A hint of real weirdness

Interview with Stephen Dedman

Stephen Dedman has been one of Australia's most consistent short story writers of the last 15 years, producing such landmark gems as "The Lady of Situations", "Never Seen By Waking Eyes" and "From Whom All Blessings Flow". His first collection, The Lady of Situations, was published by Ticonderoga Publications in 1999 and a new collection, Never Seen By Waking Eyes has recently been published by Prime Books (and reviewed in this issue). Russell B. Farr caught up with Stephen Dedman in order to find out what Stephen has been up to lately.

What is it about sf that inspires you to write it?

Originally, when I was about 12, it was the scantily clad women on all the covers of the NEL editions of Heinlein... Okay, seriously. I know this is difficult to imagine, at a time when John Howard is obviously going to be PM for life no matter how egregiously he lies, and the idiotic war in Iraq seems likely to outlast us all, but but there was a time when the future seemed exciting. I grew up in the time of the Apollo programme, the beginning of the Green movement, the peace movement... On the one hand, there was the possibility of nuclear war, or a more gradual ecological disaster. On the other, there were utopias like 2001 and Star Trek , where intelligence and learning were respected and no-one played football or cricket. On a less philosophical level, I've been attracted to weirdness for about as long as I can remember, and good sf has always had at least a hint of the real weirdness possible in the universe. And while I do write some sf (I'm working on a sf novel at present), much of what I write can better be classified as 'weird shit': museums being built to porn stars, French sculptors being reincarnated as Japanese movie monsters, that sort of thing. And one of the great things about sf is that it provides a market for work of almost any length, from the short-short to the million-word series. Ok, most of the markets pay very little, but that makes for a wonderful training ground for writers. Most other genres don't have that.

Congratulations on the new collection, Never Seen By Waking Eyes . How did the deal come about?

I was walking to a panel at Worldcon in Boston last year, and I saw Ellen Datlow talking to Paula Guran on a couch in the corridor. Ellen called out my name, and asked if was interested in serving another term on the Stoker oversight jury, and I said yes. When we'd sorted that out and Ellen left, Paula asked if I was interested in bringing out a new collection of my horror fiction, and I said yes. A few weeks later, Paula contacted me to say that Sean Wallace of Prime Books was also interested, and wanted to bring out an Australian edition, so I said yes.

The cover blurb describes the collection as "disturbing, erotic and amusing", and you've certainly taken on some disturbing themes in your work throughout your career. Is there anything too disturbing for you to write about?

Hmm. Let's just say that there are things that seriously disturb me that I don't understand well enough to write about. One day I might. I know 'The Devotee' disturbed many people (including my wife), and yet when I first heard all these details about amputee fetishism, it was the parallels between that and other more socially acceptable forms of fetishism - some of which are also threatened with obsolescence by changes in society and technology - that made it seem ideal for an sf story. And it enabled me to address some other issues, too. I don't think it's one of my best stories, and some people hate it, but it obviously has its fans.

The collection concentrates on these darker tales, but you have some damn impressive sf stories out there yet to be collected. Is there any plan for a follow-up collection of these?

Yes. Paula tried to get Prime interested in an sf collection as well, but their schedule was full, so I've contacted another small press. I'll let you know what happens.

I understand you're presently doing a Ph.D. on comics, would you like to elaborate on this?

Comics are only a small part of it, though they were a very big part of American sf pop culture in the 1930s, when the thesis begins - especially with the U.S. military, who were huge consumers of comics during WWII. The thesis is actually about the relationship between the U.S. military and American sf, including comics and movies and TV as well as books - the way the military has borrowed sf tropes for P.R. purposes, and the different attitudes sf writers (and publishers) have shown towards the military from WWII to the present.

Which is more important to you: wads of filthy lucre or all the prestige you can eat?

Of the two, the lucre; I have to pay the mortgage and the cat's vet bills and that sort of thing, and when there's some left over, I like to travel and buy DVDs and eat smoked salmon and brie. The prestige... well, it's good to be a guest at cons and writers' festivals, and it sometimes gets me well-paid work talking and/or teaching, but the taste is generally meagre and hollow (but crisp). I often suspect that I'm being invited to speak to people who haven't read anything of mine, by people who've only read my C.V. and bibliography. That sort of 'prestige' doesn't mean much to me, though the money that sometimes comes with it is very useful. In the sf community, particularly the further I get from Perth, it's a good bet that the people who're interested in talking to me have read and liked at least some of my work. And it's the work that's important to me. What matters to me much more than prestige, is that for nine years I've been able to make a living (albeit not a very good one) primarily from making up stories and games! And my commute to work has never been shorter. My hours are fantastically flexible. The dress code is much more relaxed than the public service or teaching or even working in an sf bookshop. I get money from arts councils sometimes to cover my airfares to cons, and the rest of my expenses are tax-deductible. How cool is that?

You've had what could be described as a chequered career where it seems critical acclaim has ruled over commercial success. How do you measure your own success?

Commercially... I think I just answered that question. I'm still writing 1000+ words a day at an average rate per word that keeps the wolves from the door, ergo, I'm reasonably successful. (I try not to compare my writing income with that of other writers, and the Voyager 10th Anniversary bash was something of a shock to my system.) Would I like a book of mine to become a bestseller, get optioned for a movie, etc.? Of course, but it would still have to be a book I'd loved, not something I cringe to see my name on. Critically... my minimum standard for every year is at least one honourable mention in both Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and Year's Best Science Fiction, and at least one Aurealis Award nomination. If I don't get those, I know I haven't been writing enough good short fiction (ok, sometimes publishers' schedules screw me around, but I don't like using that as an excuse), and I will concentrate on changing this. Does my ambition go beyond this? Of course. But there's a great quote from Hemingway: as nearly as I can remember, it goes, "Every day, I try to write as well as I can, but sometimes I surprise myself and write better than I can." That's happened to me a few times in the past; I hope it'll happen again, but it's not something I can control.

What is your impression of the Australian book genre market at present: is it awash with chunky fantasy trilogies or are the major publishers taking on a diverse list?

The major publishers are producing enough chunky fantasy trilogies to insulate the average cathedral... but they're also bringing out gems like Margo Lanagan's collection Black Juice and Sean Williams's Books of the Cataclysm, and a modicum of action/adventure sf, and more power to them.

How important do you think independent genre publishers are to the present and future state of sf in Australia?

Absolutely essential. Almost no-one else is publishing original short sf and horror stories, or very many reprints, and short fiction isn't just a training ground for novelists, it's where most of the best work in those genres has always been done. Things may be easier for beginning writers now that they can e-mail stories to anywhere in the world and not have to stuff around with U.S. stamps or IRCs or whatever, or wait quite as long for a response, but in my case, I doubt I ever would have become a full-time writer had it not been for the late lamented Peter McNamara and Aphelion magazine. The magazine folded after five issues, having published two stories of mine and leaving no other short sf markets in Australia. But it was having been published in aphelion that had gotten me hooked on selling stories and seeing them in print, and that gave me the chutzpah to tackle the U.S. semi-pros such as Strange Plasma and Pulphouse.

Other than the collection, Never Seen By Waking Eyes (reviewed in this issue and available from good bookshops), what can we expect to see from you in the near future?

New short stories in Westerly and Brutarian this year, and a Shadowrun novel, For A Fistful Of Data, sometime next year. And there are stories I've sold to Weird Tales and Absolute Magnitude and a couple of erotica collections, but I don't know when they're likely to appear. And I have stuff doing the rounds, as always: that's still the best way to get published.

Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite and Foreign Bodies. He has escaped from several institutions of higher education, where he studied writing, theatre and film history. He has worked as a video librarian, a proofreader, a game designer, an experimental subject, a dinosaur salesman, a museum exhibit, the manager of a science fiction bookshop, and an actor (last seen abducting two teenage girls on Australia's Most Wanted). For a regularly updated biography go to http://www.livejournal.com/users/stephen_dedman/

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