PROBE
Harry Harrison
(continued)
Interview by Alyce Wilson
I'm wondering if your early days of fandom perhaps colored your perception of what science fiction should be. I mean, is that why you started out more serious?
No. I was a science fiction fan from the time I was 5 years old. And I've kept my art career, but as soon as I could, I started illustrating science fiction magazines. And of course, Bill Gaines and Wally Wood and I were working together, doing science fiction for D.C. Comics. It got very popular later on.
All my original ideas are science fiction. And I end up writing them out, and it's a lot of fun to do. I mean, I've only written things I wanted to write, and I'm very happy that all my books have sold, and I sure enjoyed them.
So who knew, when you're starting out, what your career was going to be like?
You did mention that you learned early on that there were places that
would only take certain kinds of stories.
Yes. You just couldn't endorse horrible words like "damn" and "hell." And sex was completely taboo. With one of my stories, "The Streets of Ashkelon," the hero's an atheist.
My agent said, "You can't sell it." He happened to be right.
But the world has changed, and now it's been anthologized 40 or 50 times. It's been anthologized in the Jesuit monthly. That's pretty good.
Really? Wow.
Well, I mean, it's a thoughtful story about religion, and I don't tell you the thing. I lay things out. And in a way, it's a very political story. They do what they want, and fine. The world changes.
What has changed? How has fandom changed, science fiction fandom, from
when you first were active?
Well, it has changed in so many different ways. It was very small. And it was all prepubescent boys; no girls involved. No other races; no blacks and no Asians.
And it's actually just grown to be a big, wide spectrum. I mean, you have women writing general science fiction and things of interest to other women. I love how it is now. I mean, the writers are half and half, both sexes. And you also have homosexuals, and we'd never even heard of a homosexual. Part of the big scene.
It has expanded, and it's just unbelievable. At the first convention I went to, the first ever held, had 20 people.
Where was that?
In New York in 1938 or '39. The first ever convention.
And the old cons were 100 people. Now they're 8,000 people sometimes. I mean, things are just expanding and going on. I can't comment. I just watch it go by, you know? It's happening. It's phenomenal.
It is very interesting that, as you said, it expanded, and part of
it is because there's a wider spectrum of people who are participating
in it.
And the spectrum of writing. I mean, it's fantasy, and new weird, they call it, and it's sort of horror which has incorporated science fiction.
I was in Denmark a number of years, living in Europe, and went to the English convention every year, and at Eastercon (ph), they'd have about 100 people, 300 people. And that would be my annual holiday for myself.
And they were all middle-aged fans. No, they weren't. They were in their 30s in those days. Now they're middle-aged. But they tended to... the English drink more than Americans.
And there were a lot of young kids there, I mean, 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old Star Trek fans. They want to go on the program, to talk about Star Trek. So they allowed them on at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, when all true fans are sleeping off the beers from the night before.
We got more and more. There were more of them. They weren't science fiction
fans, and then we'd turn them on to science fiction. They started their
own Star Trek con. There were so many of them, they would have
taken over. Bye-bye. Go make your own convention.
You have lived all over the world.
I have. I've visited in 60 countries. I've lived in about nine or 10 for long periods. I speak a lot of languages in many different countries.
What has that brought to your writing?
I think the dimensions, the cultures. How can you write about future cultures unless you've lived in different cultures? I lived in Mexico for a few years, and it's so different compared to United States culture. A different thing completely.
I lived in Denmark for seven years, and it's like America; it's a Western culture. There, it's a homogenous population, for one thing. Everyone speaks one little, funny language. Basically, it's a cross of German and Swedish. They're very proud of their country. They have a sort of Danish pride.
And Italy is another country. I actually love Italy, but I can't stand too much time in it. Italians go their own way. And it's one of the warmest countries in the world, certainly the best food in the world, probably the best language in the world.
So it has to be reflected in my work, and I actually have echoes in certain stories. I set them in a foreign country.
I used to have a writing instructor who claimed that you tend to write
about a place after you've left it.
Oh, yes. Really, I've written sort of 10 years after I left the country. And it gets in your blood. And while you're living there you don't even think about it. And after I'd left Denmark, about 10 years later I had a plot that almost had to have been written in Denmark. I would never know it if I hadn't lived there. And it was called In Our Hands, The Stars, and it was a very political book.
You said you speak nine languages.
Yes.
And one you've been very active in is Esperanto.
Well, to backtrack, when I moved to Mexico, we lived in a small town and no one spoke English. So we learned to speak conversational Spanish.
From there to Italy, a small town, no one spoke English. So I talked Spanish to the Italians. And some of the Italians, in the Bay of Naples, talked to me. Very warm. Everyone speaks a dialect there, sometimes different accents.
If you went to, you know, buy bread, I tried to talk Italian, and they'd say, "No, Signore. En español, pan. En italiano, pane."
But you remember "pane," don't you, next time you go to buy bread?
And I went from there to Denmark. Denmark I had to take lessons. Danish is a very easy language to read, but it's very hard to pronounce or hear. I had a teacher there.
And if you speak Danish, you understand Norwegian. And if you speak Spanish,
you can speak Portuguese. And that's how it came about. And I have enough
German and French to get by. I mean, living in the continent, you pick
it up.
