The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson Page A

it’s good science fiction. Same with terraforming Mars, which is very achievable, and even the idea of terraforming other places is interesting to contemplate. It’s also a good metaphor for what we now have to do here on Earth, for the rest of human time. As for ten-dimensional space, physicists keep coming back to it, ever since Kaluza and Klein in the twenties, and I keep thinking, what the heck can it mean? It seems to stand in for all the deep weirdness of modern physics and what they are saying about this world we live in, but apparently don’t see very well. Also, if you have foolishly taken on a time travel story, it’s the only way to make it look like it makes sense.
    Are you sorry Pluto is no longer a planet?
    No, not at all. I think it’s a good lesson in words.
    These books came out at about the same time as the Three Californias . Were they written earlier? Or in between?
    I somewhat wrote them all at once, or overlapping through those years. It went something like, Icehenge part 3, Memory of Whiteness early drafts, Icehenge part 1, Wild Shore , Icehenge part 2, and Memory of Whiteness final drafts. The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge came later.
    You once said that a writer had to perch on a three-legged stool. I think (!) you meant that you had three readerships: the SF community, the science community, and the more “literary” types. Does that still work for you?
    Yes, I think that might describe the three parts of my adult audience, although I think college students and high school students form a group as big as any of these three. Also, leftists, environmentalists, and wilderness people. I like all these readerships very much, indeed I am deeply grateful to them, as providing me my career and my sense of myself as a writer. I’m not a writer without them. So, thinking of the SF community as my home town, I guess I think of the “literary” community as another small town, with pretensions, while scientists are the real big city, but they tend to act like a big city, in that they don’t know each other and usually don’t read fiction; so word of mouth doesn’t work as well there as in the other communities. Younger readers use word of mouth and also listen to their teachers, a bit, so they are crucial. Getting word to people who would enjoy my books if they were to give them a try; this is the big problem, and ultimately it comes down to word of mouth. So again I depend on my readership. It’s a real dependency!
    You are firmly ensconced in a genre (SF). Many writers regard that as a trap, and others as an opportunity. How do you see it? Is working in a field with a developed, opinionated and rambunctious “fandom” a blessing or a curse?
    It’s the home town. It’s a floor and a ceiling, in some respects. I love the genre and the community, but want readers who don’t usually think of themselves as SF readers to give me a try, as they have in the past for Bradbury, Asimov, Frank Herbert, Ursula Le Guin, and so on.
    These days there seems to be a lot of permeability. Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union was a great SF novel, an alternative history, but that’s SF too, and it was widely read and enjoyed by people. Maybe Philip K. Dick’s takeover of the movies helped break down part of the barriers.
    Anyway there is no reason to pretend it’s a ghetto and we are oppressed artists that the world won’t give a break. In the 1950s that was true and drove many writers mad. Now to hold that position (which some do) would be only a confession that you’d rather be a big fish in a little pond than swim in the big ocean. I like the ocean, but I love SF too. And really, to have a literary community as a kind of feedback amp on stage, loudly talking back to you and ready to talk at any moment—any writer is lucky to have that. The solitude and alienation of many writers from their audiences strikes me as sad.