Harry Turtledove Interview

Hello, Harry: many thanks for giving us some time here. Welcome to SFFWorld.

We’re writing these questions as Open Road Media are releasing some of your older work in the USA as e-books.

Of the current list currently on sale (The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, A Different Flesh, Agent of Byzantium, Prince of the North and Werenight). Have you got any particular personal favourites in that list?

This one, I’m afraid, I’m going to duck. Asking me which book is my favorite is like asking me which daughter is my favorite (coming from the more populous English-speaking country on this side of the Pond, I spell it without the “u”).

How comfortable are you generally with seeing the re-appearance of older work? Is it something you’re happy to do, reaching a potentially new, wider audience, or are they something from your past but something you’ve moved on from?

I’m always pleased to see the old stuff turn up again (and I’m taking no notice of whoever’s thinking “like a bad penny’). There are so many books every year, people often forget about ones that go by them without getting read as soon as they come out. Now rather more people have some suspicion of who I am, so with luck I can amuse them–and get them to spend a little money–with things they haven’t run across before.

And now from the present to the past, for a little while.

Can you tell us how you started writing?

I was still in elementary school when I realized I had the ability. I started reading sf in the third grade, and really got hooked when I turned 11 or so. I tried a novel at 13, finished a novel at 16, and have the typical writer’s half-million trunk words that no one will ever read because they’re really, really bad. But, as with anything else, you have to learn your licks somehow. Nobody turns into Richard Thompson the second he picks up a guitar, either.

Who and what did you read while growing up?

Well, Norton and Heinlein were what hooked me on sf. I read whatever was in the library and whatever I could find in the paperback racks at drugstores and at secondhand stores. People I soon discovered included Eric Frank Russell and L. Sprague de Camp. Buying de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall when I was 15 or so was what interested me in Byzantine history to begin with, he said, cleverly seguing toward the next question.

You have a background in History – including a Ph.D in Byzantine History! Does having such a background help or hinder your fictional writing?

It’s an enormous help. For one thing, I know languages and bits of history that are really and truly obscure to most people. That gives me a wellspring of material to draw on. For another, I have the research and evaluative skills a training in history gives me. I can find out strange things, and I can make a pretty fair stab at figuring out what’s true and what ain’t.

Of the many historical events and eras you’ve covered, which is your favourite and why?

Whichever one I’m working on. If they weren’t fun, I wouldn’t have anything to do with them.

What do you like about writing Alternative History? We’ve been told that it’s rather like being able to be God, as you have the power to move things around and see the consequences of alternative choices of your choosing? How true would you say that is?

A friend of mine once said writing a-h was the most fun you could have with your clothes on. I don’t know that she’s right, but I also don’t know that she’s wrong. I have the kind of mind that likes to change one thing and imagine what springs from that. It’s the same extrapolative urge that informs other sf, but put on a different place in the timeline. Any fiction writing, of course, is playing God. But if you come on as the Hairy Thunderer, no one will want to read you no matter what you turn out. Less is often more.

Writing ‘an alternative’ suggests that you know much about the ‘real’ version of events. How much research do you have to do, to ‘get the facts right’, so to speak, before you start changing it?

The more you know about what really happened, the better you’re likely to do goofing on it. This is not to say that you should let your research show very much. On the contrary; “I’ve done my homework and you’re gonna suffer for it” is one of alternate history’s besetting sins. Tell as little as you can get away with. A-H stories are about people affected by changes, not about the changes themselves. Or they’d better be.

A couple of questions from the SFFWorld Forums here – In your opinion, can an author write Alternative History without earning a Masters or a Doctorate in the subject?

Yes. Of course. See, just for instance, Poul Anderson (physics) and S.M. Stirling (law). You do need an interest in history, though.

In your opinion, should alternate history be very different from known history or should it strongly parallel known history? For example, should a story about a surviving Third Reich have it fall in a similar way to the USSR?

It depends entirely on the story. There is no hard-and-fast answer to that. I will say that the collapse of the USSR gave rise to the possibility of stories about a victorious and then decaying Third Reich. Before that, the totalitarian states were pretty much seen as “a boot in the face of mankind forever,” to quote Orwell.

How do you balance between keeping people, places and events historically correct whilst at the same time creating your own version?

Carefully. That’s where experience and art come in.

Have you traveled to any of the places you write about? Has that influenced your writing?

Yes. Three places that immediately spring to mind are Stonehenge, Hawaii, and Yellowstone. Seeing it with your own eyes, experiencing it with your own senses, means a lot.

Looking back now, do you think your writing style has changed over the years?

I like to think that I’m smoother and subtler than I used to be. Naturally, just because I like to think it doesn’t have to mean it’s true.

How long did it take you to find your niche in the world of writers?

When a Del Rey publicist called me “the master of alternate history,” I pretty much found myself hammered into a niche. I do other things, too.

Over the years you have written a stunningly impressive number of books: we make it at least 90! In all that time, has your writing process changed much?

No. I’m a primitive. I still do first draft in longhand. This is because I’m old enough to have started trying to write on a typewriter keyboard, one of the less user-friendly devices around. Instead of continually retyping pages till I got them the way I wanted them, I did them in longhand till satisfied, then transcribed that. I still do, only cleaning things up with a WP is a lot easier.

Any insights you would be able to share for those aspiring writers seeking advice?

Write. Keep writing. Put it on the market. Keep putting it on the market. Repeat, over and over and over again. Be stubborn. Persistence counts in this racket, more than anything else, very possibly including talent.

Undoubtedly, the Science Fiction and Fantasy field are genres that have grown in style, maturity and complexity over the years. Do you find yourself still reading for entertainment much? Or do you tend to read away from the genre?

The one real drawback of professional writing for me is that I tend to read fiction analytically, not for fun. Most of my reading these days is nonfiction or old favorites.

Over your career of over 35 years, you have, without a doubt, been an extremely influential author. Although you do write a variety of fiction, it is your Alternate History that has been most recognised. As you have said already, this is to the point where you have been referred to as a ‘Master of Alternative History’, as well as other things. How comfortable are you with such titles?

It feels like a straitjacket. A well-padded straitjacket, perhaps, because I’ve been lucky enough to make a living as a writer, but a straitjacket nonetheless. I do enjoy writing other kinds of things, which is, I suppose, why I keep doing short fiction, too. I’m closer to a free-range critter there.

Do you ever feel an itch to try and “rebrand” yourself?

Sounds painful.

At this point in your career, do you feel that you are able to write what you want or are you more concerned about pleasing the fans and trying to write something that will get readers for your books?

Either or both, depending on what I’m working on, or sometimes on the time or day or phase of the moon.

And, in 2015? What are your aspirations today?

Same as always. To write as well as I can. To try to get better.

How are you finding the e-book revolution? Are you happy with an e-reader these days, or do you still prefer ‘tree-books’?

I prefer print on paper. But I know that there were cuneiform-reading Babylonians who hated the transition from clay tablets to papyrus and parchment, too.

You also have a new book being released in July, Bombs Away. Can you tell us a bit about it?

It opens in late 1950, when the Chinese crossing the Yalu in the Korean War are more successful than they were in real history, and destroy much of the UN (mostly US, though there were British and Turkish and other troops as well) force up there. Truman decides to nuke several cities in Manchuria in response to slow Mao down, Stalin responds in kind on the USA’s European allies, and things go downhill from there.

I guess at this point it would be appropriate to ask the age-old question: what is it that keeps you writing, today – or have you now got to the point where you can happily walk away, feeling that ‘the job is done’?

Well, the most basic answer is, I still do need to make a living. I’ve developed this substance dependency on food over the years, and I don’t know how to kick it (mm, actually, I do know how to kick it, but that seems too permanent a solution). And doing things I haven’t done before and finding out about things I didn’t know before remains fun. So I’ll stick around annoying people for as long as they’re willing to put up with me, I suppose.

Ha ha! Great answer. Harry – once again, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you!

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