Mindscanned: an interview with Robert J. Sawyer
01/07/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
Our glorious editor GF Willmetts sits down with Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer to chat about whether aliens visiting Earth are likely to be friendly or aggressive, dropping pop-cultural references into his books, why Rob's turning down offers to write short fiction for $1.25 a word, and why what really attracts people to scifi is the need to be amazed. Buy Mindscan in the USA - or Buy Mindscan in the UK  Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer's books are rarely seen in the UK but he has a huge following across the pond. With two books out recently that we reviewed last month, I thought it was high time I got him in my interrogation chair for a few answers again.
Rob's got a very busy schedule at the moment but he managed to squeeze in some time over the end of June weekend.
The focus of this interview is on his latest two books, Rollback and his collection Identity Theft And Other Stories. Check out the reviews elsewhere on site before reading cos we're going to chuck you into the discussion without too much pre-amble.
SFCrowsnest: In your recent collection, Identity Theft And Other Stories, you said you appeared to be obsessed with Mars yet there and with your novel Rollback, there seems to be a stronger obsession with age. Is Rob Sawyer going through a middle-age crisis?
Robert J. Sawyer: Not in the sense you mean, I don't think. I'm 48, but don't feel like it - I feel young, at least most of the time. But my parents are 35 years older than me. Growing up, I had the oldest parents among my friends; it wasn't unusual for people to think my mother was my grandmother when I was a kid. And, well - you do the math. They're getting on and I'm wrestling with what that means. Rollback is about an elderly professor emeriti at the University of Toronto; my father and mother both taught at U of T. Not that the characters are anything like my parents in personality or the details of their lives, but the situation, the universals underlying getting into what statistics tell you is the last decade of life is something I've been keenly aware of lately.
SFC: Most of your short stories in the collection seemed to be favours for other people. Although you say you're going to cut back, do you think this will be as easy as you think or are you going to bow down to their needs occasionally?
RJS: I just turned down $1.25 a word - which is fifteen times what Analog or Asimov's pay - to write an original SF story for my alma mater's alumni magazine. And, no, I had no trouble doing it. Despite what I said in answer to your previous question, I am conscious of the fact that next year is the thirtieth anniversary of my first SF sale. I've enjoyed doing short fiction, but I really do think that that stage of my life is over; there are only so many hours in the day and I'm looking for new challenges, not repetitions of old ones. In fact, I'm writing a television pilot right now - and having a blast.
SFC: Although you say novel-writing is more profitable and less time-consuming, how much mind-gear switching is involved with the story is as long as the idea you come up with?
RJS: Well, there's no doubt that on a per-word basis, novel writing is more profitable, at least for me. But a novel has to be fractal: it has to be fascinating on scales large and small. That is, it has to have an over-arching theme; and it has to have bits of business that tunnel through the text like wormholes through space-time, linking up something planted in chapter 3 with a payoff in chapter 22; and it has to appeal on the single-paragraph and single-sentence basis. So, all the skills, and all the scope that go into writing short fiction are applicable to parts of the novel-writing process, too; I never had trouble going from short to long.
But sometimes I do find the short-story form too constraining. 'Shed Skin' in Identity Theft and Other Stories is a fine little short story, I think - it was a Hugo finalist, after all - but when I was done with it, I could see whole chapters that could grow from many of the individual sentences in it, and, indeed, as soon as I finished the story, I turned around and re-envisioned it as a novel; that book, Mindscan, was published by Tor in 2005 and won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
SFC: How detailed a plot do you write before expanding to prose? I mean do you leave much latitude for change as you write?
RJS: Honestly, I do as much outlining as required to get the contract and no more - and these days, that's not very much at all. My life perhaps might be easier if I did more planning in advance, but although one can plan the vast sweeps and turns of an interstellar battle before writing it, the intimate character moments are something I discover when I'm doing the word-by-word work of actually writing a scene. For me, one of the best moments in Rollback is when Don realises everyone who has ever walked on the moon has now passed on; that's not something that would have occurred to me at the outline stage, but it's a very powerful resonance in the book: the realisation by the main character that people who had done great things were dying, while he, a Joe-Average who had done nothing special, was going to live on.
SFC: The scenario in Rollback follows the reception of a radio message from aliens looking for other life in the universe and its consequences. Granted the first message is likely to be spread out across a wide area, I would have thought sending a return message would have to be a lot more specific, not to mention directed at where a star system is likely to be forty light-years down the line so to speak.
RJS: The star in question is Sigma Draconis, and it's 18.8 light-years away - so the 40 or so years is round-trip time, not one-way. The amount Sigma Draconis will move relative to other stars in the sky during 18.8 years is (a) utterly trivial and (b) pig-simple to calculate to just about any degree of precision you might want. So, there's no logistical problem. But the message we received in Rollback isn't a broad-beam communication; it was targeted at us. Just as we can fairly easily determine which nearby stars might have habitable planets, so, too, could other civilisations. It takes a lot less energy to send targeted signals than to broadcast to the whole universe, and all our own attempts at contacting other civilisations have been sent to specific targets. SETI just isn't that difficult to do - which makes it all the more vexing that it hasn't yet succeeded.
SFC: One thing I found odd in Rollback was the aliens willingness to share their DNA with another alien species. I mean, they could have lucked out and given it to an intelligent lying aggressive xenophobic species and potentially been in serious trouble. Granted they could have cut off contact but the latter would be at advantage should they ever physically meet by preparing a biological weapon.
RJS: Hey, the very first SETI message we ever sent contained a snippet of human DNA. Realistically, if you want to wipe out a civilisation, there are all kinds of more effective ways than biological weapons. Name one disease that has a 100% fatality rate - but every nuclear weapon has a 100% fatality rate for those at ground zero. Also, as the book said, SETI is, by its nature, an altruistic endeavour. It's something you do because you trust other people. Once you've announced the location of your civilisation - as we have, just through our radio and TV broadcasting - you really have very little to lose by providing specific information.
SFC: When I wrote the previous question, it suddenly dawned on me that 'an intelligent lying aggressive xenophobic species' could fit mankind to a 'T' if we went down certain routes. A span of one hundred and twenty years between several messages could make a difference on how mankind could change including the ethics you propose?
RJS: The thing is, Geoff, that aggressive species are aggressive because of Darwinian imperatives and those come down to rational economics. Why do we fight wars? Over resources. What resources are there that are cheaper to come and get over spans of light-years than they are to manufacture at home? None. It's only when you move beyond blind desire for resources that you start looking for things that have no material value: an exchange of culture and art. By definition, someone who's curious about what kind of music or literature you like is no longer predisposed to being an intelligent lying aggressive xenophobic species. Indeed, xenophobes aren't going to initiate SETI communication unless they're absolutely sure that whoever they contact isn't going to come and wipe them out. In this case, the medium is the message: you don't have to even be able to translate a SETI communication from another civilisation to know that its subtext is, 'We come in peace.'
SFC: As to resources. Hmm...we don't do ourselves any favours by sticking to only one planet. It will be the Darwinian need for survival that will push us out from the planet which would encourage a need to fight for resources. Throughout history, mankind has gone to war and in the last century had melodies to back it up.
Although I agree mankind wouldn't knock on another species' home planet any time soon and vice versa, unless they've had generation ships already in transit, it would depend on how long a time frame an alien species is thinking in. A starship a long time in transit could be hungry for resources used in transit when it arrives and to hell with altruism.
RJS: There is a huge, huge, huge - did I already say huge? - difference between going to Mars and going to another star; there's a survival advantage in getting some of humanity off Earth, yes - and one that can be obtained at reasonable cost by putting some of us on the Moon or Mars or elsewhere in this solar system. But if you've got starships, you've got the ability to manufacture water and air and energy at home - and en route, and once you reach your destination. And, actually, Rollback talks, albeit obliquely, about the Darwinian problems related to generation ships: you no more care what happens to your descendants six generations down the line than you care about what happens today to your second cousin once removed. Darwinism is a mathematical engine; interstellar travel is hugely expensive. The payoff has to make sense for your close relatives or you won't do it - not for a Darwinian reason, anyway. But you might for an altruistic one.
SFC: Likewise, if the aliens themselves were lying, no doubt we'd have a variation on A For Andromeda or the film Species?
RJS: My goodness, let's not be paranoid! The aliens in Rollback went to a great deal of effort to determine the underlying psychology of the people they were going to reveal their secrets to. They were looking for people who showed true altruism - not the so-called altruism of favouring your closest genetic relatives - and for those who didn't discriminate between in-groups and out-groups. One of the themes of Rollback is that there are ethics that transcend species boundaries, and ways to test them.
SFC: I'm not so much paranoid just aware of recognising the dual nature of a species. Isn't it just conceivable that an intelligent alien species could work out the nature of the questions to give the right answers?
RJS: If you're asking is there any way to make contact with other civilisations 100% risk free, then, of course, the answer is no. Is there anyway to make getting out of bed in the morning 100% risk free? The answer is also no. Are you more likely to slip and break your neck tomorrow because you got out of bed than we are to have nefarious aliens figure out some way into tricking us into think they are our friends just so they can hurt us because that's how they get their jollies? Absolutely. But we still get up in the morning. I guess it comes down to this: no one thinks they're paranoid - but your definition of acceptable risk and mine are at variance.
SFC: Although I can understand the expense of rejuvenation, it's like a lot of modern day expensive drugs. You would have thought that it would make more sense to reduce the cost so many could afford it and have a larger return revenue rather than just have a treatment available to the very rich.
RJS: Tell that to any drug manufacturer and see if they'll listen. You have to recoup your R&D in a time frame that makes sense to your shareholders. Why are we still trying to get a decent hundred-dollar laptop in 2008? Surely, by your logic, IBM should have been selling such things since day one. Any new product - whether it's a hardcover book or a life-prolongation treatment - is priced high at the introduction to get as much money as the maker can out of the early adopters and then the price is slowly brought down after the R&D has been recouped, when the small unit values are almost all pure profit. Also, as you saw in Rollback, maintenance of the rejuvenation procedure was labour intensive: recall the character of Petra Jones - a doctor who makes frequent house calls! It really is economically more feasible to sell something to a few people at a high price if there is going to be a lot of after-sale support required.
SFC: The bit about drug expense was something I had issues with about herceptin, a new breast cancer cure, which is so prohibitively expensive that even the British health service thought it too expensive to buy. It doesn't say much for a drug company's altruistic behaviour, does it? Considering the number of women with breast cancer that it could help and the length of time within copyright both company and patients would have gained, not to mention the knock-on effect to other drugs the company has to offer. Both parties would benefit with a lot of decent PR.
With your rollback medication, wouldn't the UN or some government insist it be suppressed or become widely available? There would be more Petra Jones jobs which would also raise the drug company's profile.
RJS: I describe the rollback process at length in the novel, Geoff. When you refer to it as 'rollback medication,' you make is sound like it's just a magic pill that makes you young; it isn't, and I don't any such thing will ever be possible. The rollback I describe is a complex suite of treatments, ranging from nanotechnology to plastic surgery. As for the rest, you make my argument for me: as I said, show me a drug that's widely beneficial that drug companies have decided from the get-go is just too darn helpful to worry about making a profit from and have just given away for free. There's never been one. As for saying that some government would intervene and say that, hey, this thing that will keep you from dying must be made available to everyone without cost, we already have an analog in the real world: it's called 'food' - with it, you live indefinitely; without it you die, and millions are in danger of doing just that for lack of it - but you haven't seen some vague world government stepping in and making sure everyone has enough. And that's not surprising: the UN has no such jurisdiction and nor does any other government.
SFC: I suspect the Canadian Tourist Board is going to love you for setting a story in your home country. Was this to counter so many stories set in the USA or purely to make it easier for research?
RJS: Why look for any such motive? Would you ask a British writer or an American writer a similar question? No: you'd say to a Brit, "Hey, how come you set your book in New Zealand?" That's remarkable; a writer using his or her homeland as a setting isn't.
SFC: I think a British writer who set his story in New Zealand would probably be off-setting a taxable expenses holiday by travelling over there.
RJS: Maybe. Or maybe the plight of the Maori wonderfully illustrated his or her thematic point. But, good grief, I travel all over the United States, and cumulatively have spent years of my life living there; it's hardly easier for me to set a story in Toronto than to set it in New York. Heck, every reader world-wide has a sense of New York City (or London, for that matter); you can write about New York with great economy of words, because the set pieces already exist in the readers' mind; it's hard work to make a city they're not familiar with come alive for them.
That said, and apropos of your previous question, Rollback is very much about a quintessentially Canadian - or, at least, non-American - issue.
We've got socialised medicine. We take a as given that your economic status should have no bearing on the quality of health care you receive. But we really are entering an era, if we aren't there already, in which it's possible to spend many millions of dollars prolonging a person's life. At what point does it become unfeasible for a society to make limitless health care expenditures on its citizens? And when treatments that will actually change by decades your date of death become available and are expensive, how do we decide how to ration them? Rollback very much is a call to recognise the fact that society is not well served when only the super-rich have access to such treatments. For that particular resonance, the Canadian setting was a natural.
SFC: Your reply here is actually agreeing with my point about human's dual nature when it comes to altruism. It doesn't actually question the right to should we or not have the right to extend anyone's natural life if it was possible. There would be many hands up saying they deserve the treatment even if they hadn't got the money.
RJS: Which is why Rollback is about a person whom somebody else decided deserved a longer life. Sarah, the rollback's intended recipient never sought it, and as her husband Don says, in the book, 'I didn't ask for it, and I didn't want it.' We will have to wrestle with who gets this, because almost everyone will want it.
SFC: Very few Science Fiction authors used SF references in their stories. Obviously, yours was to give some contemporary reference or a reminder that some scientists are SF fans. Did you match these with your own personal favourites or for the profile for the character?
RJS: Well, as it happens Don Halifax - the main character of Rollback - and I are the same age, so we grew up watching the same TV shows. There are a lot of pop-cultural references in the book, and not just to SF, because our pop culture defines us.
Just last week I put something on my blog about the passing of Bill Dial. Now, most of the human race has no idea who he was. But North Americans of my generation instantly recognise one line he wrote: 'As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.' If you recognise that, you and I are part of the same cohort - and if you don't, we aren't. Rollback is all about a man thrown out of his natural station in life. The people he's physically closest in age to share none of his life background. They don't remember, and may not even have heard of, Watergate or the Apollo program or Doctor Who or Seinfeld. It's no coincidence that the last word in the book Rollback is a bit of slang from a younger generation Don is not at all part of.
SFC: The real question is do you think there's no SF in the future of other realities? I mean when the fantastic is reached, it would be easier to apply than write fiction about it?
RJS: Well, the 'fantastic' and 'science fiction' aren't quite the same thing. People will be reading The Lord Of The Rings a hundred years from now, because it's timeless; it has no expiration date, because reality can never catch up with it. But modern science fiction? Well, put it this way: Algis Budrys, one of our best, just died, and one of the obits I saw observed that none of his books are currently in print in English. I rather suspect that science fiction as we know it was largely a 20th century phenomenon: a literature of an era in which, say, a guy like Roger Penrose can write a provocative non-fiction book like Shadows Of The Mind and have guys like me riffing on it a decade later, as I did in Mindscan. As the rate of scientific and technological change accelerates, there won't be time for cutting-edge stuff to filter down into pop culture before it's already obsolete or overturned.
SFC: Today's world is catching up with some basic Science Fictionisms, do you think this will reduce the ability of SF to astound or will the authors have to work harder to attract readers?
RJS: In a way we are indeed working harder, but not at astounding people. The writers today are bringing much more in the way of characterisation and story-telling skill to their work than did the Golden Age authors, and that's what will attract new readers. Technological miracles, as you say, happen daily in our real lives; the era in which the field was defined merely by its ability to gobsmack - as evidenced by the titles of magazines such as Astounding, Amazing, and Thrilling Wonder - has passed. Now, ambitious science fiction is every bit as much about the human heart as it is about the human mind - and I think that's all to the good.
SFC: I think what attracted people to SF was to be amazed. The latest SF blockbusters show people want to get a wow! factor still. There still has to be that factor if it's to survive. Granted writing standards have gone up but even in the days of the pulps there was still some quality writing out there.
RJS: Sure, there was some quality writing in the past - that's what let's us graph a trend. But what attracts people to printed SF is different from what attracts them to Hollywood blockbusters. It's the special effects that fill the movie houses. Good written SF combines the intimately human with the grandly cosmic; most media SF really gives you neither - there's very little of any adult emotional depth, and there's no real sense of cosmic scales (`star system' and `galaxy' are almost always used interchangeably in Hollywood scripts). There's a real difference between "Wow, that was a cool effect" and the sense of wonder that printed SF provides: a sense of scales truly gigantic, of time vastly deep, of the sweep of evolution. Printed science fiction, when it's firing on all cylinders provides that - and is doing so better than at any time in its history.
SFC: Can't argue with that. Thanks for the interview, Rob.
Interview material (c) Robert J. Sawyer and SFCrowsnest.co.uk
2008-06-24
All rights reserved and please seek permission for any extensive quotes.
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