Last week I posted about classic SF writers in SPACE SHIPS! RAY GUNS! MARTIAN OCTOPODS!: INTERVIEWS WITH SCIENCE FICTION LEGENDS Edited by Richard Wolinsky (you can read my review here). This week, I’m posting about a more current group of Science Fiction writers like John Crowley, Samuel R. Delany, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, Nano Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly (no relation), John Kissel, Joe R. Lansdale, Jonathan Lethem, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Norman Spinrad, and John Shirley.
The interviews with all these writers spark plenty of controversy and conversation. I was most interested in the revealing aspects of how many of these writers got started in their profession and what “propelled them on their artistic journeys.”
The Outspoken and the Incendiary also is a tribute to Terry Bisson, who died on January 10, 2024 (age 81 years) in Berkeley, CA. Bisson’s years of interviews produced a living chronicle of where SF was headed. If you’re a Science Fiction fan, you’ll find The Outspoken and the Incendiary both enlightening and entertaining. I learned a lot from this book! GRADE: A
Table of Contents
Foreword: Nisi Shawl — xi
Introduction: Jonathan Lethem — 1
Eleanor Arnason “At the Edge of the Future” — 3
Terry Bisson (interviewed by T. B. Calhoun) “Fried Green Tomatoes” — 23
Michael Blumlein “A Babe in the Woods” — 35
John Crowley “I Did Crash a Few Parties” — 45
Samuel R. Delany “Discourse in an Older Sense” — 57
Cory Doctorow “Look For the Lake” — 67
Meg Elison “Sprawling into the Unknown” –77
Karen Joy Fowler “More Exuberant Than is Strictly Tasteful” — 85
Eileen Gunn “I Did, and I Didn’t, and I Won’t” — 95
Elizabeth Hand “Flying Squirrels in the Rafters” — 103
Cara Hoffman “My Favorite Amphibian” — 117
Nalo Hopkinson “Correcting the Balance” — 127
James Patrick Kelly “Encounter with a Gadget Guy” — 149
John Kessel “I Planned to Be an Astronomer” — 161
Paul Krassner “Reflections of A Realist” — 171
Joe R. Lansdale “That’s How You Clean a Squirrel” — 183
Ursula K. Le Guin “A Lovely Art” — 193
Jonathan Lethem “Rooms Full of Old Books Are Immortal Enough for Me” — 201
Ken Macleod “Working the Wet End” — 211
Nick Mamatas “Put Your Twist in the Middle” — 221
Michael Moorcock “Get the Music Right” — 229
Paul Park “Punctuality, Basic Hygiene, Gun Safety” — 251
Gary Phillips “But I’m Gonna Put A Cat On You” — 259
Marge Piercy “Living Off the Grid” — 271
Rachel Pollack “Radical, Sacred, Hopefully Magical” — 281
Kim Stanley Robinson “A Real Joy to Be Had” — 289
Rudy Rucker “Load On the Miracles and Keep a Straight Face” — 311
Carter Scholz “Gear. Food. Rocks.” — 327
Nisi Shawl “The Fly in the Sugar Bowl” — 335
John Shirley “Pro Is for Professional” — 345
Vandana Singh “A Source of Immense Richness” — 359
Norman Spinrad “No Regrets, No Retreat, No Surrender” — 367
Afterword: Nalo Hopkinson — 375
Elegy: Rudy Rucker — 379
Elegy: Peter Coyote — 383
About the Authors — 387
An elegy by Peter Coyote? Certainly not a connection I was expecting.
Deb, there are a lot of unusual features to THE OUTSPOKEN AND THE INCENDIARY. It’s a very different book.
Dang it, George! You had to make me buy it, didn’t you?
Jerry, George the Tempter strikes again! Jerry, you will love THE OUTSPOKEN AND THE INCENDIARY!
I wasn’t aware Joe Lansdale wrote SF. I remember Joe going to a room party at a Bouchercon with his friend (and ours) Bill Crider.
He was very entertaining
Maggie, Joe R. Lansdale has written SF, fantasy, and some very good crime fiction. He and Bill Crider were close friends.
Does my possibly distant cousin go by Maggie as well as Mary? (I don’t know, though I have seen your byline before, Mary Mason…)
He’s written a bit of sf, but he’s here in large part, like Mamatas at his level, more for being fantasy and horror writer (which are also Speculative Fiction or Fantastica, etc. by most people’s reckoningj) who are more pushing certain enevlopes. Thanks for the review on several counts, George, not least on this one has gotten away from me till now.
Todd, I m from Kansas. My ancestor who stowed away coming from Ireland during the potato famine changed his name from Beatty to Mason. Does that fit your family history? I’ve lost 3 cousins in the last year, so could use another!!!
I suspect our Masons are more raffish, and most seem to have sprung from New Hampshire Masons who arrived in that colony with the name already distributed among them…at one point I became vaguely aware of at least 130 first cousins between the Rocchi and Mason families (among whom I’ve met perhaps 40-70 over the decades) and my born-Thorpe grandmother remarrying a Wheeler (Ivan being the only grandfather, even as a step-gramps, to survive long enough for me to meet him–coal mining and granite quarrying put paid to both my bio-grandfathers at early ages)…Earl Mason left a family behind in NH when he absconded to Vermont with my young grandmother, some time in the early/mid ’30s, which added some of my oldest cousins to the mix, including at least one killed during service in the Korean War, who, before that service, had been a professional clown.
This covers a pretty good span of years. I remember seeing those Ace, Berkley, and Avon editions of Delany, LeGuin, Moorcock, and Spinrad on the spinner racks in the ’60s. Rucker, Robinson, and Shirley have been around at least since the ’80s. Joe Lansdale has worked the steam punk territory but even with that in mind, he seems an odd outlier here.
Fred, the Joe R. Lansdale interview in THE OUTSPOKEN AND THE INCENDIARY explains some of what caused him to write SF. I was enjoyed the Michael Moorcock and Kim Stanley Robinson interviews where I learned a lot–like why Moorcock moved to Texas!
George, you’ll note that book’s packaging doesn’t restrict itself anywhere to “science fiction”…
Todd, true. But the vast majority of the interviews in THE OUTSPOKEN AND THE INCENDIARY involve Science Fiction writers with some other writers mixed in.
Paul Krassner would be more an “outlier” here, but even he, like Coyote, is drawn to this kind of work, as the Jefferson vehicles might’ve made clear…
Hah! Who’s just awoken on a mildly sick day? I will blame the catarrh for the confusion of Paul Krassner (he of THE REALIST magazines, et al.) with Paul Kantner (of various fantastica-flavored rock songs of similar vintage). The point stands for Krassner, as well…and I’d somehow missed that he, too, has died. It’s not getting less common…as promised and threatened it might in some skiffy…
Todd, Paul Krassner was creator of THE REALIST.
He certainly was. I was a subscriber to his revived newsletter format version in the ’80s.
These are all from a series of small paperbacks published by PM Press (the publisher of this collection) called “Outspoken Authors.” They would have a few short stories, an essay or two, and the interview. I thought they might stop after Terry Bisson’s death, but they appear to be continuing. They’re nice little books.
Jeff, I’m going to look into PM Press. THE OUTSPOKEN AND THE INCENDIARY is a terrific book!