APB: All Points Between Science and Literature: Greg Bear

Showing posts with label Greg Bear. Show all posts

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Greg Bear on Politics in Writing

"To handle the issue [terrorist action in "The Wind from a Burning Woman"] honestly, I had to make the “Burning Woman” fight for a cause that I, myself, would cherish. One editor, reading the story for an anthology on space colonies, rejected it because it didn’t overtly support the cause. It would have been dishonest to force the story into such a mold; however pleasant or unpleasant the result, my stories must work themselves out within their own framework, not according to some market principle or philosophical bias. It may be remarkable that, with such views, I’ve come as far as I have in publishing."

--Greg Bear from the "Preface" to The Wind from a Burning Woman.

I invited Greg Bear to write for an anthology that proposed a fascinating new ethos. And he said, "Stay away from ethos." My point was an SF-nal one: So many interesting ways of seeing the world. Let's go for a swim. He could have played the game yet opposed the ethos, too.

His perspective, I think, could be summed up by the above. Each story has it's own way of thinking. Even as I felt he'd misunderstood, I admired as his staunch position about the writer being outside any set of predisposed rules.

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Greg Bear on Why He Writes, and Why He Writes Science Fiction

I have friends who believe the world will come to an end in twenty or thirty years.... Serve everybody right, they seem to say.
What they are actually saying is that within the next few decades—certainly within the next sixty or seventy years—they will come to an end.... The future does not really exist, certainly not the far and unknowable future. Why talk about it?
They are still my friends, but they are... wrong.... The future will come, and it will be different, unimaginably so. Then why do I bother to try imagining it...?
I’m willing to bet, in our deepest hearts, that we all hope one of our more optimistic imagined futures, or some aspect of a literary time to come, will closely parallel reality. Then we will be admired for our perspicacity....

Perhaps. But it will be accident, not prophecy.

Like my pessimistic friends, I'm not going to live forever....

But when I write, I not only live to see one future, I experience dozens...

When I write, I’m immortal.

--Greg Bear from The "Preface" to The Wind from a Burning Woman

Notes:

A perfect quote for his passing. I also like his willingness to forge friendships with those he disagrees with.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

"Webster" by Greg Bear

Just Over the Horizon' Review - GeekDad

This first appeared in David Gerrold's Alternities.

A lonely, middle-aged woman, whose reproductive years are coming to a close, uses a dictionary, using the words the make a man of her desire, her design. But it doesn't go as planned.

Discussion (with Spoilers):

I wanted to read his stories in a roughly chronological order, but I don't presently have his earliest, which he apparently considered too immature (written when he was fifteen).

This is his earliest story Bear collected for Complete Short Fiction of Greg Bear series (clearly a misnomer), which appears in volume one, Just Over the Horizon.

He rewrote the fantasy for this new volume. He economized in some places, expanded in others, reshuffled the order a bit on occasion. Some choices seemed sage, but some less essential. A very few of his early stylistic and sound choices I wanted back in the text. Towards the end, the rewrite improved the text.

The imagination and wonder are relatively rich for his sophomore publication outing. It flips the genders on the old Pygmalion tale, albeit following George Bernard Shaw's version, more than Ovid's.

What makes it work is how he makes us care. We want her to succeed, which makes the tragedy sting.

Monday, November 21, 2022

Greg Bear: Rembrance

Gregory Dale Bear--born August 20, 1951, died November 19, 2022--is one of the great SF writers of his generation. With nearly fifty years of publication, at least thirty to forty of them would leave his colleagues envious.

The photo to the right is how I most remember Greg Bear--the broad smile, the crinkly eyes--although it probably wasn't his only or even his main expression. But this is what sticks with me. That memory lingers on his pleasant disposition says much about the man.

He was brilliant in most things he did. He told us at Clarion West: "I can talk and you can learn from me, or you can talk, and I'll learn from you."

If you were lucky enough to party at his house, his library awed all of us to silence.

Bear was a master of many fields. I gave a signed copy of Bear's novel, Darwin's Radio, to a microbiologist friend who was impressed with Bear's scientific knowledge. He felt like they were colleagues.

But Bear didn't get a PhD or even a B.S. in any scientific field but a degree in English. If you want a masterclass on creating characters, read his Hugo/Nebula winning novelette, "Blood Music," then compare that to the novel version, which deepens the characters. He takes a novelette--good enough to win awards--and makes it better. Most writers would have simply added on to what they'd done.

Here's an interview worth watching to learn about the recollections of man in his later years:

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Review: Conversations From the Edge: The Galaxy's Edge Interviews by Joy Ward

Conversations From the Edge: The Galaxy's Edge Interviews

by Joy Ward (interviewer)

Arc Manor

Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles

Biographies & Memoirs , Sci Fi & Fantasy

Joy Ward is a veteran journalist and has been doing interviews for Galaxy’s Edge since the beginning. These are the interviews collected here: a long list of major science fiction and fantasy writers and editors (see below).

Ward's best ability is to get at the personal side of the authors, although she does manage to coax out good writing tips from some. Some of the interviews--if you've read about the authors before--will be familiar, George R. R. Martin, for instance. But some writers have evolved, so that the Kij Johnson I interviewed a decade and a half earlier differs from the Kij Johnson that Joy Ward interviewed.

Some interviews are touching simply because the writers are no longer with us: Jerry Pournelle and Gene Wolfe. The Pournelle interview gains new interest following the interview with his friend and collaborator, Larry Niven. Some older writers like Terry Brooks, Robert Silverberg, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Joe Haldeman seem to feel outside the field at present.

Speaking of Niven and Pournelle collaborations, a substantial number of writers discuss their collaborations: Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon, Eric Flint, and David Gerrold.

The most revealing interview is last one: David Drake. He shares a rather stunning, personal story that I was unfamiliar with, so my interest in his work is now piqued. Most readers, I suspect, will be writer wannabees, but Drake's intimate revelation makes me wonder if interviewees have been missing out on not making themselves as interesting as the work itself.

Some interviews have been expanded from the original publication. There is some redundancy in reintroducing the author: with new and original introductions. One introduction might prove sufficient.

Interviews include the following writers and editors and something of what you will find:

George R.R. Martin (turns a dead end into a superhighway)
Jerry Pournelle (his politics, his path to publication and collaborations with Niven)
Nancy Kress (her initial introduction to the field)
Joe Haldeman (tried to maintain involvement in several genres: poetry, literary, SF, adventure)
Peter S. Beagle (the importance being recognized)
Eric Flint (his politics, and his collaborations)
Mercedes Lackey (collaborations and indifference to art as opposed to craft)
Larry Dixon (collaborations and indifference to art as opposed to craft)
Gene Wolfe (how new writers don't pay attention to advice)
Jack McDevitt (the importance of SF & curiosity)
Greg Bear (his personal motivations)
David Gerrold (perhaps the most writerly--modeling stories, voice, showing/having reader experience the story as i
Kij Johnson (her interest in experimental structures and her tapping into flow)
Mike Resnick (his beginnings in pornography and interest in new writers)
Terry Brooks (the importance of putting in hard work)
David Brin (the science in science fiction and the destruction of dystopias)
Catherine Asaro (women as lead characters)
David Weber (advantage of plot and character over style)
Robert Silverberg (the history of the field)
Toni Weisskopf (the importance of healthy discussion within the genre)
Lois McMaster Bujold (the importance of short fiction to selling novels, talk with editor generating Falling Free)
Robert J. Sawyer (the importance of research, dislike of endless series)
Harry Turtledove (read and write)
Connie Willis (importance of having good manners and of having m.s.s. out and comforting self when rejections come in that a better story is circulating)
Larry Niven (collaboration)
David Drake (how experience can feed one's muse)