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 heard back a little while ago from whoever runs the Pimsleur Approach Twitter feed in response to my contacting them about their company’s presumably unauthorized use of Isaac Asimov in its advertising.

Here’s what they had to say.

I’m happy to hear that the Good Doctor will be set free. Still waiting to hear back to my follow-up question asking what bizarre mix-up could have led to this happening in the first place, though—after all, Asimov didn’t get there on his own.

In case you were wondering, this morning, 48 hours after I first noticed it, the face of Isaac Asimov is still being used to tout Pimsleur Approach on the front page of the Huffington Post.

Only today, poor Isaac is doing it twice!

I’m hoping that since it’s no longer a weekend, someone at one of those two companies will quickly take notice of the fact that this is presumably an unauthorized usage and quickly put an end to it.

But what do you think the chances are of that?

I woke up today and checked the Huffington Post, as I often do as part of my morning new scrounge, and was surprised to spot Isaac Asimov’s head bouncing around in an ad for Pimsleur Approach.

Check out my (non-moving) screen grab.

I find it hard to believe that the use of his well-known face in this ad is authorized.

Isaac Asimov … endorsing Pimsleur? This can’t be a real thing. Can it? I don’t recall him ever writing anything on that subject, or hearing him pontificate on it, and a Google search only turns up a single reference that connects the two—and that’s for people who are equally as pissed off at seeing a great man misused by it as I am!

This traduces his memory and lessens his (though I kinda hate to use this word about the Good Doctor) brand.

So Pimsleur Approach people, just stop, OK? And if it’s not something the Pimsleur people did, but is instead the responsibility of the Huffington Post’s ad department, then they should knock it off. A photo of Isaac Asimov is not a stock image that can be used to imply endorsement.

I’ve written both companies to ask WTF is going on, and will let you know what I find out.

UPDATE: As of 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Asimov’s face is still shilling …

I interviewed Isaac Asimov on November 7, 1972—Election Day—for my high school alternative newspaper, Kong. When I ran across the tape last year, I discovered to my horror that three years later, I’d recorded over the first 31 minutes of that tape with a second interview, this one with Steve Gerber. So all that remains of my Asimov interview are these concluding five minutes.

Please don’t hate me … but you’re free to hate the impetuous 19-year-old me who reused the tape!

The photo embedded on the video below shows us in Doubleday’s Park Avenue offices. Isaac is wearing his traditional bolo necktie. Unfortunately, I can be seen wearing a puka shell necklace, which I guess I thought was cool back when I was 17.

We discuss the sexual aspects of The Gods Themselves, the number of typewriters he owns, his advice for breaking into the business, and more.

I’m the one who asks the first complete question about the collection The Early Asimov, and it’s Asimov, of course, who answers. The third voice is that of high school classmate Eric Shalit.

Following up on my discovery of a tape of my 1972 interview with George Carlin, I decided to see whether I could locate tape for another interview I’d done that year, one I conducted with Isaac Asimov for a high-school underground newspaper. Check the two of us out below.

Imagine my thrill when I managed to find a cassette tape labeled:

And imagine with what excitement I inserted that cassette into a tape recorder.

Then imagine the disappointment as I heard …

…. 45 minutes of piano music.

OK, I thought, maybe the interview only took up the other side of the C-90 cassette tape. So I turned it over and heard—

—the voice of Steve Gerber! (more…)

Yesterday’s mail brought a copy of Tor’s hardcover reissue of Isaac Asimov’s The Currents of Space, a novel which was originally published in 1952, and which I likely first read in the late ’60s. I haven’t read it since. I have no idea whether it would hold up today, or how differently its story would be perceived by the adult me as opposed to my teen self.

But what I’m thinking most about isn’t any possible changed reaction to the novel, but rather my very different reaction the dedication.

Asimov dedicated the book—

To David, who took his time coming, but was worth waiting for

Isaac’s son David was born in 1951, the year before The Currents of Space was released. When I first read those words, I probably paid them little attention. What teenager would? But I can now imagine Isaac having written the words to that dedication while filled with a father’s pride, and with hope for the future they would have together, not knowing that their relationship would turn out to be a rocky one. (more…)

I was looking back through some of my earliest publications and came across this ad for GEnie’s SF & Fantasy RoundTable as printed on the inside front cover of the November 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Raise your hand if you can remember GEnie, or having to “set your modem for half duplex (local echo) at 300 or 1200 baud.” Does anyone still have to do that sort of thing, or have such manipulations gone the way of the buggy whip?

I can’t remember the exact year I joined GEnie, only that it was so early in the online timeline that there really wasn’t any other reason to be online. Back then, GEnie was where all the cool kids hung out … sort of like LJ today.

The solicitation may look primitive now, but it sure seemed tantalizing and state of the art back then.

I can’t wait to see how primitive today’s online interfaces (and the ads for them) will look nineteen years from now!

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.

Had he still been with us, Isaac Asimov would have turned 87 three days ago. Well … at least, that’s when he would have celebrated it, as he was never really sure of the exact date.

As he put it in his autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, “It could not have been later than that. It might, however, have been earlier. Allowing for the uncertainties of the times, of the lack of records, of the Jewish and Julian calendars, it might have been as early as October 4, 1919. There is, however, no way of finding out. My parents were always uncertain and it really doesn’t matter. I celebrate January 2, 1920, so let it be.”

So, in honor of that maybe/maybe not birthday, let’s step into the Wayback Machine. Here I am, visiting Doubleday’s Park Avenue offices to interview Isaac back in the ’70s for my high school underground newspaper. Click through the image for a better look at Isaac, garbed in his customary bolo necktie. I, unfortunately, can be seen wearing a puka shell necklace, which I guess I thought was cool back when I was 16 or so. At least I wasn’t wearing a headband!