love to listen to them. This is my hometown, but I lived away for several years. The longer I live back here, the less interested I am in writing about spooky kids, serial killers, and such, and the more interested I become in writing about the regular folks of New Orleans: the cooks, the bartenders, the working Joes. They are at least as unusual as the self-proclaimed "freaks," and to my mind, anyway, far more interesting these days.

People who know us well say that the two young chefs of Liquor and Prime, Rickey and G-man, are much like me and my husband – me being Rickey, the bad-tempered one who agonizes over everything, and Chris being G-man, the easy-going nice guy.


OA - Thank you very much, Miss Brite. For more about Poppy Z. Brite and her novels, please visit her site, or her blog. She’s also on Twitter.

Transmissores de opinião: Entrevista com Moon & Bá

Depois de colecionar prêmios HQ Mix, essa dupla de quadrinistas transpôs barreiras, fronteiras e preconceitos, publicando histórias de cunho autoral nos EUA e, contrariando os paradigmas que estabelecem que brasileiro na América do Norte é apenas ilustrador de aluguel da Marvel ou da DC Comics, acabaram indicados ao prestigioso prêmio Eisner, o Oscar da indústria dos comics. Fábio Moon e Gabriel Bá, numa entrevista de 2004: os artistas que provaram que todo mundo gosta de pãezinhos e quadrinhos brasileiros.


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Octavio Aragão – Já li comparações do trabalho de vocês com o de Brian Azzarelo e Eduardo Rizzo, na série 100 Balas. Particularmente, discordo. Vejo possíveis afinidades com o David Lapham, criador de Balas Perdidas, mas, além disso, há uma indiscutível "brasilidade" na iconografia de vocês - a começar pelo nome da série 10 Paezinhos.

Há alguma preocupação em manter uma identidade nacional ou isso já está tão impregnado que é automático? Se é assim, a recente notícia da publicação de Meu Coração, Não Sei Por Quê nos EUA, sob o codinome Ursula, será uma injeção de brasilidade iconográfica nas veias do comic americano?



Moon & Bá – Todos artistas têm suas influências e seus gostos particulares. Nós gostamos muito do jogo de luz e sombra e da plasticidade de histórias urbanas, tramas que usam elementos reais um pouco distrorcidos, mesclados com um pouco de fantasia. Por essa razão, artistas que usam bem estes dois elementos sempre chamarão nossa atenção, o que é o caso do Eduardo Risso e do David Lapham, assim como o Will Eisner, Frank Miller e Mike Mignola. Agora, olhando mundo afora, existem semelhanças inexplicáveis nas abordagens de artistas "latinos" nos Quadrinhos, grupo no qual nos encaixamos também, e creio que seja uma forte influência européia em todos nós, tanto os brasileiros quanto os argentinos.

Mas nossa maior influência é o Laerte, pois crescemos lendo suas histórias e a sua relação com São Paulo é muito próxima da nossa, sendo a cidade quase um personagem a mais. Essa bagagem sempre estará presente em nosso trabalho, não importa que história estejamos contando. Antigamente as influências ficavam muito superficiais, limitadas à imagem e à cópia, mas hoje elas são mais profundas e não atrapalham mais nosso trabalho, ao contrário, só ajudam a ressaltar o que ele tem de melhor.


OA – A preocupação de vocês em fazer de seu trabalho um produto misto de conceito e estética transborda as páginas e chega a influenciar suas roupas (digo isso baseado nas indumentárias que vocês usaram numa entrevista para o Jornal da Globo, no ano passado), que fogem a passos largos do visual nerd que campeia entre profissionais da área dos quadrinhos brasileiros. Resumindo: vocês são quadrinistas "fashion". =).

Como é isso? Vocês são mesmo extensão de seu trabalho nesse sentido? O produto também é a figura de vocês? Faz alguma diferença na hora de negociar com alguma editora ou agente?

M&B – Acho que o caminho é inverso, uma vez que a maneira que vivemos e nos vestimos transborda em nosso universo imagético. É um desafio muito mais difícil criar um personagem que é o nosso avesso, se veste de forma que nunca nos vestiríamos e age de forma contrária às nossas crenças. Mas esse tipo de desafio é o que faz o seu trabalho crescer. Contamos histórias muito próximas de nós, da nossa geração, do nosso mundinho, mas nos preocupamos em não limitar as histórias somente a isso.

O conceito e a estética que colocamos nas histórias só ajudam a dar mais tridimensionalidade à trama e aos personagens, mais credibilidade. Dessa maneira, o trabalho sozinho dirá tudo que há pra ser dito mas, além disso - e isso vem principalmente da época do fanzine - precisamos acreditar nas histórias que contamos pra convencer o público a comprá-las, por isso tanto esforço no conceito que é injetado nas HQs.


OA – E o Prêmio Eisner, heim? Autobiographix concorrendo a melhor antologia, pau-a-pau com feras do calibre de Neil Gaiman e Art Spiegelmann. Quem recebeu essa notícia? Gabriel e Fábio, os "profissionais", ou Fábio e Gabriel, os "fãs"? Como foram os primeiros minutos depois de receberem a notícia? A indicação já rendeu frutos ou a publicação de Ursula não tem nada a ver com isso?

M&B – Foi ótimo saber que o livro está concorrendo ao Eisner. Certamente traz alegria a ambos os lados: o do fã e o do profissional. Se já era um grande prêmio ter sido convidado a participar do livro, ser indicado ao Eisner só coroa a experiência. Ainda não rendeu frutos, mas acreditamos que não passará despercebido aos olhos do mercado americano.

A publicação da Ursula foi resultado de um contato feito o ano passado, na Comicon de San Diego, com o pessoal da AIT/Planet Lar.



OA – Vamos àquela pergunta fatal: quem, no Brasil, leva nota dez: os quadrinistas ou os chargistas? É mais fácil fazer charge ou quadrinhos e por que?

M&B – O chargista precisa estar sempre informado e atento ao "hoje" para que sua crítica seja pontual e não genérica. Falta um pouco dessa atenção nos quadrinhistas, dessa pesquisa e aprofundamento.

Por outro lado, fazer HQ dá muito mais trabalho do que charge e precisa de muito mais empenho, uma vez que você fica um ano fazendo a mesma história.

Mas ninguém merece nota dez. Todo mundo poderia se empenhar mais no seu trabalho, seja em quantidade, seja em qualidade, seja no que eles querem dizer ou quem procuram atingir.


OA – E a questão política? Os quadrinhos podem influenciar na vida sócio-política do Brasil ou são "lúdicos demais" para isso?

M&B – Nesse ponto existe o maior engano sobre Quadrinhos no Brasil. É possível contar histórias sérias em Quadrinhos, ao contrário do que se vê em abundância por aí, que é o humor. Se os chargistas, por exemplo, lançassem mão do senso crítico e estético que usam nas charges numa HQ, já seria um avanço. O ilustrador é um dos críticos mais cruéis, e as charges atiram para todos os lados, impiedosas, mas fica somente nesse pequeno universo. Continuar com esse discurso numa HQ dá mais trabalho, então precisa de mais apoio financeiro e faz mais crítica, precisando de mais culhão para ser impresso. O que não dá para continuar é usar quadrinhos apenas para materiais didáticos e manuais de cidadania. Fazer Quadrinhos está muito mais ligado à transmitir opinião do que somente servir como ilustração.