IGMS Issue 30

by IGMS

  Of course, there simply isn't time to pay much attention to every offbeat idea that comes along, and most of them really aren't worth it. So you have to be a bit selective about both the ones you pay attention to and the ones you choose not to. In doing that, if you only pick things that eventually turn out to be winners, you're probably being too conservative. If you pick only things that are soon forgotten, you're probably too gullible -- or too much of a contrarian for contrarianism's sake.

  I've given some space to "cold fusion," mainly by way of commenting on the clumsy way the initial announcement was handled and the stubbornly defensive response of many establishment scientists, who systematically refused to even look at anything that might be evidence. I'd say the jury's still out on that one; it looks as if there may be something there, but nobody is quite sure what.

  On the other hand, we also did some of the first (and, according to K. Eric Drexler, some of the best) popular coverage of nanotechnology, which has already established itself as one of the most important and promising fields of scientific and technological research. We haven't yet seen the most spectacular forms suggested by early speculations about it, but it's still young and my personal hunch is that it will eventually do things that are hard for even the leading current researchers to envision. After all, how credible would Charles Babbage have found the computer on which I'm writing this, or the internet through which I'm sending it to you?

  SCHWEITZER: Nevertheless, even the most open-minded scientist or editor needs a working crap detector. The history of our field is littered with real embarrassments, like the Shaver Mystery. (A series of stories published by Ray Palmer's Amazing Stories in the '40s, which purported to be "true," all about sinister underground beings called "deros" which manipulate our minds, etc.) But I note that John Campbell, credulous though he seemed at times, never fell for flying saucers, for instance. So are there some things which are just too obviously silly to pursue? I don't see articles in Analog about the Bermuda Triangle or Ancient Astronauts, and I am glad for it.

  SCHMIDT: You don't see those articles because nobody has ever offered me one containing evidence or arguments strong enough to take seriously. And while I've published one or two fact articles about how what we think of as the universe could be an artifact within a larger one, I've never felt the slightest temptation to treat "creation science" (or its dressier version, "intelligent design") as if it were actually science. It just isn't, and the arguments people have occasionally used to try to convince me otherwise were so slipshod you couldn't even refute them logically -- there was no logic in them to latch onto.

  SCHWEITZER: What do you think about the "educational" aspect of science fiction? Can it really popularize new ideas and influence the world around us in a positive way, or is this merely the "Gernsback Delusion"? At the last Nebula Weekend I heard astronaut Mike Fincke say, "We went into space because science fiction writers told us to." So, do you as a science fiction editor (and writer) have any sense of didactic mission?

  SCHMIDT: I don't think of it as a "didactic mission," but I certainly do think that science fiction can and does inspire readers, especially young ones, to "make it so." I know it can happen because it happened to me: I became a physicist largely as a result of reading science fiction, especially in Astounding/Analog. It also happened to many other scientists and engineers I've known. Many of them have gotten so involved in their own research careers that they no longer have much time to read SF, but the interest is still there. A few years ago I was invited to give a colloquium on "Science and Science Fiction" in the physics department of a major university, and the professor who organized it told me later it drew the largest audience of any colloquium that year.

  I am a little concerned that we may not be doing that job as effectively as we used to, because it's most likely to have long-range effects on young readers. We're not getting as many of those as we used to, or as many as we'd like, in part because their attentions are being siphoned off in so many glitzier directions. And it's harder to evoke a sense of wonder in generations who have become jaded, almost overnight, about realities that were pure SF when we were growing up.

  SCHWEITZER: Related to that, I've noted a very disturbing trend, which maybe I exaggerate, though some (Gregory Benford for instance) would probably say I do not. The whole culture, even science fiction writers, seems to be turning away from the future. There is less interest in space travel. I hear agents tell me they can't sell science fiction anymore, except military SF series. (Shawna McCarthy said so in one of these interviews a couple issues back.) We see steampunk and alternate history, all about alternate pasts and things that didn't and couldn't happen. Do you have any sense that the speculative impulse itself is flagging? Has Vernor Vinge's Singularity scared everybody off? If so, what is to be done about it?

  SCHMIDT: I think this is a very real concern, and one of the reasons SF writers and publishers need to find new ways to stimulate positive thought about the future. The Singularity may or may not be a major factor in the widespread attitude shift. A bigger one may simply be that everyone is constantly barraged with propaganda about how terrible the problems we now face are, and too many have knuckled under and pretty much given up on trying to build a great future and resigned themselves to just playing with all the neat toys we have now while they can. Some science fiction, I'm sorry to say, contributes to this defeatist attitude by vividly portraying ugly, depressing futures without offering constructive ways we might prevent or fix them. That's the easy way out, and something we don't do much of in Analog. It's painfully easy to imagine ugly, depressing futures; it's harder, but much more rewarding, to imagine plausible alternatives and ways to get to them. That's what we try to do, and I hope it will inspire at least a few young readers to make them happen.

  SCHWEITZER: Is it possible that science fiction is a victim of its own success? People take the idea of, say, other planets so much for granted now that the discovery of hundreds of real exoplanets doesn't seem to be generating much excitement. Folks have been seeing that on Star Trek for decades.

  SCHMIDT: Certainly it's harder to evoke a sense of wonder than it used to be, given that so much of our everyday world is full of things that we now take for granted but would have been strictly the stuff of science fiction -- or, in some cases, not even imagined by science fiction -- just a few years ago.

  The problem really has at least two aspects. First, to a casual observer, the difference in content between SF and reality just doesn't look as big as it used to. Second, and to me more disturbing, is that so many people aren't grasping the distinction between having read or heard about something in speculative fiction and seeing it in the news. They should be getting excited about exoplanets because they're now, for the first time ever, known to be real, whereas Star Trek was just entertainment. I don't understand how so many people can fail to grasp the enormity of that distinction, but somehow they manage.

  SCHWEITZER: Or is the problem perhaps the reverse? People realize the exoplanets may be there, but we aren't going to be visiting them any time soon. So they give up.

  SCHMIDT: There may well be some of that, too -- but then, how many people ever really cared about visiting them? The SF community -- by which I mean people interested in seriously speculative, science-based fiction and in making its promises real -- has always been a small part of the general population. That's still true, even though we see SF bestselling books and "SF" movies that make a lot of money oftener than we used to.

  Or, to look at it another way, maybe the problem began with the end of the Apollo program. Back then, a lot of the general public was interested in space, but I think only a few of them were interested in it for the right reasons. Most weren't looking toward a major outward expansion, but only toward the much more trivial goal of winning a race with the Soviets. Once that had been done, they saw it as an end rather than the beginning it should have been, and started looking for other fads to follow.

  SCHWEITZER: I don't im
agine you, as editor of Analog, just passively sitting back and waiting for the field to develop. John Campbell certainly did not. But given that nobody will ever be in the kind of monopoly position he was in back in the mid-'40s, when he edited what was the adult science fiction magazine, which had no serious competition. So how does an editor lead these days? Do you have editorial lunches with writers and pitch ideas to them?

  SCHMIDT: I certainly do, though the meaning of "editorial lunch" has shifted over the years. Writers no longer live in New York, or even visit it, as often as they used to, so I don't have as many working lunches there. But I still have lots of productive lunches and dinners at conventions, and much of the same kind of dialog conducted in black-and-white at high speed despite great distances by e-mail. Like Campbell, I sometimes throw out ideas that I think a particular writer would enjoy exploring and do a good job. And sometimes I get a story that I think has a lot of potential but also has problems, so I tell the author what bothers me about it and challenge him or her to come up with a way to fix it that we both like better. Discovering and developing new writers is the single most rewarding part of this job, and I've developed a knack for recognizing potential even before I've seen a story. Occasionally I've sprung for an editorial lunch with somebody who hadn't yet sold me a single word, because I knew they would, and this was a way to accelerate the process. And no two writers are alike. That's one reason I like to meet them face-to-face as soon as possible, because the better I know their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks, the better I know what kinds of things they'll be interested in and do well.

  SCHWEITZER: What do you think are some of the most fruitful areas for speculation just now, i.e. cutting edge science that can be turned into good stories?

  SCHMIDT: A lot of the best possibilities are in the related areas of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cognitive science. I've heard some people say that nanotechnology has been played out and it's time to move on to other things, but this seems to me like telling a hypothetical SF writer in 1900 that electricity has been played out and it's time to move on to other things. All the signs are that this is going to be a big part of our future, and if you choose to assume it isn't, you'll need to justify that. Cognitive science is an area where we've barely scratched the surface. One of the biggest benefits I got from writing my nonfiction book The Coming Convergence (shameless plug!) was a greatly increased awareness of just how differently nervous systems work from most of the things we call computers. And, as the title of that book suggests, many of the most fruitful possibilities for SF writers to explore come not from simple extrapolation of any one science, but from the convergence and interaction of two or more -- like the three I've already mentioned.

  And let's not forget that one of the oldest fields is just full of new possibilities just waiting to be explored. All those recently discovered extrasolar planets, for instance: every one of them is a whole new world, as big and complicated and diverse as the one we live on. From this distance we know just enough about them to know that many of them are quite different from any we've read about before. I'd love to see writers take us in for close-up looks at some of them, so we can see what they might really be like, and what might happen to people trying to explore or develop them.

  SCHWEITZER: So, now that you are leaving Analog after 34 years, what do you feel you have accomplished?

  SCHMIDT: The thing about which I'm happiest is that I've managed -- with a lot of help from some very talented staff, the publishers who've provided a home for it, and above all the writers, artists and readers -- to keep the magazine alive, growing, and still the kind of magazine I think it should be. I've often said that my overriding editorial philosophy was to try to make Analog the magazine I would subscribe to if I had to buy my own subscriptions and could only afford one. I think I've done that.

  SCHWEITZER: And, presumably this will give you more time for writing. Do you have any particular projects planned?

  SCHMIDT: Quite a few, actually, beginning with a novel that I've been trying to

  finish for a couple of years but haven't had time to build and sustain the momentum it needs. Now, I hope, I can. And I'd like to do more short fiction, without waiting for an editor to call me up and invite me to do something for a themed anthology. In particular, in the ten years before I became editor, I was one of Analog's more frequent contributors, and the readers often seemed to like what I was doing. I'd like to try to do that again -- if I can get past this new editor!

  SCHWEITZER: Thank you, Stanley Schmidt.

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