Michael Swanwick is author of “The Iron Dragon’s Daughter” which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and and is currently working on a novel featuring Darger and Surplus. Mr. Swanwick’s book-length study of the fantasy writer Hope Mirrlees comes out July 10th on Temporary Culture publishing. For lots more info on Michael and all his great work please go to official website http://www.michaelswanwick.com/

Dragon Crush:We have read that you started writing fantasy at a very young age in high school. Were your teachers encouraging?
Can you offer any specific advice to young writers on how to hone their craft?

MIchael Swanwick: My teachers were encouraging, in a baffled kind of way. I don’t think any of them thought for an instant I’d become a professional writer and, to be fair, I didn’t show any particular aptitude for it. I couldn’t even finish a story! I just wrote fragments.

But I was unstoppable. I wrote constantly. It didn’t bother me when people told me my stuff was lousy, because I already knew that. Somehow, I had an unshakeable faith that I could teach myself how to write well, and as it turns out I did. I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t, though. By the time I sold my first story, I was thirty years old and had essentially no marketable work skills. New writers would be wise to acquire a skill – carpentry, maybe, or nursing – that would support them while they learn their craft.

Specific advice? Write every day, even if what you write is worthless. No, especially if what you write is worthless – that’s how you learn discipline. Try out every piece of writing advice that seems sensible. If it works, pat yourself on the back for learning something. If it doesn’t, discard it without regret. Different writers write differently, and no advice works for everyone.

Oh, and Pohl Anderson once advised that in every scene, the writer should evoke three senses. If a character is walking along the beach, for example, he should smell salt air, hear the cries of gulls, and feel the seaweed popping underfoot. I read that, tried it out, and my prose became instantly more vivid. I’ve always been grateful to Anderson for that.

DC:When starting a new novel, do you specifically intend to write either science fiction or fantasy? Or do you let the story dictate the genre?

MS: I just write what seems most interesting in the best way I can, and let the publisher decide its genre. Stations of the Tide was a science fiction novel with a strong fantasy flavor. I included an act of magic in every chapter, but I made sure it was explained in rational terms such that it clearly could happen in the universe as we know it. The Iron Dragon’s Daughter and The Dragons of Babel, with their industrialized Faerie and jet-powered dragons and factories and refugee camps and such were science-fiction flavored fantasy. I recognized their essential genre when I started them. But it would have weakened all three to make their plots adhere more strongly to expectations.

The only time I was unsure what genre I was writing was with Jack Faust, which is a very good book with a very depressing ending. It’s a reshaping of the Faust legend, and I didn’t know if it would be published as science fiction, since it was a Mad Scientist story, or fantasy, since it was also a Deal With the Devil tale. As it turned out, the American edition was published with a mainstream cover, and the British edition gave it a horror cover. So apparently it was all things to all editors.

DC: It seems as if the publishing industry as a whole may be in crisis. What is your read on the pulse of the science fiction and fantasy publishing businesses?

MS: The news is not good. The print magazines, which were always the heart of the enterprise, are dwindling away. The great publishing houses aren’t able to sell the way they used to. The only e-zines which pay decent money are those with sponsors like Baen Books or Tor, and anything with a sponsor can fold overnight. I avoid talking business with editors these days, because they’re depressing to listen to.

But writers have always lived from crisis to crisis. Newspapers stopped serializing novels, and nobody could make a living anymore. Commercial lending libraries folded, and nobody could make a living anymore. The pulp magazines disappeared (except for a beloved handful) and nobody could make a living anymore. And so it goes. Yet here we are. Writers are hardy and resourceful beasts. We’ll find a way to stay alive.

DC: Do you think it will be harder or easier going forward for new writers to make a living writing science fiction and fantasy?

MS: Harder, alas. But not that many of us do so today. David Hartwell estimates there are only one hundred writers making a living today writing fantasy, SF, and horror, without a day job, a teaching gig, editorial work, or a spouse who’s essentially underwriting the enterprise. That includes me, Stephen King, and the guy who’s living in a cardboard box and cranking out Dr. Who novelizations but has at least managed not to starve to death. Most writers live on hope. Most of us, including many of the very best, have subsidized themselves with outside income.

What makes this particular era unfortunate is that it encourages new writers to focus on the mercantile aspects of their writing from early on, and this isn’t necessarily good for their art. Innovation comes from a willingness to take chances, to write something that might not sell, just because it’s interesting.

But, again, every writer is different and this goes for new writers as well. Not everybody needs innovation, and there is no inherent virtue to starving for your art. Some are going to have a relatively easy time of it, even today. Godspeed to them.

DC: On that note, are you a fan of the Amazon Kindle or are you a purist who likes the heft of a physical book?

MS: When I was in China a couple of years ago, Neil Gaiman showed me his beta model of the Kindle and explained that while it was inferior to any book, it was superior to any library. Which is to say, it’s perfect for travel, since it can hold hundreds of books at the same weight as a single hardcover. Since I do a fair amount of traveling, I’m definitely interested. But I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to paying its rather stiff price. Maybe I’ll get one for Christmas.

DC: The Dragons of Babel was a return to the world of the Iron Dragon’s Daughter. After 15 years was it difficult as a writer to return to that
world?

MS: It didn’t actually start out being the same world, just the same dragons. I had the image of a boy who loved dragons from afar seeing one crash near his village, and the novel grew out of that. As I wrote, I filled the book with new inventions — there were no commonalities of place names or gods or the like – and I debated with myself at length whether it was the same world as in the first book, only on a different continent, or in unrelated universes.

Finally, I decided that it did no harm for them to be set in the same world and might well please some readers, so I threw in a cameo appearance by Jane Alderberry from The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, just to make it explicit.

It was only after the novel was in print that I realized that all my intellectualization was wasted effort. Readers were going to assume a common world, no matter what I decided. Authors don’t have the control over their books we like to pretend we do.

DC: We read that space exploration is something you support. What do you see as the future of manned space exploration and how will this affect the science fiction genre?

MS: Space exploration turns out to be more robust than most people think it is. China has a moon program, and so do Japan and India. In fact, a NASA official I talked to thinks it’s a mistake for the US to enter into this second moon race because we might not win it! (He thinks we should loftily wish everyone well – “We did it decades ago, you’ll love it” – and send people to a major asteroid instead, or maybe to the moons of Mars.)

So, assuming civilization doesn’t crash, it’s pretty much inevitable that we’re going to send astronauts (or cosmonauts or taikonauts) everywhere in the solar system. There will be at least temporary research bases in the more interesting locations. Colonization will be more problematic. But by the time we have to consider the possibility, our technology will be vastly different from what we have today. So it may well come about, though in a form different from how we picture it now.

Science fiction’s popularity is strongly based on how people feel about the future. That’s why Science Fiction World in Chengdu has the largest readership of any SF magazine in the world – because the future looks good for the Chinese. And it may be why fantasy has been growing in popularity in this country, despite the fantastic discoveries astronomers have made over recent decades. As we move out into the Solar System, science fiction will thrive in nations which believe that the coming developments in space will benefit them personally.

Robert Heinlein used to point out that people were going to space, whether or not the United States led the charge. The same thing appears to be true for science fiction.

DC: Could you tell us about any future projects you are working on?

MS: Right now I’m working on a novel featuring Darger and Surplus, my Postutopian con-men. They first popped up in a story called “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” in which they accidentally burned down London. Then I wrote a few stories in which they moved randomly about a bizarre future Europe, always headed ultimately for Moscow, where they planned to make their big score. I figured that if they ever got there, it would deserve an entire novel.

When I decided it was time to start the novel, I went to Moscow because I’d previously spent four hours there. (I missed a connecting flight to Yekaterinberg at Sheremetyevo Airport, and a friend took me into town for lunch and a look-around.) It’s a wonderful and terrifying city. I stayed just long enough to feel comfortable getting lost in it. I made copious notes. And I left before I got to know it well enough that I wouldn’t be able to write about it.

Every Western writer agrees that if you want to write about Russia, you have to do so while your knowledge is superficial. Otherwise, you’ll spend decades trying to figure it out. Even I, who have spent less than a month total there, can see that’s true. It’s mysterious in ways you can’t quite get a grip on. But it grabs your heart.

Also, in a couple of weeks, my book-length study of the fantasy writer Hope Mirrlees comes out. Hope-in-the-Mist (Temporary Culture) will launch at Readercon, where Mirrlees is the memorial guest of honor. And since it’s being published in an edition of 200 copies, I expect it will sell out shortly thereafter. It took me years to research but, oh man, was it fun!

DC: Now, for our more fun “lightning round” of questions which we end every interview with. Feel free to embellish or answer with one word. Have fun with it!

Bradbury or Heinlein?

Bradbury!

Paperback or Hardcover?

Thousands.

Broadsword or Laserblaster?

Peace.

Coke or Pepsi?

Single-malt.

Munchkins or Hobbits?

Orcs.

Invaders from Mars or Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Terrifying.

Lynch or Cronenberg?

Terrifying.

Twilight Zone or Outer Limits?

Nostalgic.

Beatles or Stones?

Dylan.