Listen in as I look back half a century on what it was like being in the room with Len Wein and Dave Cockrum (or as much as I’m willing to admit) as they plotted Giant-Size X-Men #1, why my mid-’70s likeness still hangs on the wall at Marvel Comics HQ, my freelance income during the first six months of my life as a comics professional, the collaborative short stories my friends and I stayed awake 24 hours to write on Harlan Ellison’s 39th birthday, an article I commissioned for F.O.O.M. about collecting comics in 1975 which should make you weep 50 years later, how my meeting with Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton ended up being a Marvel Comics caption contest, and much more.

You can eavesdrop on all those memories via the embed below or download them at the site of your choice.

Here are some images which will enrich your listening experience, though they probably won’t make much sense without it —

My caricature on the wall at Marvel HQ

Marie Severin’s cover to F.O.O.M. #16
with her caricature of me circled

Call It Fate #1
with the first short story I ever wrote on the cover

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More than 30 years ago, I conducted a lengthy interview with Tom Disch. How lengthy? Once transcribed, it came to nearly 18,500 words, and took up 48 pages of the Winter 1986 of Last Wave. I’ve been thinking of that interview ever since my recent share of an equally intensive interview with Chip Delany, and decided the conversation was worth reviving here. Tom, who was one of my instructors at Clarion in 1979, deserves to be remembered.

John Clute wrote this about Tom in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia:

Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distanced mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Disch was perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern sf writers of the first rank.

I’ve always been in awe of that description. Read on to see whether you agree it was deserved.

But before you begin, I feel a couple of trigger warnings are in order:

First—as part of a discussion of how Tom’s homosexuality might have affected his writing, I raised the issue of sex change operations in the context of how certain editors were biased against life choices choices they couldn’t understand. I cringed just now reading how I framed that question, because in the intervening three decades since I asked it, I’ve come to believe that’s a lousy term to describe what’s actually happening under those circumstances, which is the bringing about an alignment of one’s inner and outer selves. I’d never ask that question in the same way today—because I now think of the process as being not a change but a gender confirmation—and I’m sorry I raised the topic that way then. But in the interests of historical accuracy and not ducking responsibility, I’m leaving in the question as it was asked in 1984.

As for second trigger warning—Tom makes a joking reference to John Norman novels and rape which I worry could be triggering for some. If you want to skip that completely, jump over the answer he gives to the question I raise about his review of a Ron Goulart novel.

Now that I’ve taken care of that—hoping that my attempts haven’t made things worse—here’s the entirely of the interview, as it appeared in the final issue of Last Wave.

Thomas M. Disch is one of the more talented and controversial figures in the science fiction field. His body of work encompasses short stories, novels, poems, opera libretti, essays, book reviews, and now even an interactive novel. In every instance he has chosen to work at a level of ambition of which only a handful of other genre writers share in the attempt. He has created works of a remarkably high quality, and at the same time enraged many for his failure to fall into the lockstep of genre requirements. The following interview took place on August 11, 1984 in Tom Disch’s Manhattan apartment.

Last Wave: I think of you as being a joyful writer, as opposed to being the depressing writer which many other people seem to paint you. In your early novel The Genocides, for instance, which is one often given as an example of a depressing work because the benign, indifferent aliens win, I find triumphal joy, for the protagonists in it do triumph with dignity against great odds over the human evil around them. In your recent On Wings of Song, which I’ve read one reviewer claim to be a cynical book, I see a happy ending: David Weinreb does get free and fly. For some reason many people prefer to see him as dying. In rereading these two works and all else inbetween, I just don’t see the cynicism which the overwhelming majority of readers chooses to focus on. Why do you think there is this myth of your work being such a downer? (more…)

I’m working on an essay in which I intend to insert that famous Charles Beaumont quote about achieving success in Hollywood, a quote I’ve had reason to paraphrase many times before. This time, though, since I’ll be sharing it in a major national newspaper, I’ve decided that paraphrasing just won’t cut it. But nailing down Beaumont’s exact wording, even with the Internet, has proven difficult.

For example, one version, as passed along by Harlan Ellison in his introduction to Shatterday, goes—

Attaining success in Hollywood is like climbing a gigantic mountain of cow flop, in order to pluck one perfect rose from the summit. And you find when you’ve made that hideous climb … you’ve lost the sense of smell.

While another site replaces the cow flop with cow shit like so—

Achieving success in Hollywood is like climbing an enormous a mountain of cow shit so that you can pluck that one perfect rose from the top. And you find after you’ve made that hideous ascent, you’ve lost the sense of smell.

Still another misattributes the quote to Henry Slesar, while changing the make-up of that mountain—

Success in Hollywood is like climbing to the top of a mountain of manure to pluck one perfect rose– only to discover that you’ve lost your sense of smell.

So … which is it?

Climb? Ascent?

Achieving? Attaining?

Cow flop? Cow shit? Manure?

Do any of you know of a primary source for this quote? Should that first Ellison source be considered the most accurate?

There was no Instagram back in 2004—but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from Instagramming the 2004 Nebula Awards weekend!

Early tomorrow morning, I leave for San Jose to attend the 2014 Nebula Awards weekend. So what better time than now to take a few peeks at the same event held a decade ago in Seattle.

Slightly younger Robert Silverberg meets much younger Robert Silverberg

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I dreamt this morning that I visited Harlan Ellison. Not in the playhouse he and Susan occupy in the real world, though. In my dreamland, they were living in an urban area in one of the storefronts of a strip mall. I never got inside, however, as Harlan came outside to greet me and talk. There was a dry cleaning shop immediately next door, and the owner stood in his doorway and watched us as we had our conversation.

We showed off signature sheets of our future projects to each other, and cooed over the illustrations we had gotten. Now that I’m awake, I can no longer identify the artists or the books in which the drawings were meant to appear, but the intricate color artwork was amazing. It was a pleasant, warm, friendly conversation.

One of Harlan’s publishers arrived to discuss his next book, so I said goodbye. We made plans to meet again before I left, though.

As I took off, I noted a large sign in the parking lot which contained a giant comic-book word balloon the size of a car, meant to be filled in by old-style movie theater letters, or the kind you see used in church signs. Beneath it was a note to Harlan’s visitors which seemed aimed more at those fans he wouldn’t come out to see. They were invited to fill in the balloon with quotations, and if Harlan liked the saying he would leave it until the next visitor came along to change it.

As I crossed the street, I had to leap to avoid getting hit by a bus. Then, walking back to the train station so I could head home, I got lost. I woke as I wandered.

It was 6:15, and I would have liked to roll over and get another hour of sleep, but could not. I had Harlan on my mind.

As part of the celebration of Esquire‘s 75th anniversary year, the 75th page of the December 2008 issue of the magazine contains brief quotes from what the staff considers to be the seven greatest stories they’ve ever published, with a link pointing to the complete stories.

In addition to Tom Wolfe’s “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson, Yes!” (which I’d read over over again in the collection The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby back in college when I thought I was going to follow in Wolfe’s footsteps) and Norman Mailer’s “Superman Comes to the Supermarket” (which is not about the superhero, but rather the Kennedy/Nixon debate), they’ve posted the full text of Gay Talese’s classic personality piece from the April 1966 issue, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”

For those of you who’ve never read the piece and don’t understand why you should care, well, aside from the fact that it’s wonderfully written, it also includes a cameo by Harlan Ellison, who went head-to-head with the Chairman of the Board and lived to tell the tale. (more…)

Another reason that Harlan Ellison entered my dream earlier this week may have been because he entered my pants almost a decade ago, something which I had forgotten until Julia Duncan showed me this picture at last weekend’s Halloween party.

I hadn’t even known that this picture existed, and had forgotten about my antics back at Readercon 11, but now that she’s shared a scan of the photo with me, I’m sharing it with you. (more…)

In this morning’s dream, I’m very aware that I have an appointment to get together with Kim Newman at a specific time, but instead I find myself in the back seat of a moving car sorting potatoes. I’ve got about a bushel’s worth of baking potatoes in a paper bag, and I’m transferring them to a box, arranging them in neat rows as I do so. As I admire my handiwork, I suddenly realize that in the front of the car are Harlan and Susan Ellison. Harlan is driving, while Susan is in the passenger seat.

Susan tells me that she wished I’d have let them buy the potatoes, because there’s no way I could have found any as good as the ones they could have picked up. I insist that I’ve managed to find absolutely perfect potatoes. As Harlan drives, he reaches back so I can place one in his hand. He looks at it and says that he knows where to find better. He speeds up, while I wonder how long this is going to take and whether this trip is going to end with me standing up Kim Newman. (more…)

When I first started reading science fiction, my gods were three:

Isaac Asimov.

Robert Heinlein.

And Arthur C. Clarke.

Those were the writers I read and reread. Those were also the writers whom, when I first thought I might become a writer, I wanted to be. As far as I was concerned, they were science fiction.

In my late teens, when I began to rebel, I found a new set of gods. Once more, there were three of them:

Roger Zelazny.

Samuel R. Delany.

And Harlan Ellison.

Now that the last of my first set of gods has departed for a new odyssey, and I pause to mourn as many of us are doing today, I also find myself thinking that those entering science fiction today must have their own set of living gods, for the ones I began with must surely seem as ancient as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells did to me by the time I got around to reading them.

I won’t even begin to attempt to fill in those new names today, just say that even as I mourn the passing of Arthur C. Clarke, I also celebrate that continuum of which we all are a part.

We can only see so far today because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Clarke was definitely one of them. We are all indebted to him, and were extremely lucky to have had him with us for so long.

I dreamt last night that I was editing and publishing a boutique magazine such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet or Electric Velocipede, and was witness to a conversation between Allen Steele and Harlan Ellison.

Allen saying that, no, Harlan couldn’t have John Kessel’s newest story for whatever project Harlan was working on, because John had already promised that story to me. Not sure why it was up to Allen to be delivering the news rather than John himself, but John didn’t appear in the dream. I turned to Ellen Datlow, who was in the dream, and bragged about the coup.

Then I woke up.