| NORMAN SPINRAD'S TRANSFORMATION WHATSIT By Nick Mamatas I haven't learned much from watching cartoons, but from The Simpsons I picked up an interesting fact: The Chinese character used to represent crisis is also used to represent opportunity. I recently had the opportunity to spike my phone bill by calling Norman Spinrad at his home in Paris, to talk about the crisis in publishing and society as a whole. Norman is going through his own crisis, and is trying to turn it into an opportunity. After the commercial failure of his last novel, News At 11, Norman found himself without a publishing contract and out of print. His next book, He Walked Among Us, was a discussion of what Norman calls the Transformation Crisis, disguised as a story about a comedian from a post-apocalyptic future who comes back in time to tell the world about the upcoming disaster, through the medium of television. Desperate to get the book out, Norman offered to sell it for an advance of $1 to any publisher who would use the rest of his typical advance ($49,999) to promote the book. The Transformation Crisis is the story of this age. Technology is in the 21st century, but social mores, the economy and even conceptions of the future are grounded in the past. With this conflict between future and past, society has to transform itself or risk disaster. This is reflected in the economy, in culture and in publishing, according to Norman. After all, who wouldn't buy a novel for a dollar? Crisis has become opportunity though; He Walked Among Us has been sold to Heyne Verlag, a German publisher, and Tor will be publishing another novel, Greenhouse Summer later this year. In this interview, Norman and I spoke about publishing, politics, his run for the presidency of the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers of America, and why we hate Ayn Rand. Nick Mamatas: Well the first thing I'd like to say is congratulations for selling He Walked Among Us to the German publisher. Norman Spinrad: Well, thank you. NM: Does the German publisher know about the controversy over the book, and the attempt to sell it for a dollar? NS: Oh yes, it's all been on my site on the Internet [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/normanspinrad/] it's the long-established German publisher of mine, Heyne Verlag. In fact, actually before they bought it, I was at a conference in Leipzig and I had dinner twice with one of the editors at Heyne, so they know everything. NM: Have there been any bites about that $1 advance from American publishers? NS: No! No no, it's a very strange situation and I'm still trying to deal with it. I just finished another book, it's in the can, it is accepted. NM: Greenhouse Summer? NS: Yeah. Just today, I got the final, final, final acceptance. I mean, it's already been accepted, but we agreed on the final, final, final, revisions, and it will be published in November, by Tor, who rejected the other book. I may now talk to them about it again, it's a very strange situation. NM: He Walked Among Us deals with what you call the Transformation Crisis. It is also about basically, fandom. I've read to excerpts on the Web, on your page and one on the LA science fiction club page. [http://www.lasfs.org/club/spinrad] NS: Well, it's a very large book. It deals with the Transformation Crisis, it deals with fandom, it deals with science fiction, it deals with Hollywood, it deals with comedians, and it's a comedy. I mean it's a serious comedy, it deals with street people, it covers a lot of ground. The part about science fiction fandom is a comparatively small part of the book, but integral to the book, because that one of the things that the book is about is the world of science fiction and how it relates to the Transformation Crisis, and how it relates to show business, and how it relates to these larger issues. NM: So you don't think fandom as you portrayed it in the book is one of the reasons why publishers might think it be too insular? NS: If anything on the contrary, because there have been things written, books written about murders at science fiction conventions. But this is the only novel that I know of that really looks at science fiction fandom the way that it is. The good parts, the bad parts. NM: I was cracking up over those two excerpts. I don't know if you realize that the other one is still up, it's attached to the LA science fiction club page. You know, the scene where he goes to the clubhouse? NS: Well that was actually posted on their web site. NM: It's actually still listed as going to Bantam in 1997. NS: I know, they haven't updated their web site, that's them. I think if there is anything about that, it isn't that this it too insular to the ordinary publishers of science fiction, but that it's not insular enough. NM: It doesn't deal with the tropes? NS: Well it deals with the tropes, but it deals with them from the point of view of an outsider. One of the things that particularly relates to science fiction in this book is trying to explain to people who know nothing about science fiction, people who know nothing about the culture of science fiction, what the hell this is, why it is the way it is, and what relation does it have to the larger world. Not from the point of view of people who understand science fiction, but for people who know nothing about it. While the stuff set in the science fiction conventions is certainly funny, and grotesque... NM: And realistic! NS: Yes, that's the other thing, it's realistic because it really is that grotesque, and in fact, the book is toned down from some of the things I have seen. That may displease some of the fans; that may make some of the science fiction publishers a little afraid of the book. This to me is very stupid, because I guarantee you that there wouldn't be a fan, whatever they thought about this book, they'd all have to buy it to see if they were in it. It would be like picking at a scab, they could not not read it. The science fiction publishers are in a bad way right now and very insular right now. The mainstream publishers don't really exist as mainstream publishers anymore. Everything is some kind of genre, it's very hard to publish something that is just a novel, especially with the consolidation in the industry that is going on. It's really bad. Sixty percent of American publishing is now owned by the Germans, and it is like two companies. NM: Bertelsmann, yeah. NS: Bertelsmann and Holtzmann, in fact owns Tor. Bertelsmann is now trying to buy Heyne, who bought the book in Germany. Although I pulled it away from their arm here, but these things are like octopusses, you can't get away from them, not matter what you do. NM: How would you translate that notion of the consolidation of publishing and everything else into the Transformation Crisis? NS: Well I think that one of the things about the Transformation Crisis, it affects the total culture. Things like the consolidation of the publishing industry are two things. One is, the commodification of everything. In other words, culture, this happened to the music industry too! Atlantic, no, Atlantic, yeah I think Atlantic! Atlantic and a couple of really famous labels disappeared, and another consolidation. So publishing, movies, more and more of everything is run at its higher levels and decisions are being made by suits, by pencil-pushers and bean counters and MBAs that are very, very distant from whatever it is they're doing, from whatever the product is. So everything is a commodity. This is one of the reasons I live in France. The French understand that this doesn't work, that the bottom line isn't everything. Everything can't be judged economically, and that this is a growing cultural flaw, the conglomeration of everything. On a cultural level, that's part of the Transformation Crisis too, on an absolute cultural level. On a business level, it doesn't work either. The publishing industry, business-wise, is in bad shape. This doesn't work. This creates a singularity. You cannot market, sell, publish books, movies and records as if they were hamburgers or cars, because hamburgers and cars are reproducible items. They're mass produced stuff, they are all more or less the same, each Big Mac is a Big Mac, each Chevy is a Chevy, but each book or each record or each film is an individual item that cannot be mass marketed. You can't mass market art. It doesn't work. It doesn't work on a cultural level certainly, and it doesn't work on a business level either. This is not just books, this is everything, even food! NM: Was there a time in science fiction, when the entire thing wasn't commodified, really? NS: Sure. NM: When would you say that that, as a trend, started changing? And what made the changes happen? NS: You can't just look at science fiction. What happened to science fiction is a subset of what happened to publishing in general. What happens is, the more you get this kind of consolidation...what happened to Bantam books? This happened during a period when you could get 20% on stock market funds. Capital turnover is 20%. This happened over the last ten years. Anybody who knows anything about the publishing industry knows that you can't...a 20% profit margin? You got to screw writers, overwork editors, and sell the books at inflated prices to get anywhere near that. Historically, 10% and you're doing real well. But Bertelsmann, put in this guy Applebaum [at Bantam], and what they said was, "We want 20% return on capital, otherwise we can invest in something else." There was no attention paid to the differences in businesses. We can invest this in...you know? NM: Medical technology or cars? NS: Or, you know, stocks. Again, if it doesn't work, we can invest it in Hong Kong stocks, we can invest it in hedge funds, whatever it is that's turning out the 20%. So why should we accept 10% from this business, when we don't accept it from...we can shoot craps in Los Vegas and get out 20%. You know, that's their attitude. It destroys the relationship between the product and the people who are really making it, and the people who are buying it. It used to be called "audience," "readership," right? Now, they're called "consumers." NM: This notion of conglomeration and consolidation of capital, and declining rate of profit, are both terms used in Marxist economics. Do you think there is anything left in Marxism that could be useful? NS: Marxism as a prescription didn't work. One might say in some ways that the capitalist criticism was correct about Marxism. But that doesn't mean that the Marxist criticism of capitalism isn't true too. This system has got a lot of black holes in it, a lot of singularities. It's not going to work much longer. Greenhouse Summer takes place after the fall of capitalism. After the fall of capitalism, and communism doesn't replace it either. It's a form of syndicalist anarchism that replaces it. It doesn't work, you can't do this. The ultimate reason that it can't work, beneath all the other reasons that it can't work, is technology. Technology, if not now, then soon, means that 20%, 10% of the population can produce all the goods and services for 100% of the people. So then what happens to the other 80%? It can't work on a capitalist level either. So you fire the other 80%. 20% of the people have jobs... NM: Or you withhold the technology in the first place... NS: You can't withhold the technology, because someone will buy a little bit. What they're doing, they're downsizing, downsizing. They keep firing people, or downsizing people. Soon or later, they downsize themselves out of a market [laughs]. People can't live by taking in each other's wash. It can't work. NM: Like in Player Piano where everyone either wants to open a dress store or a fix-it shop, because there are no jobs left except for the Army. NS: You get a more and more unfair distribution of income. Look at somebody who is making fifty grand a year even, or less. They spend most of their money on food, on housing, on buying things. People who are making a million dollars a year, they spend a little bit more on this, but how many houses, yachts and stuff can you have? So you've got to invest it. But ultimately, if there is no mass of consumers with the money to buy the stuff you're making, they invest it in what? In buying more machines to make them more efficient, to make more stuff to sell to fewer people. It isn't working. So sooner or later, there's nobody to buy the stuff. This is what is happening right now. The United States is now what they call "the market of last resort." The collapse in Asia, the collapse in Japan...if the United States is not running a $300 billion a year trade deficit, all these other countries have no place to sell this stuff. And if it happens to the States, the system collapses. There's a point beyond which inequality of income, with fewer and fewer people having more and more money, and everybody else having less, the system collapses, because there is nobody to buy what it is making. So maybe that's an anarchist version of Marx... That's the economic consequences of the Transformation Crisis. Technology obsoletes this part of conglomerate corporate capital. NM: In France in 1995, there were large general strikes in December. What were you doing during that time? Were you in France then? NS: There weren't any general strikes. NM: No In Paris... NS: No, you have to understand something, November, December, everybody strikes. Every year. That's the strike season. [general laughter]. NM: But in 1995, the strikes were much larger than those previous to that, because of Chirac. NS: Oh, in 1995, they were big. And they sort of brought down the Juppe' government, which was a good thing to bring down. And they... NM: They had the Metro free for a week and everything after that. NS: We didn't really have the Metro. You see, when they have a Metro strike in Paris, what they do, they have a partial strike. What the people on strike do, they're smart, they have these turnstile things that you can't get through ordinarily without putting in a ticket. They open them and leave. [laughs] So that gets you a certain amount of popular support. Instead of making it impossible for people to get anywhere, you get them for free. NM: Do you see that as happening? If you have corporate capitalism breaking down, that sort of thing happening on a generalized level? NS: When it gets to the point where people can't eat, as I said someplace, that's when the peasants with the pitchforks come out. You cannot push it to the point where people can't live. Because if you push them to where people can't live, they'll eat the rich. If there's nothing else to eat, they'll eat the rich. What has been lost, in this system, is the idea of social justice. Economic justice, social contract, you can push it just so far. It depends on what country it is. In the States, because unions have been broken, and because people have had the wool pulled over their eyes, by people like Reagan, inequality can go further before there is an explosion. In France, no! In France, we can push back much quicker, and In Germany. NM: And also in Greece, throughout Europe really. There is much more of a tendency to strike. The unions are more powerful, they have working-class parties, things like that. NS: The unions are more powerful, people understand what is going on better. The inequalities are still not nearly as great here as they are in the States. But even here, they push back. Much quicker. That's what the inequalities are smaller here than they are there, people push back quicker. There are problems with this system too, lots of problems. The other problem is demographic. I mean, populations age, older people live longer. Birth rates get down, so you have fewer and fewer active workers to support more and more retired people, and that's another singularity, sooner or later. The system has to change. I don't know if I have an answer for that one. These things are all part of the Transformation Crisis. Technology creates the ability for everybody to have what they need, and you need a system that distributes it without destroying the production, and that is not corporate capitalism, and on the record, that's not communism either. NM: You've been out of print in the States for a couple of years now. You are coming back into print with Greenhouse Summer and also some reprints from Tor. NS: Tor is printing Greenhouse Summer in November and in next March they are doing Child Of Fortune and The Void Captain's tale, probably in one omnibus edition. In Britain, there's going to be this year, reprints of The Iron Dream and Bug Jack Barron and then maybe a reprint of The Men In The Jungle. In addition, there is going to be an on-demand printing, a small press reprint in the States, about to come out of Agent of Chaos. Maybe, in addition, an American edition of The Iron Dream. That's the basic publishing program between now and next March. NM: No Bug Jack Barron for the States? NS: Not so far. Keeping books in print now is very difficult. I just got an e-mail from my British publisher, which is a small-press publisher, saying that they are going to do a Phil Farmer book, because they have nothing in print in England, nothing. And Phil has written, I don't know, many more books than me. I don't know, a hundred fifty... NM: Even in the States, all we can get is the Riverworld books, pretty much. NS: This is a big change too. Things are not just available from me anymore. But this is where the new technology comes in, with this on-demand printing stuff, it is very good for the development of the small press. They can now keep backlist books in print forever, because you don't have to keep anything in the warehouse. They're never in print because they're never out of print. They're never out of print because they're never in print. If somebody wants one, they print one. So some of my books are starting to come out that way. And I think that's the future of older, backlist books. It's not possible to keep these things in print as mass market paperbacks. It just doesn't work unless they're selling, because they have to sell X number of copies a year, anywhere between 10 and 20,000 and that's a lot for an old book. 5000, 2000, 3000, even 1000 trade paperbacks, on-demand printing, from a small publisher, that's fine. Forever. You sell 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 copies a year, till the end of time. NM: A couple of people in the SFWA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America] are worried about that sort of thing. They worry that the big publishers will also publish on-demand and that they will never be able to get their rights back. Since you're running for President of the SFWA again, what comment would you make on that? NS: There are two things. One is, as long as I'm making money, I don't care if they keep the book. Lots of European contracts are term contracts. You've got the book for five years, seven years, after that, you've got to renegotiate. So that's one easy solution. I've also signed another contract, I think it's a contract for Agent of Chaos, which says, if in any year I don't make a certain amount of money, I get the book back. NM: You get that for American contracts as well? NS: This is an American contract, a small press. This is for dealing with on-demand printing, with small presses. The big publishers haven't started doing it this way yet, and the agents haven't realized that this is the way to do it. You say "All right, we're not going to argue about 'in print' anymore." We have term contracts, and/or, minimum income per year requirements. If you don't sell enough books and you still want to keep it, give us money, and you got the book. In other words, they're thinking in the old way again. The old way is, is it in print, or is out of print? Who cares? You've got the book for five years, then you've got to renegotiate, or as long as you are paying out whatever it is, a total of $3000, $4000, $5000 a year, you keep it! As we say, money talks, bullshit walks. NM: So, you're running for President of SFWA again, but it is a very tentative run, because you don't really want to be President? NS: I do and I don't want to be President. Paul Levinson doesn't seem to believe that I don't really want to be President, because he really wants to be President. I just happened to read yesterday, a quote from Plato, to the effect of "The people you want in power are people who consider it a burden, not an ambition." I've been President of the SFWA and it is a burden, it's a duty. If I lose, the upside is I don't have to do the job. That's great. I've got columns in Asimov's, I've got a column in The Greenwich Village Gazette [http://www.greenwichvillageny.com], I've got a web sire, I've got all these books. People know who I am in the SFWA and what I stand for, and I run on an extensive platform, the reasons I want to be elected, and if people don't want that, I don't care if I lose. NM: You have mentioned in you campaign platform that you are hoping that somebody else will take over for you and run in your place. NS: An idea of an uncontested election is hideous! NM: Is there anyone in particular you want to run? NS: No! NM: Anybody? NS: Well, anybody who would seem like they would be a decent candidate and make it a contested election. In the last election, I ran also, and Robert Sawyer offered to step aside so I'd be elected. And the last thing in the world I want is to win an uncontested election. In retrospect, maybe I made a mistake. I'm a radical. If I'm elected, I'll do radical things, and people know it. Someone with a radical platform... NM: Who is the only one running... NS: ...to be elected in an uncontested election is very bad. If I win a contested election, fair enough, then it is an election on issues, and then I will go do it. I can say I don't care whether I win or lose, which is true, but not because I don't care about what happens, but because there are upsides and downsides either way as far as I'm concerned. NM: Last year you mentioned, when you were running... NS: It'll be a pain in the ass if I win! NM: ...when you were running against Sawyer, you were contemplating making the SFWA more legitimate, but as a labor union rather than as a professional organization. Is that still a good idea? NS: I don't know if it can be a certified labor union. NM: Well, there already is the National Writers Union. NS: That's not very effective. It is sort of a union, and it's not really a union and they can't strike. You can't strike, you're not a union. NM: It's the size of the union, versus the number of employers you have to deal with, basically. NS: If you can't strike, you're not a union. I have fairly high-level connections within the AFL-CIO, big time connections. If I can ever get this through the SFWA, I can get this through the AFL-CIO. If you get certified as a union, you can put up picket lines that other unions won't cross. And then you've got something. I mean, if you're having trouble with a publisher, and the truck drivers won't deliver, you shut them down. That's a union. I don't think SFWA can do it. If people wanted it, I could get it done. NM: But it wouldn't necessarily be effective as a union? NS: Oh, it would be very effective. It's a effective if you are really a union recognized by the AFL-CIO, because you can put up a picket line that people won't cross. You can shut down the delivery of paper to mills, or books to stores. If The Teamsters will honor your line, you're a union. But, you have to be an official union. But SFWA in the past, has been a very tough outfit, and has acted as a quasi-union in various ways, without being able to strike, or without being able to exactly strike. NM: There are a large number of libertarians inside the SFWA, including Paul Levinson actually. He was a professor of mine, a few years ago. NS: Really? I didn't know he was a libertarian. NM: I was surprised when I was reading the SFWA web page the other day, when he came out against Barnes and Noble buying of Ingram, the book distributor. [http://www.sfwa.org/news/sfwaftc.htm]. That is an anti-free market thing to say. So do you think being in the organization or the history of the organization can overwhelm the individual politics of many of its members so that they can actually work collectively and do things like that rather than just say, "Markets, whether I cut my throat with them or not."? NS: When SFWA was really tough, the Grievance Committee was created by Jerry Pournelle and me. Jerry Pournelle likes to call himself a 14th century liberal. And I was completely on the other side, but we worked very effectively together. I mean pragmatism, and to use a Marxist term, class self-interest, overrides this kind of ideology, whatever libertarianism is. To me, it's a pendulum, libertarian of the left, libertarian of the right, sometimes combined in the same person. Generally speaking, it seems to be social liberalism and economic fascism. NM: I usually call them Republicans who like anal sex and smoking pot, myself. NS: Basically, that's the kind of people they are, which is better than some forms of Republicanism. NM: Oh, definitely. NS: Or you could call it fascism with a human face. I didn't realize that Levinson was a libertarian, whatever that is. There are different forms of it. I am libertarian in some ways myself, except I'm a left libertarian. NM: Not a pro-market libertarian? NS: I do not believe you can have a functioning economic system without a market component. I think that's lunacy. To pretend that the sum total of everybody's greed ends up as the common good is equally lunacy. I mean, Ayn Rand, to my mind, was a moron. And a dreadful novelist. I could tell you the point at which I through Atlas Shrugged against the wall, and decided not to read 500 more pages. NM: Wow, I only made it to page 20! NS: It was during a sex scene, when the hero and heroine where getting it on and Rand described it as his train going into her steel mill! [general laughter] I couldn't get past that. That was the end. And written humorlessly, if it was a joke, okay, but totally humorless. NM: Ayn Rand has stayed in print. Have you ever been jealous of writers that have managed to stay in print, for whatever bizarre reason they manage it, while you've been falling out of print? Bug Jack Barron, in the 60s, was about as influential as Atlas Shrugged was, as far as influencing the culture and getting into people's heads. NS: Well, as you know, Ronald Reagan was elected President. It depends on what you mean by jealousy and what you mean by envy. I don't begrudge anyone their success. I may want what they have and I don't, but I don't want to take it away from them. This is a subtle distinction in English, between envy and jealousy. I would like to have had the economic success of [William] Gibson, but I don't begrudge Gibson, it was his luck. NM: A lot of the writers from the New Wave are coming back into print. Harlan Ellison is getting the omnibus treatment from White Wolf, so is Michael Moorcock. Samuel Delany is getting a lot of reprints from university presses. Do you think this might signal a new New Wave, from people who read these books and then start writing? NS: Old books are not a new New Wave. A new new wave has to be new stuff. I think the publishing industry is undergoing radical change. I think that things will be kept in print from unconventional publishers: on-demand printing, academic presses. I've got two books in England, I've got four old books lined up to be published, old titles. I don't think the time is yet when you can seriously launch a book that way. If I did, I would have sold He Walked Among Us to any number of small presses or on-line presses. NM: Anybody who had a dollar? NS: Well, the offer is, anybody can have it for a dollar who will publish it properly. NM: If they spent the money they would have spent on an advance on the promotion. NS: You know, a contract that guarantees certain things. I had plenty of small presses that wanted to do it, but that's not why I pulled it from Bantam. I want it done properly. NM: Do you think Greenhouse Summer will get a proper promotion? NS: I don't know. I don't think they know. What is certainly true is that you've got to promote yourself. You have to promote a book long before it's published. The fate of a book is decided long before it is published, unless there is a fantastic coup. It is decided when orders are solicited, and it is decided before the orders are solicited. You must do thing way, way, way in advance. And the writer cannot trust any publisher to do it. Maybe they will, and maybe they won't. You've got to do things yourself. That's the way it is. You've got to use what's out there. One of the things out there is the Internet, which I think is nowhere near being a publishing medium, but it is very good for publicity and equating people with your work and doing advance work for a book. Having a web site, I'm pretty proud of my web site. I did it all myself. Many writers, especially science fiction writers, have a fan build and maintain a web site. I can't do code, but I can do a web site. It's a simple web site, no sound yet, no video yet, but with a lot of content. Stories, a cookbook, with news, with this, with that. I find it effective. NM: Speaking of self-promotion and the Internet, you have a new column, "Global Visions." Why do you want to write a political column? [See "Global Visions" at http://www.greenwichvillageny.com] NS: Years and years ago, I used to do this for the Los Angeles Free Press, every week. I get the International Herald-Tribune here in Paris, which is competing with the New York Times and Washington Post, so it doesn't get much better than that. Looking at the stuff I said, "I can do better than this. This is pathetic." And so, I decided I wanted to a political column again because I did it a long time ago, and because I think most of the political columns out there are in a narrow political range. The analysis is pretty goddamn superficial. Being situated in France, I can be more international, and I'm outside the American media machine, so I can look at that better, so I can look at that better than the stuff I'm seeing. It's like a binocular vision, so I call the thing "Global Visions." I travel a lot, I'm all over the place. I do try to have a global vision, and I am conversant with a lot of countries, I think I can do this. And I don't see anybody else doing it, to tell you the truth. NM: Do you have any specific goal for the column? Will you use it to talk about the Transformation Crisis, or current events? NS: The Transformation Crisis, is ultimately, a history of our age, it is almost everything that happens. The next one will be about Kosovo. It's ludicrous and a disgrace. At the end of the week, you can read it. The column is called "Global Visions" because it is about that is happening on the planet. I'm not going to do film reviews, I'm not going to do literature. NM: So, pure politics? NS: Whatever pure politics is! Basically, a political column. I have another column, which I do in Asimov's, which is my literature column. That's four times a year, and that's that. So I'm not going to do books or film or anything like that, except as it relates to what I'm talking about. NM: Well thanks for the interview Norman, and good luck. NS: Okay, thank you. | |
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