by Robert Reed
César Mallorquí: Many of my influences are North American, such as Ray Bradbury and Fredric Brown, but I could also name Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.
Juan Miguel Aguilera: Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman.
What is the most exciting thing happening in Spanish science fiction today (authors, movements, editors, etc.)?
Eduardo Vaquerizo: I’d say there are two exciting things going on. On the one hand, and little by little, science fiction is becoming more respectable. More mainstream readers and writers are coming to the genre, which for me is a positive thing. The second item is the growth of small publishers, combined with the presence of more writers. It’s leading to an increased focus on the quality of Spanish science fiction.
Rafael Marín: We’re living through an implosion. Bad times aren’t particularly exciting.
Elia Barceló: I don’t follow Spanish science fiction as closely as I did twenty years ago, but I still try to read current novels and anthologies. It has become impossible to read everything, and that’s good news, because it means that there are lots of new things.
Some great developments are: Gigamesh and its big new bookshop, Lektu and the possibility of buying buys online at moderate prices, the Terra Nova anthologies and all the work Mariano Villarreal is doing, the existence of HispaCon, Sportula as a new publisher, and the new Random House imprint, Fantascy. And there are exciting new voices like Emilio Bueso, Ismael Martínez Biurrun, Felicidad Martínez, Sofía Rhei, Santiago Eximeno.
Rodolfo Martínez: Perhaps the most exciting phenomenon is the appearance of many small publishers who are willing to bet on national authors.
Juan Miguel Aguilera: I would say that one exciting development is the increasing presence of women in our field. Recently I was talking with a friend who wrote a story for my next Akasa-Puspa anthology, and I told her that I thought her approach was fantastic, really innovative. I think female writers are going to help refashion the field.
César Mallorquí: The single most important development is something Elia alluded to: there are more and better writers than ever before.
Let’s take a step back and talk about some Spanish publishing history. John W. Campbell is perhaps the single most influential editor in the history of English-language science fiction. Is there a Spanish John W. Campbell? Who were/are the most important Spanish science fiction editors?
Eduardo Vaquerizo: I could name the people from Nueva Dimensión; Domingo Santos was the principal figure, and the magazine set the standard for science fiction in our country. But for me the single most influential editor was Francisco Porrúa, who had a gigantic presence through the Minotauro publishing house and helped it deliver world-class science fiction. It’s true that Porrúa didn’t publish Spanish writers in his collections, but I think his books opened many minds and led to careers whose goals were high-quality genre writing of literary merit.
Elia Barceló: Domingo Santos and Luis Vigil can be considered, in my opinion, the two most influential science fiction editors in Spain. They started Nueva Dimensión and kept it going for two generations of readers; they opened the world of international science fiction to Spanish readers when Spain was a Third World country, a dictatorship where everything was forbidden. They introduced us to the great American and British writers who were still alive and writing wonders. They even published Russian stories! I really think science fiction exists in Spain because of them.
Later, there were others, of course: Miquel Barceló (fanzine Kandama and then the Nova collection in Ediciones B., and the UPC Award), Alejo Cuervo (Martínez Roca and then Gigamesh). Now Rodolfo Martínez also works as an editor (Sportula). But Santos and Vigil were the old guard and we have lots to thank them for.
Rafael Marín: Domingo Santos, without a doubt. He was a writer, translator, and director of various collections throughout the 70s and 80s. It is to him that we owe the credibility gained by Spanish science fiction authors.
César Mallorquí: As mentioned, I think the two most influential editors in Spain have been Domingo Santos, who among other things founded and co-managed the magazine Nueva Dimensión, and Francisco Porrúa, creator and editor of the magnificent Minotaur collection. I’d also like to mention Miquel Barceló, who edited the Nova collection for Ediciones B.
Juan Miguel Aguilera: No question about it, our John W. Campbell—at least my generation’s—was Domingo Santos. His work enabled the 90s generation to change the face of science fiction in Spain, and this is recognized with the Domingo Santos award, which is issued yearly. After Santos I’d place Miquel Barceló as a critical editor in our history.
The Orbis Library of Science Fiction (1985-1987) collected one hundred titles, mostly translations of English-language science fiction classics, with a few Spanish novels mixed in. Domingo Santos helped curate the selection. How did this collection affect you personally, if it did? What did it do for science fiction in Spain?
Eduardo Vaquerizo: For me the Orbis collection was a kind of mental tin-opener. I was always interested in science and literature and had read Verne and Asimov, but until the Orbis Library came along I hadn’t encountered the big names of English-language science fiction. The collection provided me with concentrated access to top writers. The result was discovery: new ways of thinking about the genre, from poetry to radical adventure, from social criticism to human conflicts. With the Orbis Library Domingo Santos did for novels what he had done for the short story with Nueva Dimensión.
Elia Barceló: I am too old to have been really affected by this collection, excellent though it was. The one which really touched my mind, heart, and soul was the Nebulae series, which I had the good fortune to read in my hometown’s public library when I was in my teens. Later, the publishers Orbis, Nova and Martínez Roca helped me discover new writers and novels, but I was already hooked.
Rafael Marín: Yes, one hundred volumes of a collection primarily dedicated to American science fiction. My novel Lágrimas de Luz appeared as volume sixty-five. An accomplishment and a surprise.
Javier Negrete: I was twenty years old when the collection started, and my interest in science fiction was at its peak, so it was like a godsend. I bought the whole thing, of course, and read most of it. Thanks to Orbis, I discovered authors like Dick and Vance, with whom I’d only been vaguely familiar. And that goes for Spanish authors too, like Bermúdez Castillo—I still remember how much I laughed reading Viaje a un Planeta Wu-Wei or El Señor de la Rueda—and Rafael Marín, an author I would later befriend.
I’ve talked with my friends about this, and a lot of people got hooked on science fiction thanks to the collection’s famous blue volumes. Some of these folks became loyal readers, and some went further and became writers. In my case, I was already writing at the time (I was working on the first draft of my novel La Espada de Fuego), but the Orbis collection sparked my imagination and fueled my creative energy.
César Mallorquí: When this collection appeared in Spain I was already a big genre fan, familiar with almost every title that they included, so it didn’t affect me much personally. But it was an extremely important collection in terms of disseminating science fiction among readers who barely knew it.
Juan Miguel Aguilera: A lot of the Orbis collection was based on the Ultramar collection, also spearheaded by Domingo Santos. The Orbis Library received more publicity and its impact abroad was larger, but here in Spain the Ultramar books, with their wonderful covers by Toni Garcés, are held in higher regard, and I think my peers would agree that they marked the beginning of our Golden Age.
On that subject: It’s been said that the Spanish Golden Age of science fiction occurred at the end of the 1990s. What was your involvement in that Golden Age, as writers and readers?
Elia Barceló: My first story was published in 1980 and my first book in 1989, when I was already living in Austria. I’ve been working in the field of science fiction ever since, though I must admit only part of my work can be considered science f
iction because in the intervening years I have expanded into different literary genres.
In any case, 1992 was the moment when, for the first time, I got together with other Spanish science fiction writers in Barcelona, at a short event organized by BEM (the fanzine) that allowed us to meet Joe Haldeman and gave us three days to talk about our favorite literary genre. In the nineties the SF world in Spain seemed to bloom. It was one of these wonderful times when you feel everybody is doing his/her best to contribute. There were lots of fanzines and magazines, new possibilities for publishing, new writers with new ideas, Hispacon every year, the Asturcon in Gijón (held the first weekend of the Semana Negra), the Semana Negra itself (which up to then had been a festival for crime literature), which allowed us to present our latest books, the UPC Award . . . It really was a great time.
I was very active during that decade, although having two kids and not living in Spain didn’t help, but I published three books and a dozen stories, won an Ignotus, contributed stories and articles to all the fanzines and magazines, compiled Visiones Propias II, the yearly anthology of the Asociación de Fantasía y Ciencia Ficción, was guest of honor at a couple of conventions, translated stories from English and German into Spanish, presented lots of books of fellow writers in Gijón, was on many panels, and so on. I was invited twice to Utopiales—the great French Festival held in Nantes—though that might have happened a bit later. Anyway, I was in touch with everybody, I tried to read everything that was being published and to help science fiction in Spain come into its own.
Rafael Marín: I would say that our Golden Age started in the mid-80s, then there was a brief parenthesis at the start of the 90s, and it resumed from the early 90s through to the mid-00s.
Juan Miguel Aguilera: For me it was the start of the 90s, or, more precisely, with the publication of Domingo Santos’ Ultramar collection at the end of the 80s. The first sign of the changes upon us was a novella by Rafael Marín, “Nunca digas buenas noches a un extraño,” which was published in the magazine Nueva Dimensión. At the time I didn’t know Rafael, but I remember thinking that that story was something new, unlike anything that had been published in Spain before. Later the novel Lágrimas de Luz appeared, also by Rafael. The 1987 novel I wrote with Javier Redal, Mundos en el Abismo, is considered by many to be one of the defining moments in the formation of Spanish science fiction as we know it today.
Eduardo Vaquerizo: I think that literature, as any art, happens in short bursts or waves that combine passion with state-of-the-art craftsmanship. The thing is that in the 90s large groups of young people fell deeply in love with the science fiction and fantasy that was being published in Nueva Dimensión, along with the Orbis and Minotauro publishing imprints. We were baby boomers, a generation of youngsters who had grown up reading Verne, Wells, Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon, Le Guin, Lem, Bradbury, Ballard, Dick and many others. There weren’t a lot of us, but we organized gatherings, usually at cheap Chinese restaurants, where we talked and ate and drank a lot.
We were enthusiastic conversationalists. At these gatherings there would almost always be a publisher present, or someone who produced a fanzine, or perhaps someone who hosted a radio talk show about science fiction and fantasy. We were a hardcore, very active group of fans. I think that was the secret: we were competing, judging each other’s works passionately, and publishing in small, even non-professional markets. But these markets turned out to be a good training ground, and they were quite professional regarding the selection of stories and the editing of fiction. Another powerful lever was the literary prizes, the only way to obtain some money writing science fiction and fantasy for us at the time.
The result was a noticeable rise in quality and in the number of active writers. The changes in the 90s happened as a result of the work done by previous genre fans. They paved the way for us. I’d like to believe that in the 90s we similarly paved the way for newer writers who are flourishing today.
Javier Negrete: I’m a bit skeptical about “Golden Age” labels, as well as those that allegedly define literary generations. That being said, the 90s wasn’t a bad time for science fiction. The UPC award, with its shortcomings—like paying inordinate attention to foreign authors, suggesting an attitude of deference—was really important in getting young or not-so-young authors to write short novels like crazy. The short novel, or novella, is an interesting form, because it forces the author to condense full plots and compelling characters into a small space, and that kind of discipline helps a writer grow.
Conventions like those of Cádiz, Burjassot and Gijón helped diverse authors meet in person. Besides leading to friendships, many of which continue to this day, the cons allowed for an exchange of ideas, projects, dreams . . . An interesting period, to be sure.
César Mallorquí: I was one of the writers that formed the 90s generation we’ve been discussing, so my involvement was significant. Nevertheless, at that time we didn’t have any “generational awareness” whatsoever. We simply wrote what we wanted to write, though we did notice that we were living in a period of great creative stirrings. It was beautiful.
In his 2007 survey of the history of Spanish science fiction (“Notas para una historia de la ciencia ficción en España”), Fernando Ángel Moreno Serrano writes that the 90s saw a growing appreciation for the “importance of language.” Agree/disagree? How important is this awareness today?
Rafael Marín: Writers and readers in the 70s were used to reading translations, in some cases very poor ones. Writers like me who arrived on the scene in the 80s read more mainstream novels by Spanish or South American writers. That influenced our style. Now we write knowing that form and language are important.
César Mallorquí: Until the 90s the few science fiction writers who published in our country were, in general, fans, happy to contribute but somewhat limited from a literary perspective. In the 90s a new generation appeared, better equipped with literary technique, and that was visible in the quality of the texts. Science fiction is, above all, literature, so the importance language is fundamental. That notion continues to be in play today.
Javier Negrete: Yes, I think that in the 90s several authors appeared who, without sacrificing story or plot, paid greater attention to the use of language than in previous decades. Of course, all generalizations are unfair: a writer like Bermúdez Castillo had already written brilliantly.
I suppose the cause of the improvement was that by this time there were more people writing science fiction than before. And with a greater base of writers, it makes sense that even in a statistical way there should be a rising number of authors with a heightened sense of style (I’m thinking of Rafael Marín and León Arsenal) as well as more efficient storytellers who didn’t sacrifice quality (like Juan Miguel Aguilera, César Mallorquí o Rodolfo Martínez).
The same seems to be happening now with authors who emerged after the year 2000. Some of them, like Emilio Bueso, have very well-developed and personal styles, while others like Virginia Pérez create a lot of tension and immediacy—these are just a few examples, of course there are many others. And there’s a great many authors who despite their best intentions don’t reach a quality of craft that I would consider professional. Which is to say, the same situation as twenty years ago. And you see it in other genres too, as confirmed by my experience as a judge for various young adult and historical novel awards.
Eduardo Vaquerizo: I agree. As I said before, thanks to the new wave of Orbis and Minotauro people in the 90s read a lot of new science fiction writers. And we read other things too—other genres, literature in our mother tongue, classics of world literature. Our interest was in literature first and foremost; with science fiction as a special case, unlike more conservative academics and mainstream writers who argue that literature and science fiction are distinct. Science fiction and fantasy are the literature of the marvelous. Literature is created through language, so of course we became interested in language. Writers must hone their artistic and communicative intentions a
nd abilities to push language beyond its formals limits.
Elia Barceló: Moreno Serrano is quite right, in my opinion, but I think this awareness had already formed in the mid-eighties, especially with writers like Rafael Marín, César Mallorquí and myself, all three of us coming not from “scientific” studies but from an academic training in the humanities.
Up to 1980, the average science fiction reader read only science fiction and lacked any (or almost any) knowledge of classical or mainstream literature. Most of the novels he had read—I say “he” because the typical science fiction reader at the time was male—were badly translated American novels by translators who couldn’t even write good Spanish prose. With this “school,” the few Spanish genre writers used to focus on story, idea, usually a simple plot. Style wasn’t a consideration.
When our generation started to write, many of us had university training and a few of us had majored in philology or history. We had read the classics, the great poets, and modern Latin American authors (García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Cortázar, Borges, etc.). Some of us could also read texts in different languages and were not forced to rely on the terrible translations that were typical of the genre.
We developed an awareness of the language we were using and not only that: we became aware that, when writing science fiction, we were writing literary texts. Ideas are important and plot is important, as are all elements in a story or novel, but in literature the core is language: its richness, its appropriateness, the way it is used to convey emotions, ideas, feelings . . . But at that time we had to fight against readers (and publishers, “critics,” etc.) who didn’t see the importance of writing “well.”