Bruce Sterling

Q-1.

What country/ethnicity/culture do you identify yourself with?

 

A-1.

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I'm an émigré married to a foreigner. So I don’t “identify” very much. “Identifying” is a lot of hard work, and nobody ever gets paid for it. Also, "identity" isn't necessarily any benefit to the individual, because it's a severe legal condition which is forced on people by banks, police and immigration services. "Being identified" can be very problematic politically. I learned that in Yugoslavia.​

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Q-2.
 

SF/F/Horror/Slipstream genre has always been dominated by Anglo-American language. Is Anglo-American genre fiction is your major influence?
 

A-2.

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Well, yes, I suppose that it must be. To tell the truth, I spend much more time reading science, architecture, design and history than I do reading genre fiction. I suppose my true major influence these days is social media, because I can read it while I travel.

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For instance, I'm answering this interview in a small village in the rural Balkans. There's not a lot of Anglo-American genre fiction here. I tend to get a lot of writing done here, however.

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Q-3.
 

Give us the ratio of your reading of Anglo-American fiction against your own or non-English literature. Currently.
 

A-3.

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I don't read any language other than English and a little Italian.

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Q-4.
 

To our dismay, a lot of so called World things are actually American ones. From Baseball's World series to our genre's Worldcon (almost) or World Fantasy Awards. How can we correct it to its real structure, into the real chaotic world?
 

A-4.

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Americans are only four percent of the world's population. Everybody else contributes to this American dominance by refusing to valorize one another. If Norwegians were sincerely interested in Guatemalan literature, this problem would dissolve overnight, but it can't. It's like going to the Olympics and thinking that everybody's basketball team will somehow be treated with a strict equality. Everybody's got a basketball team, but there are only a few really famous ones. This situation will not be "corrected." You can't correct the world so that the basketball team from Fiji becomes as famous as all the others. The world's basketball fans will defeat you.

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Q-5.

Yet, it's true that we're culturally much influenced by American pop culture. Haruki Murakami cannot write like he does now without his American literature and Jazz influence. Is it the same for your case? Can you imagine you write without that influence at all?
 

A-5.

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Well, yes, I can imagine that. For instance, I'm writing a story right now that's a historical fantasy set in Italy in the 1460s. "America" doesn't even exist in this story. America hasn't been "discovered" yet.

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Of course, this Italian story's written in American English and not fifteenth-century Piedmontese dialect. So, to that extent, no, the American influence cannot be escaped. It's like trying to escape Greek philosophy or Roman law.

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Q-6.
 

But these days a lot of young writers and editors work in English language and for American market. Do you hold any grudge against working like this? Or is it a natural reaction to that influence?
 

A-6.

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I consider this domination of English to be rather pernicious. It's not good; globalized English is destabilizing in serious ways, like having a single global banking system.

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On the other hand, having lived in Europe, I see all kinds of language troubles. The Italian language is exterminating dozens of Italian-like dialects. There are many submerged nationalities, the Basques, the Kurds, the Welsh and so forth, where language politics are very keenly felt.

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However, when Basques, Kurds and Welsh compare their language problems, they speak English to each other. There isn't anybody alive who speaks Basque, Kurdish and Welsh. Estonian and Maltese are official languages of the European Union. However, no one speaks Estonian and also Maltese. One could pretend great indignation and resentment at this unfair situation, but why? Nobody has a grudge large enough to motivate them to become an Estonian-Maltese translator. When practical difficulties are insurmountable, whining about them is self-indulgence.

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Q-7.
 

If and when you have to write in English, do you do that to English-American readers, or to the global readers?
 

A-7.
 

I like to think there might be such a thing as a "global reader." But if there were, then there would be some distinct genre of "global novels," and people would talk about a "Great Global Novel" in the way they might talk about a "Great Japanese Novel."

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There are no works of literature deliberately written by people who are global for readers who are global. Global consciousness isn't large enough or strong enough to support a global post-national literature. It's something to aspire to, though: I'd be really interested in reading such a work. In theory, one ought to be able to write a very interesting regional novel about the planet Earth.

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Q-8.

Is there any works or writers from your local scene you can sincerely recommend to the world readers? And why do you recommend them? Is it because they have no equivalent works or writers in Anglo-American scene? Or is it because they perfectly fit there and have many things in common that we should share? Which do you think is important, originality, or affinity?
 

A-8.
 

Well, I rather like Italian science fiction, "fantascienza," but I like it specifically because it's NOT for "world readers." If you recommend something to world readers, then people think it has to have the golden, universal, timeless qualities of, say, Dante or Cervantes. This gets in the way of creative people who want to write, say, a weird pop thriller about a future Milan.

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It's a drag to write about Milan when you feel some obligation to explain everything to people in London or Shanghai. This leaches all the spontaneity out of the effort.

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I'm guessing that Licia Troisi would probably sell a lot of books worldwide, if she had better agents, publishers and translators. However, Licia basically writes elf fantasy for women readers. If a publisher pointed a gun at me and said "which Italian genre writer would be big globally?" it would probably be Licia. But global publishers already have plenty of elf fantasy on their shelves. I guess I'd be somewhat happier if Licia was selling more of it. However, I never tell my Italian friends to seek out and read any American elf fantasy, so this attitude on my part would surely seem a little odd

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And why do you recommend them? Is it because they have no equivalent works or writers in Anglo-American scene?

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People always think this lack of equivalence is great: "Oh, he's written this unique book about life in the Orkney Islands, surely no one else on earth could have written such a book." But is it really a good idea to valorize that? I recognize that it's boring to imitate American commercial genre product, but it's also boring to make up some entirely private language, like writing in Volapuk or Esperanto.

 

I find myself suspicious of that kind of forced exoticism. I was born in Texas, but I don't want to write intensely local work about cowboy hats and six-gun revolvers. If someone told me, 'your work has no equivalent in Japan,' I'd be surprised. Of course my work has equivalents in Japan: more than I can count.

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Or is it because they perfectly fit there and have many things in common that we should share? Which do you think is important, originality, or affinity?

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That's an interesting question, but it's just crushed by the existence of massive properties like "Harry Potter." Do you think she gets up in the morning worrying that her work is sufficiently 'original'? She sells all over the world and makes more money than the Queen of England. She was writing stories about a made-up magic kid school. They wear uniforms and have magic wands. Harry Potter was a smash hit the size of Pokemon, which is all about kids who have magic animals in round jars.

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There must be a million Miyazaki fans in Japan who don't know that Howl's Moving Castle is a British fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones. Once I was in a writers' workshop with Diana. I helped Diana fix a broken toilet. Diana and I had a true affinity over that practical modern problem. It brought us together because it was an issue that mattered to everyone.

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Q-9.
 

Have you ever read and liked any Japanese works, in and out of our genre? What aspect of it attracted you?
 

A-9.
 

Well, I know it's predictable to say this now, but I happen to be quite the Haruki Murakami fan. I wrote a review of one of his first books in English for the Washington Post. His American publishers used that as a blurb for several years.

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Once I flew to Hawaii and I interviewed Murakami for an American magazine. I was impressed that Murakami spoke about things like local Hawaiian food, and jogging, and Pacific whales he had seen――just, the lively aspects of his own felt experience. He was communicating the facts of his existence to me――he wasn't wandering around in some American state, being all painfully and radically Japanese. As it happens, Hawaii is the most Japanese of all fifty American states, but this didn't matter much to Murakami, he was just living there.

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After the interview, Murakami and his wife and I went out to eat at a local restaurant, and got really drunk. Not so drunk that we fell over, or anything, but it was just an engaging and exhilarating evening――pretty much the opposite of all this tedious, stuffy and dignified Japanese exoticism where us foreigners are supposed to pretend to be all interested in the Noh drama and the code of bushido. Things that frankly bore the Japanese themselves. There was nothing boring about that meal.

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I happen to be quite the fan of Japanese culture. However, it’s never been in that safe-for-export way. Certainly I can see the appeal of the Japanese cultural exports that have been the big worldwide hits, the animated movies, the monster films, the cars, the consumer electronics, the comic books, the console games, there are plenty of such things. In terms of cultural exports Japan ranks with any other G-7 major economy.

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It's hard to put a finger on it, but I think what most impresses me about Japan is how abstracted Japanese creative artists are from mainstream Japanese society. They make a deliberate break from the everyday, they step outside a boundary.

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Most artists in any nation are rather weird, or they wouldn't be career artists. However, career Japanese artists seem to be weird in nine or ten different ways. Japanese creatives are like sea urchins who grow spines in all directions. American artists, even the bravest and most extreme visionaries, often seem like they're patiently waiting to be embraced by the American mainstream and honored by being put on an American postage stamp. This American attitude can be stifling to Americans. American women supposedly have all kinds of legal and cultural advantages over Japanese women, but I can't think of any American woman artist who is as strange and provocative as Yayoi Kusama or Yoko Ono. These two women artists may be more famous in America than they are in Japan, but that is rather making my point.

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Q-10.
 

Could you please explain what you do to promote foreign literature to your readers or your own works to foreign readers?
 

A-10.

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Well, this would mostly be Internet activity, through the weblog and through social media, because that has the fewest barriers to entry and participation. I also travel a lot, and I'm not shy about meeting creative people. When I'm in, say, Brazil or Mexico, I try to talk to my colleagues there. I don't ask them to be like me: I just ask them, what matters here? What are the issues on the ground here?

 

In terms of promoting my own work to foreign readers, well, it may help that I never treat my readers as "foreign." The publishers are "foreign" and the legal rights are "foreign." I'm indifferent if my readers hold some passport other than my own passport. I don't write for foreigners. I write for readers.