David G. Hartwell

Blue Moon Night Coast to Coast

I was interviewed [link fixed] last night from 1am-2am (I pause to yawn, since I don't stay up that late much) by George Noory for Coast to Coast AM, the largest nationwide talk radio show. It was a pleasant experience. Now, I have been working in SF for nearly four decades, and I have been interviewed on radio and tv a number of times before, but this was far and away the most professional, smoothly-handled, intelligent, and open-minded interview I have experienced.

     I guess I was anticipating something less good, shallow, or at least less friendly to science fiction, or even a kind of subtle attack on the intelligence or value of SF -- I have experience all of these in past years -- but George Noory was charming, encouraging, frankly friendly to SF and SF ideas, and very sharp at handling transitions. He was quite in control of the show.

     I don't stay up late and listen to the radio (I read), and as far as I know Coast to Coast AM is not carried on a station in my area, so I had not heard it before. But I can now recommend it as a show that is open to ideas (even often silly ideas -- look at their web site) and in the end that openness is a good thing. it doesn't particularly endorse specific ideas, but it encourages their presentation so that they can be held up for examination, thought about, wondered about. But it is not about criticism, or disproving ideas, but about ideas as play. It is probably one of the motors that drives our cultural mythologies, and urban legends. I think I understand now why it is so big and I am grateful to have been a part of it.

NYRSF Editorial 192: Blooming

This issue is being put together on the fly this summer, between vacations and conventions. This editorial is written weeks after the layout, during which time I have accumulated a lot of things to talk about in this and other editorials.

The SF Museum in Seattle did open, and I was there to see it; I took pictures for this issue and the next. I was particularly impressed with the care that was taken to link the toys, games, films, and shows to written works, sources, and printed images. It is an intelligent museum, worth several visits, and worth supporting. You ought to become a member.

Of the many other possible topics, here's one very close to the core interest of NYRSF. There has been a general fuss (and some prurient interest) during July 2004 in the press and the literate magazines about Hatchet Jobs, a collection of Dale Peck's killer reviews. To my mind, the most useful response has been from John Leonard (who once said Frank Herbert didn't write well but is worth reading anyway):

[I now] suggest some hard-won guidelines for responsible reviewing. For instance: First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet, or a license to kill. Sixth, let a hundred Harolds Bloom. (The New York Times, 18 July 2004.)

I find myself charmed by the spirit of this list. I have always been suspicious of (if not downright out of sympathy with) reviewers who perform to entertain the reader rather than to illuminate the text for the reader. The hardest and most useful thing a reviewer can do is to explain why the successes of a book are worthwhile and interesting, while gently noting its failures without dwelling on them. Let a hundred Leonards bloom.