Audio/Video Interviews of SF Authors

[J-Sun]

I've just gone on a binge of playing mostly audio interviews of the SF greats and figured we needed a place to put links to such things. I'd like to hear more, myself, so if you know of any, pile 'em on!

If any of the following look interesting, go ahead and click but, if you need some encouragement or discouragement, I've written up details about them and my reactions to them here. It's definitely quicker to read than the interviews themselves, but much too long to post here.

• TVOF: Interviews with Hal Clement, Poul Anderson, A.E. van Vogt, Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl - a page with all four interviews in five files.
• Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson page (sort of) and a direct link
• Joe and Gay Haldeman
• Octavia E. Butler (video)

Long story short, they're great!

And I've just come across this:

Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, Frederik Pohl, and Gordon R. Dickson

This is basically a commercial for Ballantine but this was in the days when they had one hell of a lot to commert about. The first part, to the 22:15 mark, is Arthur C. Clarke discussing his work and naming his favorites among them. The remaining 35:15 is a group discussion of the other four greats and features the rare instance of something escaping Isaac Asimov's memory, good stuff on The Fall of Moondust, discussions on people as diverse as Hal Clement and Cordwainer Smith, and much more. Pohl is in three of these files and every one includes a slight variation on, "The only thing any writer has to sell is his point of view." Also, between the two sections of the file, you get a discussion of the Clarke-Asimov/Asimov-Clarke treaty from both sides!

-- Oh yeah - I forgot to pass on two links to sites apparently devoted to this sort of thing:

• The Science Fiction Oral History Association
• The Voices of Fandom

All these are on the page of my comments I linked to but wanted them here as well. And, as can be seen, my primary interest would be the pre-Web SF authors but any era of any relevant genre would be fair game, of course.

 

[Sourdust]

For video, the Canadian television series Prisoners of Gravity (1989-94) is worth a look: many of the episodes have been uploaded piecemeal to YouTube. (I doubt many people outside Ontario ever saw them at the time of broadcast.)

The framing device is rather goofy, with the presenter 'Commander Rick' supposedly stranded in space and picking up transmissions from earth, but he managed to get short talking head interviews with a wide variety of authors. The emphasis is on younger names who were fashionable at the time (William Gibson, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, etc), although there are a few older figures. In that sense, it's already fascinating as a time capsule of late 80s/early 90s trends (including the hairstyles and glasses).

There are of course all sorts of curios on YouTube, including some authors who have video channels themselves: New Wave fans may be amused by the webcam rants of Norman Spinrad, for instance, not that they constitute interviews.

 

[J-Sun]

Thank you! The gimmick for Prisoners of Gravity didn't sound good and I don't know that it's necessary but, until they wandered off on UFOs at the end, the episode I happened to catch ("First Contact", parts one, two, and three) were pretty substantial and interesting with brief comments from Hal Clement, Ben Bova, David Brin, and others. So it worked and I intend to check out more. I just wish they weren't all chopped up and were easier to navigate, but it was still worthwhile.

As a digression from that, one of the sidebar things led me to Bill Moyers doing a 1988 interview of Isaac Asimov (also chopped up and apparently, itself, part two of some larger set I couldn't find: B1, B2, B3) which was very interesting, especially when Asimov foresees the One Laptop Per Child concept of cheap networked educational tools (however disappointing that may be in its real details) and gets enthusiastic about education and mankind's capacity and need for it.

As far as Spinrad goes, I'm not a New Wave fan in terms of the "movement" but I like a very few authors and works from it and still promote "Spinrad for Grand Master award" when I can (this guy wrote Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream, Riding the Torch, The Void Captain's Tale and the stories in The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde and others, writes an often fascinating review column and has written some other SF-related non-fiction, has edited an anthology or two, and has been past president of the SFWA and more - I rest my case) but I didn't see too much of interest there - Spinrad seemed to lose something after the mid-80s and the youtube channel seems... eccentric. It seems similar to his blog content. I would like to see him talk criticism and review books somewhat as he does in his essays for Asimov's rather than the political and publishing polemics.

 

[Sourdust]

Yes, once you get past Rick's corny jokes, the actual interviews contain more serious reflections. (I haven't watched every episode - some of them lean towards more pop 'sci fi' themes.)

I just wish they weren't all chopped up and were easier to navigate, but it was still worthwhile.

I think until recently YouTube had a length limit of 10 minutes per clip, which necessitated chopping things up, and probably discouraged many people from bothering to digitise longer shows.

There must be people out there sitting on archives of old TV broadcasts and VHS footage filmed at conventions, waiting to be digitised. Currently there's a relative dearth of that sort of material on there. If you search for 'Readercon', there are a few recent panels of possible interest, but nothing from the pre-internet era.

P.S. The Spinrad channel is certainly eccentric - I suppose I meant the very idea of it was amusing, rather than the actual content. The risk of webcams is that people just rant into space (they call it 'vlogging').