John Klima
Q-1.
Do you think a certain generation gap really exists, or, if not exactly a gap, do you feel some kind of distance between veterans who started their careers before 1960s and the younger generation Y in our genre, at least?
A-1.
I do. I think it's felt more by the younger generation. I think one of the big differences is that many of veteran writers (those whose careers started in the 1950s, 60s, and even 70s) came up through fandom in a different way from the current generation of writers. People aren't necessarily connecting in person at conventions anymore; a lot of people are meeting online first and I think that brings a different mindset to the field. Instead of feeling a true personal connection to the fans who are reading your work, there is this meta-personal connection with all the fans who can contact you online. In some ways, current writers are interacting with more fans early in their writing careers than the more veteran counterparts did. But the interaction is not face-to-face. It's just different ways to connect with people. I know there are people that I've never met that I refer to as friends, whereas my parents (born in the 1940s) would not consider that person a friend since they had never met. So I think there's a "they don't understand me" attitude that newer writers feel towards their more experienced peers, and I don't know that that's a bad thing. I don't necessarily advocate throwing over the old regime, but the business of writing and publishing is significantly different from 30 - 50 years ago.
Q-2.
Do you think the general atmosphere for the genre is less passionate now than, say, thirty years ago? I know there are fewer voters for the Hugo, and even those voters usually vote for their favorite works now, rather than the ones we can boast about as the representative masterpieces of the genre that particular year, as cornerstones of SF history.
A-2.
I think the passion is more diffuse. People are no longer here just for the writing. For better or worse, people are into the movies, the television shows, the comic books, video games, the Internet, cross-cultural media, as well as the books and short stories. Reading is no longer the major pasttime it used to be. A few years back, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken in 2006, showed that one in four adults read no books that year. Everyone I knew was up in arms at how many people weren't reading. To me, it sounded too low. On top of that, more books are being published now than in years past. So, if fewer people are reading, and more books are being published, it becomes more and more difficult for everyone to read the same thing and make judgments for award voting.
Q-3.
Has fandom changed? Or is it writers who have changed? What are the things that concern them most? They used to be the moon, rockets, a-bombs, wars, urbanization, etc.
A-3.
That's a wide variety of different topics in one question, I'll try to break them down. First, I do think that fandom has changed. Fans are no longer brought to the field primarily through reading. Fans come to the field through movies, television, the Internet, and a whole plethora of choices that didn't exist in the proliferation they do today. Second, I also think that the writers have changed. Writers whose careers started in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are people who could remember WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war, and I think war and the post-war life has a polarizing effect on people. Writers starting their career today (or within the past ten years) would have grown up in relative peace. Which ties into, third, the concerns of the older generation, potentially simplified in your question, are things that were always in existence for the newer generation. The moon landing was before a lot of us were born. The Cold War was part of our youth, but it was really tailing off at that point. I can't really speak for other people as for their major concerns.
Q-4.
What do you think about the current state of SF? How do you like recent works by the newer generation of writers? Who is your favorite among them, or writers to watch? Can you recommend them to your personal friends who have never read our genre?
A-4.
A lot of the writers that I like right now are newer writers. Even writers like Jeff VanderMeer or China Mieville are still pretty new to the scene. I also like writers such as Steve Aylett, Kelly Link, Rachel Swirsky, Tim Pratt, Jonathan Barnes, and so on. Editing a magazine affords me the opportunity to see a lot of new writers, which is pretty cool. I don't do a lot of recommending writers to people; working as a librarian and editor a lot of my friends are already reading the people I would recommend to them.
Q-5.
Which of your works would you like to be read by Japanese readers?
A-5.
I don't do much writing myself. I only really have one published piece. Most of my work is done as an editor.
"A Keeper" by Alan DeNiro (issue 6)*
"A Taste for Flowers" by Jay Caselber (issue 9)*
"The Chiaroscurist" by Hal Duncan (issue 9 and Logorrhea)*
"The Euonymist" by Neil Williamson (issue 9 and Logorrhea)*
"The Way He Does It" by Jeffrey Ford (issue 10)*
"How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth" by Rachel Swirsky (issue 13)
"Sitting Round the Stewpot" by Patricia Russo (issue 15/16)*
"Notes on the Dissection of Imaginary Beetle" by Jonathan Wood (issue 15/16)*
Stories marked with * can be accessed online at: http://www.electricvelocipede.com/htm/free_fiction.htm
Q-6.
What is your current work? Your next project?
A-6.
Right now I'm wrapping up the next issue of Electric Velocipede and finalizing a few anthology ideas.
