Subject: Interview with Nicola Griffith

From: [email-masked] (Ruud van de Kruisweg)
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 02:38:00 +0100

With the recent hardcover publication of her second novel 'Slow River', I
thought this was an opportune moment to post an interview I did with Nicola
Griffith. This interview was first published in the Dutch SF magazine
"Holland SF". If you'd like to find out more about "Holland SF", send an
email to [email-masked].

You also might want to check out the Nicola Griffith home page:
http://www.america.net/~daves/ng/

One question though: I've done a couple of interviews with David Brin, Terry
Pratchett and Tad Williams in the past. I've posted these on
rec.arts.sf.written in the past year, but like all newsgroup postings it is
deleted in a matter of days and lost for posterity (until the next repost.) I
would like to find a place where these interviews can be archived permanently
for those interested. I've already got two Tad Williams homepages where the
Williams interview can be found, are there any more of a more general nature,
FTP sites with large Science Fiction and Fantasy archives?

Ruud van de Kruisweg

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                        INTERVIEW WITH NICOLA GRIFFITH

                original publication: HOLLAND SF, October 1994
            by Ruud van de Kruisweg ([email-masked])

 Nicola Griffith is a British born SF writer now living in the US. Her
 debut novel AMMONITE created quite a stir when it was first published as a
 Del Rey Discovery in 1993. It won the Lambda Award and James Tiptree Jr.
 Award, was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British
 Science Fiction Award and barely missed winning the Locus Award for the
 best new SF writer. Definately a writer to watch and enough grounds for an
 email interview.

 HSF:   First, can you tell us something about yourself?

 NG:    I was born in 1960, in Leeds, England, the second youngest of five
        girls. Went to an all-girl catholic convent school and realized at a
        tender age (well below the age of consent) that I was a dyke. Single
        sex education worked out very well for me.

        I went to Clarion in 1988 (the first UK citizen to attend, I think)
        where I met Kelley Eskridge - also an SF writer. We have lived
        together in Atlanta, Georgia, for five years. Some time in the next
        year or two we plan to move to the Pacific Northewest (Portland,
        Seattle, Bellingham) because the cooler climate will be much better
        for my health. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in March
        1993. Being ill pisses me off because it means I can't (a) work as
        hard or as often as I would like, and (b) I can no longer teach
        women's self defence and martial arts, which is something I have
        enjoyed doing for the last ten years.

        In the last ten or fifteen years I have, at various points, also
        been a singer/songwriter, fronting the all-dyke band, Janes Plane;
        an alcohol and drugs counsellor and case worker (awful job, hard,
        depressing, badly paid); a hotline counsellor; a bouncer at a club;
        a tree technician and fence builder; a waitress; labourer at an
        archaeological dig; and I've occasionally earned money
        not-quite-legally...of which I'm not terribly proud of but which
        seemed necessary at the time. I've taught writing courses in the
        UK, and hope--now that I have my immigrant visa--to get a
        Writer-in-Residence post at a university here in the US.

        Two of the biggest things in my life have occurred in the last
        year: Kelley and I got married, and I got approval from the US
        State Department to live and work in this country on the basis of
        my importance as a writer of lesbian/science fiction. (Apparently I
        made legal history, the first out dyke to get something called a
        "national interest waiver" and admittance on the basis of being an
        "alien of exceptional ability.") The marriage has changed my life
        profoundly, in ways that would take too long to describe here.
        Let's just say I'm very happy, and quite lucky.

 HSF:   What were the books and authors that shaped your writing career?

 NG:    The books that influenced how I read, and what I _want_ from books
        when I read, were by those to whom I tend to refer as the English
        Landscape Writers: Mary Stewart, Mary Renault, Henry Treece,
        Rosemary Sutcliffe et al. They were primarily historical novelists,
        but their work contained a definite element of historical
        myth-as-reality. It gave me a frisson, a fizz in my bones, that
        mainstream fiction did (and can) not. From those books I went on to
        read history books -- Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman
        Empire', for example -- and books on gods and goddesses, the celts
        and amazons and myths. I hated children's books. And then I
        discovered SF and fantasy: Frank Herbert's 'Dune' (oh, I loved that
        book at age thirteen!); Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' (ditto, at
        age 11-- still do, actually); Asimov's 'Foundation', and E.E. 'Doc'
        Smith's 'Lensman' series. They were the books which helped form my
        idea of SF: biology, sociology, and world saving/dooming
        conspiracies and gadgets.

        Of course, once I hit fifteen, I began to dislike SF: there were no
        women in it. I gave it up, and just read lesbian fiction for a
        while. Then at about age nineteen, I discovered Ursula Le Guin. And
        Joanna Russ. And Vonda McIntyre, and Octavia Butler, and Kate
        Wilhelm, and Suzy McKee Charnas, and Elizabeth Lynn. It felt like
        coming home. "Yes," I thought, "this is what it's all about."
        Biology, sociology, gadgets _and_ women. Fabulous. From there, I
        gradually eased back into the flow of SF, and now I enjoy the work
        of all the above, plus John Kessel, Robert Silverberg, Michael
        Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Judith Moffett and, literally, dozens of
        others. And then I began to realize that lots of feminist
        mainstream writers -- Margaret Atwood, Marge Piercy, Doris
        Lessing -- were actually writing science fiction. What was going on?

        The way I see it, reality is currently too big and too varied for
        any piece of "realistic fiction" to characterize it. So people are
        turning again to big themes, mythic sweeps...extra-reality, if you
        like...which leads to SF.

 HSF:   Nice to see that you count Elizabeth Lynn as one of your
        inspirations. She wrote a couple of very good novels with likeable
        gay/lesbian characters in the early eighties. I read that she gave up
        writing for her job as an akido instructor. I wonder if she was the
        first openly lesbian SF writer? ]

 NG:    I don't know. How does one define 'openly lesbian' in terms of the
        author? There are several writers out there who are dykes, and often
        include lesbians and gay men in the their work, and at conventions and
        so forth they hang out with their partners...but their bios on the
        backs of books don't mention their partners, and their dedications are
        coy. Are they out? I don't know. Should they be? Again, I don't know.
        But I found out Lynn was a dyke through eating breakfast with a woman
        who went to school with one of Lynn's ex-girlfriends. Nothing on her
        books indicated unequivocally that she was a dyke. Gael Baudino was
        the first SF writer I read whose bio said 'Ms. Baudino lives with her
        lover, so-and-so (I forget her name now) in such and such a city.'
        It's something I've always been absolutely adamant about to my
        publishers: "I want it out there, up front, in big letters: Nicola is
        a dyke and she lives with her partner in Atlanta." Some people want to
        know: "But why do you want to tell everyone you're a dyke? Why does it
        matter?" They think it's rather vulgar of me to talk about my private
        life. For me it's quite simple: if the reader doesn't know I'm a dyke,
        s/he'll assume I'm straight; _not_ saying I'm a dyke, therefore, would
        be lying by omission. Besides, I'm still at that proud,
        stand-on-top-of-the-empire-state-building and-yell-it-to-the-world
        stage of marriage to Kelley. She's a gorgeous, brilliant woman, and
        I'm thrilled that she loves me. It makes me feel smug and pleased with
        myself. (I suspect it always will.)

 HSF:   Was the choice to write SF an obvious one? I sometimes hear that
        fans and/or writers are drawn to SF/fantasy because it gives them
        room to be themselves and being 'different' is not frowned upon.
        How true was this for you?

 NG:    What I write has nothing to do with how other people think, or
        feel, or act. Those who don't like the fact that I'm a dyke had
        just better keep that fact to themselves, or be prepared to face my
        displeasure. So far, no one in SF has ever given me any indication
        that they believe being a dyke is anything remarkable. This is
        partly because that's the response I demand, and partly because
        those involved in SF have a great deal invested in appearing to be
        cool, radical, and into Changing Times. Being reactionary and
        homophobic would really destroy that illusion. Besides, in the last
        few years, I have come to the conclusion that I don't care what
        other people _feel_ about me being a dyke, I don't care what they
        _think_, I only care about how they _behave_.

        I write SF because that's what gives me a buzz; that's the way my
        mind works. Mainstream work often seems to have something missing.
        When I read I want not only the writer's analysis of how their
        world has affected them (whether that's the present or the future,
        here or somewhere else, gay or straight), but also of how they can
        then affect the world. I like a writer who can expose systems:
        political, biological, social and cultural. Sometimes mainstream is
        just a little too self-involved and personal, a little too myopic.

 HSF:   'Ammonite' has won two SF prizes: the Lambda award for best lesbian
        SF novel in 1993 and this year the James Tiptree Award. What's your
        feeling about an SF award especially for homosexual SF/fantasy
        novels? Is there a need for such a prize? Shouldn't books be judged
        on quality and not on the sexual preferences of the protagonists?

 NG:    Let me answer that with another questions: do you think there's a
        need for a literary award (for example, the Hugo, or Nebula, or
        Campbell) especially for SF novels? There are already plenty of
        literary awards such as the Booker Prize, the Nobel, the Pulitzer.
        Shouldn't all books be judged on quality, and not the reality
        and/or possibility of their setting? I believe that prizes based on
        sexual orientation are at least as valid as those based upon genre.
        I have to say I _love_ winning prizes. It's a great encouragement
        (writing can be a lonely business) for me, and--I imagine--a useful
        tool for the reader in search of good material.

 HSF:   Was it difficult to get the book accepted? I would think that
        Ballantine/Del Rey wasn't the first choice for a novel like
        'Ammonite'.

 NG:    'Ammonite' was not difficult to get accepted. As a matter of fact,
        I had offers from several American publishers (for example, St.
        Martin's, and Avon) before I accepted the one from Ballantine/Del
        Rey. I had three reasons. One, Del Rey were willing to let me keep
        the book whole and uncut (it's a longish book for writer that no
        one in the States had ever heard of before). Two, they offered
        about twice as much money as the other publishers. Three, the
        distribution network of Random House (Ballantine's parent company)
        is the best in the country: if I went with Ballantine, my book
        would appear in every airport, every chain, every supermarket and
        every speciality bookshop in the US and Canada. And it did. The
        issue of lesbianism and feminism never came up. However,
        sales-wise, I do think the book had to struggle against the
        perception that it would be some kind of awful Womyn's Utopia
        peopled by seven feet tall, wise, kind, vegetarian amazons who
        burned men in effigy at the full moon. And there were probably many
        who wished it was one of those gals- as-one-of-the-boys books,
        where the woman drinks anything that pours, pilots anything that
        flies and fucks everything that moves. Instead, it's a book about
        people, every variety of people--smart and stupid, kind and venal,
        indifferent and vicious, etc.--who all happen to be women. This
        seems to upset some readers, who persist in seeing a book about
        women as a man- hating or man-fearing novel, when--if the book is
        defined in terms of men at all, which I find irritating--it is more
        accurately a man-less novel.

 HSF:   How do you feel about the constant comparisons between 'Ammonite'
        and 'The Left Hand of Darkness'?

 NG:    Mixed: pleased, that my work is considered to be in the same class
        as Le Guin's; irritated, because I want my work to be sui generis.
        'Darkness' is a marvellous piece of work. I borrowed from it quite
        consciously the idea of Marghe as a lone ambassador. (There again,
        that's an idea that has been a great deal--for example, Gentle's
        'Golden Witchbreed.') The snow and ice stuff seems to be a motif
        quite common to feminist work: Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' Russ,
        Lessing, Slonczewski, Bryant, Charnas, Piercy etc all use the
        trial-by-ice, Demeter myth in some form or another. [See 'A New
        Species: Gender and Science in Science Fiction' by Robin Roberts
        for more on this.] But I don't mind the comparisons, in the end,
        because there is a link between the two books: both were seen as
        breaking ground when they were published. Both were seen to be both
        less and more radical than they actually are. The radical subtext
        of 'Darkness' is simple: people are people, despite biological sex.
        The radical subtext of 'Ammonite' is equally simple: women are
        people, despite biological sex and socially constructed gender
        roles. Both of those statements are manifestly true. Both are
        occasionally forgotten. Both need repeating, over and over.

 HSF:   David Brin complained in an interview with HSF that he felt that was
        excluded for the James Tiptree Award because of political reasons:
        "As I say in my afterword, it is a topic in which men are often
        denied to have the same wisdom or insight as female authors.
        Fortunately, only a few silly people have said that about Glory
        Season... (although those few did make certain the book was not
        considered for the James Tiptree Award (for gender bending SF)."

 NG:    I was delighted when the book won the Tiptree Award. The award _is_
        political, in the sense that _all_ decisions based upon subjective
        criteria are political (remember the truism, 'The personal is
        political?'), and that the declared and specific aim of the award
        is for it to go the novel or short work which best examines and
        _expands_ gender roles in science fiction. I'm a little unsure
        about what you intended with the quotes from David Brin. While
        haven't read his 'Glory Season', I am quite certain that what
        mattered was not whether or not the author was male or female, but
        whether the work itself did anything to stretch the current
        thinking on gender roles, attitudes and expectations. If the book
        had been good enough, it would have been considered.

 HSF:   He also shares your view about matriarchal societies.

 NG:    I think the current thinking that patriarchal societies are
        inherently violent, and matriarchies nurturing, is erroneous and
        based entirely on wishful thinking. There is evidence that early
        matriarchies were astonishly brutal and bloody. (Where do you
        suppose the later patriarchal cultures got the example?) Brin is
        right, though, when he says not all matriarchies need be pastoral.
        Most women love technology: it saves our lives on a daily basis; it
        makes for speedy travel; it produces tampax, knives that stay
        eternally sharp, and agricultural machinery that takes the sweat
        out of growing potatoes and milking cows. It makes typing easier,
        hot movies possible, and twelve gauge shotguns affordable to all.
        Who doesn't like technology, really? There's nothing wrong with
        science and machines, but the Industrial Revolution changed us and
        our culture. It's time our values changed to match.

        'Ammonite' was set on a non-technological world. Realistically,
        when you put several hundred people on a raw planet with
        practically zero metals and then kill half of them off, four
        hundred years later the people are lucky to be alive, never mind
        living in Futuropolis. The women in my novel are very sophisticated
        in terms of art, and agriculture and so on; they are ingenious with
        what implements it's possible to produce with wood and ceramic.
        They are smart (well, some are; in every culture you get a few
        greedy and/or stupid people) and savvy (again, mostly), just not
        over-endowed with hydro-electric generators or computer chips.

 HSF:   It's a pity that you haven't read Brin's 'Glory Season'. One of the
        things that surprised me about that novel was that Brin completely
        ignored sexuality between women, even though the world in that book
        was almost completely populated by women. The one thing that
        surprised me about your book was that men didn't play a part. Marghe
        for instance doesn't seem to have a sexual history, either lesbian
        or heterosexual, before she arrives on Jeep. This prevents a couple
        of interesting conflicts from happening. If she'd have considered
        herself heterosexual, she'd be in an emotional turmoil after
        falling in love with another woman; on the other hand, if she'd had
        lesbian love affairs, she might have considered her coming to Jeep
        a sort of home coming.

 NG:    I'm not really surprised that Brin ignores sexuality between women
        in 'Glory Season.' The first time I noticed a women-only world
        written by a man was Lyrane, in E.E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman series:
        women who were strong, beautiful, intelligent and so on...but they
        didn't understand the concepts of love, sex, art; their social
        structure was static, hierarchical and insectlike; they had no
        great inventors or innovators. In other words, they were not fully
        human. This seems to be the assumption of many, many male writers:
        women, on their own, are not people; they only assume human
        attributes in the presence of men. This implication is sometimes
        subtle, sometimes blatant, but is disturbingly frequent. Brin's
        lack of acknowledgment of women as sexual beings in and of
        themselves is just one more manifestation of the assumption that
        women aren't really human. So I'm not surprised any more, but
        almost always disappointed. One of the reasons I didn't mention
        Marghe's sexual history before landing on Jeep was that it was not
        necessary to the story (how much do we know about Genly Ai before
        he goes to Winter? how much about Christie before she turns up as
        envoy in 'Witchbreed'?). I just assumed she was a dyke, and went on
        from there. There was one review of the book where the reviewer
        decided that Marghe actually came out on the planet: he read the
        whole book in terms of her angst at 'coming to terms' with being a
        lesbian. Marghe is a SEC representative and anthropologist; it's
        how she sees herself, what she thinks about. The fact that she's a
        dyke matters--to her--about as much as her eye colour, or her
        favourite breakfast food. The point of the book is that gender, and
        biological sex, and sexual orientation don't _matter_, not really.
        What matters is how generous you are, or how willing to learn; how
        adaptable you can be, or how steadfast.

 HSF:   You've completed your second novel. When will it be published? How
        does it compare to 'Ammonite' and what can you tell us about it?

 NG:    My next novel is an entirely different kettle of fish. 'Slow River' is
        set in a near-future urbanscape. It begins with a woman who is
        kidnapped, then dumped, nameless and naked and hurt, in the middle of
        strange city, in a strange country, in the dead of night. It is a
        novel about the essential nature of self. If you had no name, no job,
        no money, no clothes, no friends or family or support system, and
        couldn't go to the police because you believed you had just killed one
        of your kidnappers, what would you do and how far would you step
        outside your moral code to stay alive? And what would happen on the
        morning when you woke up and could not longer face the person you had
        become?

        The book is set in the future, and deals peripherally with
        information technology, but 'Slow River' is _not_ a cyberpunk novel
        in the nihilistic mode. It is realistic, yes, in its depiction of
        urban lowlife, but full of the beauty and hope (and absurdity) of
        everyday life: sunshine and the way it changes the texture of
        stone-clad buildings; the taste of a hot, fragrant cup of tea; the
        eyes of a squirrel balanced on a power line....

        The protagonist is a woman called Frances Lorien van de Oest,
        Lore for short, the youngest of three siblings born to Katerine and
        Oster van de Oest, the owners and officers of the very rich, and
        very powerful -- but still family owned and controlled -- van
        de Oest corporation. The VDO Corp made its money from patenting
        genetically engineered bacteria and fungi and the nutrients they
        need to live on, which are used in various bioremediation
        processes. Primitive bioremediation is already with us (remember
        the oil-gobbling microbes that helped clear up after the
        Exxon-Valdez spill in Prince William Sound?), but in my near future
        I have imagined solar aquatics--the transformation of sewage into
        clean drinking water, edible fish and recycled heavy metals without
        the addition of harsh chemicals; and the return of the Kirghizi
        desert from its dioxin-riddled failed-cotton monoculture wasteland
        to its steppe state using six hundred-foot high heliostats,
        artificial waterfalls, and glass pipelines hundreds of miles long.
        In _Slow River_ there are descriptions of and opinions on:
        personality, a kidnapping, hot but science- fictional sex,
        nanotechnology, lesbian prostitution, growing up, dangerous and
        potent aphrodisiacs, illegal media piggyback scams, pornography,
        fashion, the responsibilities of the rich to the poor, fame, vice,
        survival and, oh, dozens of other things.

        Stylistically, it's quite different from 'Ammonite.' There are no
        lyrical descriptions, no world-threatening Bad Guys. Instead of the
        two alternating viewpoints of Marghe and Danner, 'Slow River' has
        three viewpoints, in different tenses...but all the viewpoints are
        Lore's, from different stages in her life. The tricky part was to
        make the book read smoothly, so the reader doesn't realize how
        technically difficult everything is. The reader just gets a good
        story, with some cool and exotic happenings, and thought-provoking
        questions. At least that's the plan.

        It will be appearing as a Ballantine/Del Rey hardcover here in the US
        in August 1995 (which means it will hitting the shelves in mid-July).
        Ballantine are also re-releasing 'Ammonite' with a new, more
        appropriate cover. In the UK, 'Slow River' will be a December
        paperback from HarperCollins. No translation rights sold as yet.

        As for other work, I have a novella, 'Yaguara,' coming out in the
        UK in Ellen Datlow's 'Little Deaths' erotic horror anthology
        (Orion, Sept. 1994). Kelley also has a story in that one. It will
        also be appearing in ASIMOV'S magazine early next year. I'm writing
        a couple of short stories to complete a collection, tentatively
        called 'Women and Other Aliens.' I have two novels percolating at
        the moment: one is a non-sf thriller/suspense thing, the other is,
        well, hard to describe: clairvoyant singing parrots in the subways
        of New York; black gay male protagonist escaping from a religious
        cult in the Caribbean.... Fantasy, perhaps. And there's a Magnum
        Opus I want to start at some point: a maybe-fantasy, definitely
        historical thing about a ruthless, driven abbess in eight-century
        Britain. And...but the writing is endless.

 HSF:   I was curious where the name of the protagonist of your forthcoming
        book, Frances Lorien van de Oest, came from.

 NG:    The protagonist of 'Slow River' is called Frances Lorien van de
        Oest because ----- (insert serious-sounding explanation of
        your choice). I'm very bad at names. I often have the idea of the
        personality of the protagonist a long time before their name, so I
        assign as a place-holder anything that pops into my head with the
        intention of sorting it all out later. The only problem is, by the
        time 'later' comes around, the name has stuck; the character has
        grown into it and refuses to give it up. Look at 'Ammonite.' Can
        you imagine anyone really calling their daughter Hannah Danner? Not
        unless they were very cruel. I just couldn't change it once the
        book was done.

 HSF:   SF has been a genre dominated by male writers for a verly long
        time. With the seventies came new writers like James Tiptree Jr.,
        Joanna Russ and many others who made a great impact, but percentage
        wise the men were still the dominant force. The nineties seem to be
        a turning point. Browsing through the best new writer list in the
        Locus polls, I find that almost all of them are women. Coincidence
        or not?

 NG:    It's been my experience that although SF dreams about being the
        social and literary cutting edge is, in fact, neither (which isn't
        to say it shouldn't keep trying). The fact that women now form a
        substantial percentage of publisher writers is simply a follow-on
        from (a) the political changes of the last thirty years, and (b)
        the situation as it has already existed in 'mainstream' literature
        for the last fifteen or twenty. Just as the New Wave of the sixties
        purported to be radical and experimental, it was only deemed so in
        the SF milieu--mainstream writers had already been playing those
        fiction games for fifty years. Just as lesbian and gay fiction
        started to become financially and socially acceptable to trade
        presses fifteen years ago (with a huge surge in the last five), it
        is now beginning to appear in the mainstream of SF...to the extent
        that half the new twenty-something straight male writers are
        penning stories with dyke protagonists. (For some reason, this is
        particularly true in the UK.) Science fiction may follow hard on
        the heels of trends but it does not often _create_ them. An
        example: 'cutting edge' SF of the last two years has been first
        person present tense narrative, something the mainstream has been
        doing for years and years. I imagine that someone, somewhere is
        writing an SF novel that uses second person present tense--just
        like Jay McInnery did in the eighties--and believing _that_ is
        brand new. Which does not mean it's not worth doing. I'm just
        puzzled that many who write and read SF want it to be the literary
        techniques which are the bright, gleaming forefront. In my opinion,
        what makes SF so interesting, so constantly new and worthwhile and
        exciting, is the form itself. Science fiction is what everyone is
        trying to learn to write. The South American magic realists; the
        feminist fabulists; the technothriller writers...it's all, really,
        SF. (I don't care about the differences between fantasy, science
        fiction etc. etc. I think nitpicking over definitions is,
        ultimately, a waste of time.) Those who are already writing it
        might enjoy themselves more if they just relaxed and thought, "Hey,
        I can do this stuff," and worry about what they were writing,
        instead of how. Literary technique is-- or should be, in my
        opinion--all about how well the writer communicates her vision to
        the reader: how efficiently or beautifully or movingly. That is
        what technique is _for_, creating effect; it should not necessarily
        (but, I admit, it can sometimes) be the effect itself.

 HSF:   I see a growing number of SF authors on the Net. What was your
        reason for joining the on-line commnunity? How useful is the Net
        for a writer?

 NG:    I've been on-line about a month. Give or take. My original stated
        motive was to do research easily from my own home. My _real_
        motivation, however, was much more basic: I felt left out. (What did
        'upload' mean? What did it feel like to be 'on the net?' What esoteric
        goodies was I missing out on?) There was also the omnipresent (for me)
        fear of being left behind in the tidal wave of technology (something I
        talk about in 'Slow River'), and the urge to try something new. It has
        its good and bad points. Research-wise, I'm finding it totally
        useless: electronic media are very, very low in information
        density-libraries are faster, at least for a beginner like me.
        Entertainment- wise, it's a mix of pretty good and utterly
        exasperating. Business-wise, which is more often than not also
        entertaining, (things like this interview, announcements of readings
        etc) it's great.

 HSF:   The schism between British and American SF that arose after
        the new wave seems to be a thing of the past. There was this
        feeling that the Brits would write difficult somber books while the
        Americans would write fluffy space opera. Now the Brits are
        gradually recapturing the American market: Iain Banks, Terry
        Pratchett, Colin Greenland, Mary Gentle, Brian Stableford, Michael
        Scott Rohan, Kim Newman, David Gemmel and others. Including you of
        course. My feeling is that British SF has become more accessible:
        more SF staples, more story telling without losing a European
        perspective. Do you feel that this assesment of the difference
        between post-New World British SF and the current crop of British
        authors is correct?

 NG:    I think the schism between US and UK SF goes back further than
        the New Wave. In fact, I don't think there ever was a schism; I
        think they grew from separate places altogether. British SF stems
        from the literary tradition of H.G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley, and
        Orwell; American SF springs from Hugo Gernsback. You can see the
        difference in traditions just by looking at the different way books
        are marketed over here and over there. UK books have subtle covers,
        rich colours, occasionally abstract art; designed for adults. US
        covers are primary colours, spaceships and lasguns, occasionally an
        anatomically impossible amazon with a bronze bra; designed for
        adolescents. US SF has traditionally been about What Happens, and
        Who Saves the World. UK SF has been more concerned with How it
        Felt. The New Wave furor was the sound of the two traditions
        colliding and exchanging genetic material. Now we have hybrid
        vigour...

 HSF:   BTW, congratulations on your permanent green card. This would be a
        bit more difficult a mere ten years ago. I can remember the case
        where two Dutch journalist for a national TV station wanted to find
        out if the law that gays and lesbians weren't allowed to enter the
        US was still being applied. So they told the customs office about
        their sexual preferences and were immediately put on the first return
        flight to the Netherlands. Things seem to have changed.

 NG:    Thanks for the Green Card congratulations. Yes, things here
        have changed. Not enough, of course (if Kelley and I had been a
        straight couple, I would have been admitted on a permanent basis
        five years ago and saved us tens of thousands of dollars and many,
        many nights of worry and anguish), but it's a start. I have been
        very, very fortunate that (a) I had a skill/talent that is
        acknowledged to be important by the US government (dressmakers just
        don't get the same kind of leeway as writers); that I'm from the UK
        (practically America, after all); and (c) that I'm white (they'll
        deny racism until they're blue in the face, but it still very much
        alive and well). Actually, Kelley and I had decided years ago that
        if I couldn't get in the US, we would live in Amsterdam. So we
        could have been neighbours. (Why Amsterdam? Because the
        political/social climate is--or appears to be from this
        end--welcoming towards lesbians and gay men. Because as an EEC
        citizen I could live there without a job, and Kelley could legally
        work there as long as she registered with the local police. Because
        the Dutch word for beer is 'bier,' and it's important to be able to
        communicate one's needs....)

 HSF:   I read in Locus that the SF community also helped a bit. In
        what ways?

 NG:    The SF community, the lesbian and gay community, and the mainstream
        writing community all helped me with my immigration application by
        writing testimonial letters on my behalf. I promised each letter
        writer that her or his testimonial would remain confidential (so
        they could use all the hyperbole they wanted, without fear of being
        quoted later), or I would _love_ to print some of the very
        flattering things said about me by people like Allen Ginsberg,
        Ursula Le Guin, and various university professors. Most of them are
        very exaggerated, but even though I know they're not strictly true,
        whenever I get miserable, all I have to do is pull the folder of
        letters out and read about how fabulous I am. Lovely.

 (This interview was first published in the Dutch SF magazine "Holland SF".
 If you'd like to find out more about "Holland SF", send an email to
 [email-masked].)

 -+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.-+-+.
     (c) 1994 by Ruud van de Kruisweg ([email-masked]). This
  document can be freely distributed on electronic media if none of the text is
   changed. Please contact me first about any form of printed distribution.