I was particularly attracted to Blish and Sturgeon. Both were soft-spoken and charming conversationalists. Jim and I would take walks in Central Park during his lunch hour (he was then working as a public relations officer for a pharmaceutical house) and we would talk shop. Although I was an admirer of his work, I felt that it lacked the hard drive to which I'd been trained, and I constantly urged him to attack his stories with more vigor. He never seemed to resent it, or at least was too courteous to show it. His basic problem was how to hold down a PR writing job and yet do creative writing on the side. I had no advice for that. It's a problem which very few people have solved.
Sturgeon and I used to meet occasionally in bars for drinks and talk. Ted's writing exactly suited my taste, which is why I thought he was the finest of us all. But he had a quality which amused and exasperated me. Like Mort Sahl and a few other celebrities I've interviewed—Tony Quinn is another Ted lived on crisis, and if he wasn't in a crisis, he'd create one for himself. His life was completely disorganized, so it was impossible for him to do his best work consistently. What a waste!
In all fairness I should do a description of myself. I will, but I'm going to save it for the end.
I'd written a contemporary novel based on my TV experiences and it had a fairly decent reprint sale and at last sold to the movies. My wife and I decided to blow the loot on a few years abroad. We put everything into storage, contracted for a little English car, stripped our luggage down to the bare minimum and took off. The only writing materials I brought with me were a portable, my Commonplace Book, a thesaurus, and an idea for another science fiction novel.
For some time I'd been toying with the notion of using the Count of Monte Cristo pattern for a story. The reason is simple; I'd always preferred the antihero, and I'd always found high drama in compulsive types. It remained a notion until we bought our cottage on Fire Island and I found a pile of old National Geographies. Naturally I read them and came across a most interesting piece on the survival of torpedoed sailors at sea. The record was held by a Philippine cook's helper who lasted for something like four months on an open raft. Then came the detail that racked me up. He'd been sighted several times by passing ships which refused to change course to rescue him because it was a Nazi submarine trick to put out decoys like this. The magpie mind darted down, picked it up, and the notion was transformed into a developing story with a strong attack.
The Stars My Destination (I've forgotten what my working title was) began in a romantic white cottage down in Surrey. This accounts for the fact that so many of the names are English. When I start a story, I spend days reading through telephone directories for help in putting together character names— I'm very fussy about names—and in this case I used English directories. I'm compelled to find or invent names with varying syllables. One, two, three, and four. I'm extremely sensitive to tempo. I'm also extremely sensitive to word color and context. For me there is no such thing as a synonym.
The book got under way very slowly and by the time we left Surrey for a flat in London, I had lost momentum. I went back, took it from the top and started all over again, hoping to generate steam pressure. I write out of hysteria. I bogged down again and I didn't know why. Everything seemed to go wrong. I couldn't use a portable, but the only standard machines I could rent had English keyboards. That threw me off. English ms. paper was smaller than the American, and that threw me off. And I was cold, cold, cold. So in November we packed and drove to the car ferry at Dover, with the fog snapping at our ass all the way, crossed the Channel and drove south to Rome.
After many adventures we finally settled into a penthouse apartment on the Piazza della Muse. My wife went to work in Italian films. I located the one (1) standard typewriter in all Rome with an American keyboard and started in again, once more taking it from the top. This time I began to build up momentum, very slowly, and was waiting for the hysteria to set in. I remember the day that it came vividly.
I was talking shop with a young Italian film director for whom my wife was working, both of us beefing about the experimental things we'd never been permitted to do. I told him about a note on synesthesia which I'd been dying to write as a TV script for years. I had to explain synesthesia—this was years before the exploration of psychedelic drugs—and while I was describing the phenomenon I suddenly thought, "Jesus Christ! This is for the novel. It leads me into the climax." And I realized that what had been holding me up for so many months was the fact that I didn't have a fiery finish in mind. I must have an attack and a finale. I'm like the old Hollywood gag, "Start with an earthquake and build to a climax."
The work went well despite many agonies. Rome is no place for a writer who needs quiet. The Italians fa rumore (make noise) passionately. The pilot of a Piper Cub was enchanted by a girl who sunbathed on the roof of a mansion across the road and buzzed her, and me, every morning from seven to nine. There were frequent informal motorcycle rallies in our piazza and the Italians always remove the mufflers from their vehicles; it makes them feel like Tazio Nuvolare. On the other side of our penthouse a building was in construction, and you haven't heard rumore until you've heard stonemasons talking politics.
I also had research problems. The official U.S. library was woefully inadequate. The British Consulate library was a love, and I used it regularly, but none of their books was dated later than 1930, no help for a science fiction writer needing data about radiation belts. In desperation, I plagued Tony Boucher and Willy Ley with letters asking for information. They always came through, bless them, Tony on the humanities— "Dear Tony, what the hell is the name of that Russian sect that practiced self-castration? Slotsky? Something like that."—Willy on the disciplines— "Dear Willy, how long could an unprotected man last in naked space? Ten minutes? Five minutes? How would he die?"
The book was completed about three months after the third start in Rome; the first draft of a novel usually takes me about three months. Then there's the pleasant period of revision and rewriting; I always enjoy polishing. What can I say about the material? I've told you about the attack and the climax. I've told you about the years of preparation stored in my mind and my Commonplace Book. If you want the empiric equation for my science fiction writing—for all my writing, in fact, it's:
Discipline
Experiment
Experience
Pattern sense
Concept + Drama sense = Story <-> Statement
Preparation
Imagination
Extrapolation
Hysteria
I must enlarge on this just a little. The mature science fiction author doesn't merely tell a story about Brick Malloy vs. The Giant Yeastmen from Gethsemane. He makes a statement through his story. What is the statement? Himself, the dimension and depth of the man. His statement is seeing what everybody else sees but thinking what no one else has thought, and having the courage to say it. The hell of it is that only time will tell whether it was worth saying.
Back in London the next year, I was able to meet the young English science fiction authors through Ted Camell and my London publisher. They gathered in a pub somewhere off the Strand. They were an entertaining crowd, speaking with a rapidity and intensity that reminded me of a debating team from the Oxford Union. And they raised a question which I've never been able to answer: Why is it that the English science fiction writers, so brilliant socially, too often turn out rather dull and predictable stories? There are notable exceptions, of course, but I have the sneaky suspicion that they had American mothers.
John Wyndham and Arthur Clarke came to those gatherings. I thought Arthur rather strange, very much like John Campbell, utterly devoid of a sense of humor, and I'm always ill at ease with humorless people. Once he pledged us all to come to the meeting the following week; he would show slides of some amazing underwater photographs he had taken. He did indeed bring a projector and slides and show them. After looking at a few I called, "Damn it, Arthur, these aren't underwater shots. You took them in an aquari
um. I can see the reflections in the plate glass." And it degenerated into an argument about whether the photographer and his camera had to be underwater, too.
It was around this time that an event took place which will answer a question often asked me: Why did I drop science fiction after my first two novels? I'll have to use a flashback, a device I despise, but I can't see any other way put. A month before I left the States, my agent called me in to meet a distinguished gentleman, senior editor of Holiday magazine, who was in search of a feature on television. He told me that he'd tried two professional magazine writers without success, and as a last resort wanted to try me on the basis of the novel I'd written about the business.
It was an intriguing challenge. I knew television, but I knew absolutely nothing about magazine piece-writing. So once again I explored, experimented and taught myself. Holiday liked the piece so much that they asked me to do pieces on Italian, French and English TV while I was abroad, which I did. Just when my wife and I had decided to settle in London permanently, word came from Holiday that they wanted me to come back to the States. They were starting a new feature called "The Antic Arts" and wanted me to become a regular monthly contributor. Another challenge. I returned to New York.
An exciting new writing life began for me. I was no longer immured in my workshop; I was getting out and interviewing interesting people in interesting professions. Reality had become so colorful for me that I no longer needed the therapy of science fiction. And since the magazine imposed no constraints on me, outside of the practical requirements of professional magazine technique, I no longer needed a safety valve.
I wrote scores of pieces, and I confess that they were much easier than fiction, so perhaps I was lazy. But try to visualize the joy of being sent back to your old university to do a feature on it, going to Detroit to test-drive their new cars, taking the very first flight of the Boeing 747, interviewing Sophia Loren in Pisa, De Sica in Rome, Peter Ustinov, Sir Laurence Olivier (they called him Sir Larry in Hollywood), Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor, George Balanchine. I interviewed and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, until it became cheaper for Holiday to hire me as senior editor, and here was a brand-new challenge.
I didn't altogether lose touch with science fiction; I did book reviews for Fantasy & Science Fiction under Bob Mills's editorship and later Avram Davidson's. Unfortunately, my standards had become so high that I seemed to infuriate the fans who wanted special treatment for science fiction. My attitude was that science fiction was merely one of many forms of fiction and should be judged by the standards which apply to all. A silly story is a silly story whether written by Robert Heinlein or Norman Mailer. One enraged fan wrote in to say that I was obviously going through change of life.
Alas, all things must come to an end. Holiday failed after a robust twenty-five years; my eyes failed, like poor Congreve's; and here I am, here I am, back in my workshop again, immured and alone, and so turning to my first love, my original love, science fiction. I hope it's not too late to rekindle the affair. Ike Asimov once said to me, "Alfie, we broke new trails in our time but we have to face the fact that we're over the hill now." I hope not, but if it's true, I'll go down fighting for a fresh challenge.
What am I like? Here's as honest a description of myself as possible. You come to my workshop, a three-room apartment, which is a mess, filled with books, mss., typewriters, telescopes, microscopes, reams of typing paper, chemical glassware. We live in the apartment upstairs, and my wife uses my kitchen for a storeroom. This annoys me; I used to use it as a laboratory. Here's an interesting sidelight. Although I'm a powerful drinker I won't permit liquor to be stored there; I won't have booze in my workshop.
You find me on a high stool at a large drafting table editing some of my pages. I'm probably wearing flimsy pajama bottoms, an old shirt and am barefoot; my customary at-home clothes. You see a biggish guy with dark brown hair going grey, a tight beard nearly all white and the dark brown eyes of a sad spaniel. I shake hands, seat you, hoist myself on the stool again and light a cigarette, always chatting cordially about anything and everything to put you at your ease. However, it's possible that I like to sit higher than you because it gives me a psychological edge—I don't think so, but I've been accused of it.
My voice is a light tenor (except when I'm angry; then it turns harsh and strident) and is curiously inflected. In one sentence I can run up and down an octave. I have a tendency to drawl my vowels. I've spent so much time abroad that my speech pattern may seem affected, for certain European pronunciations cling to me. I don't know why. GA-rahj for garage, the French "r" in the back of the throat, and if there's a knock on the door I automatically holler, "Avanti!" a habit I picked up in Italy.
On the other hand my speech is larded with the customary profanity of the entertainment business, as well as Yiddish words and professional phrases. I corrupted the WASP Holiday office. It was camp to have a blond junior editor from Yale come into my office and say, "Alfie, we're having a tsimmis with the theater piece. That goniff won't rewrite." What you don't know is that I always adapt my speech pattern to that of my vis-à-vis in an attempt to put him at his ease. It can vary anywhere from burley (burlesque) to Phi Beta Kappa.
I try to warm you by relating to you, showing interest in you, listening to you. Once I sense that you're at your ease I shut up and listen. Occasionally I'll break in to put a question, argue a point, or ask you to enlarge on one of your ideas. Now and then I'll say, "Wait a minute, you're going too fast. I have to think about that." Then I stare into nowhere and think hard. Frankly, I'm not lightning, but a novel idea can always launch me into outer space. Then I pace excitedly, exploring it out loud.
What I don't reveal is the emotional storm that rages within me. I have my fair share of frustrations and despairs, but I was raised to show a cheerful countenance to the world and suffer in private. Most people are too preoccupied with their own troubles to be much interested in yours. Do you remember Viola's lovely line in Twelfth Night? "And, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief."
I have some odd mannerisms. I use the accusing finger of a prosecuting attorney as an exclamation point to express appreciation for an idea or a witticism. I'm a "toucher," hugging and kissing men and women alike, and giving them a hard pat on the behind to show approval. Once I embarrassed my boss, the Holiday editor-in-chief, terribly. He'd just returned from a junket to India and, as usual, I breezed into his office and gave him a huge welcoming hug and kiss. Then I noticed he had visitors there. My boss turned red and told them, "Alfie Bester is the most affectionate straight in the world."
I'm a faker, often forced to play the scene. In my time I've been mistaken for a fag, a hardhat, a psychiatrist, an artist, a dirty old man, a dirty young man, and I always respond in character and play the scene. Sometimes I'm compelled to play opposites—my fast to your slow, my slow to your fast—all this to the amusement and annoyance of my wife. When we get home she berates me for being a liar and all I can do is laugh helplessly while she swears she'll never trust me again.
I do laugh a lot, with you and at myself, and my laughter is loud and uninhibited. I'm a kind of noisy guy. But don't ever be fooled by me even when I'm clowning. That magpie mind is always looking to pick up something.
Hell's Cartographers, 1975
Introduction to the Interviews
Editor's Note: Bester provided written introductions for the stories and articles that made up the 1976 omnibus anthology Starlight. This one originally appeared as a preface to the Isaac Asimov interview that appears here. In a slightly altered form, it provides a good introduction to his collected interviews in toto.
The question most often asked by fans is: Why did I stop writing science fiction? The answer is difficult because I'm a complex man with tangled motivations. However, I can try oversimplifying. Many times I've been driven off a bus by a child nagging its mother with "I wan' ice cream,"—over and over again. I can't endure repetition;
I enjoy only new things. I'm the exact opposite to Gustave Lebair, a famous bibliomaniac, who read the same book St. Apollonius of Tyana in the Bibliothéque Nationale every day for sixty years. A perceptive friend once said, "Alfie Bester believes that the entire world was made for his entertainment." I really don't go quite that far in my selfish egotism, but I come damned close to it.
When I was serving my apprenticeship and trying to become a master craftsman in my profession, science fiction was merely one of many fields that I attacked. There were also comics, slick fiction, mainstream novels, radio and television scripts. As soon as I mastered a field and became successful, I'd be driven off the bus and have to catch another one in my search for the entertainment of a fresh challenge. I don't mean to imply that I was successful in everything I tried. I had my fair share of grim failures, and I'm saving them up to have another go.
My two successful science fiction novels of many years ago brought me dangerously close to boredom with the field. Brian Aldiss is much kinder than I am to myself. He says, "No. You stopped writing science fiction because you realized that you'd said all you had to say. I wish more writers would have that good sense." That may be true, but the fact is it was my association with Holiday magazine that cut me off from other forms of writing.
Holiday was a godsend to a man of my temperament. As a regular contributor and ultimately a senior editor, my professional life was filled with variety, fresh challenges, and constant entertainment. As an interviewer and feature writer, I had to master a new and difficult craft. Once mastered, there was no danger of boredom because I was meeting and spending time with hundreds of fascinating people in hundreds of different professions. With the cachet of a then-important magazine backing me, no door was ever closed; ideal for an incurably curious man.
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