Notas sobre ficção científica (6)

"Then let us speak of how we have changed as a genre. Long ago, my children, in the days of my youth, our tribe was small and poor, skulking in exile on the margins of the rich kingdom of Literaturia. When we attempted to approach, we were driven back with execrations and the throwing of fecal matter by the armed Critics with their battle cry of “Genre! Kill!” We found, however, that many readers so loved us that they came into exile to join us, calling their settlement Fandom, and even in Literaturia, many secretly welcomed us to their hearts and homes. Over the years, we have grown in numbers and strength, and there is much intercourse of various kinds, and exchange of mental goods. Nowadays, blue-blooded Literaturians, believing they understand our simple customs, often imitate them, badly. Some of our tribe have become somewhat respectable in the streets of Literaturia, and pass, at times, almost unscathed among the Critics. The heights of the cities, however, and the great prizes to be found there, are still closed to us. I urge you to continue on the way of your tribal Elders, my children: Ignore execrations, seduce Critics, infiltrate curricula, and keep on truckin’."

As palavras são de Ursula K. Le Guin (quem mais?) numa mesa redonda que a juntou a Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress e Ellen Datlow para discutir a presença e a importância das mulheres na evolução da ficção científica. A iniciativa partiu de Mary Robinette Kowal para a Lightspeed Magazine; e o resultado, esse, deve ser leitura obrigatória para todos os fãs do género.

Fonte: SF Signal

Pat Cadigan: "My ambition was to be good enough to get into one of those anthologies. I still want to be that good" (entrevista)

Uma história do movimento cyberpunk que se preze jamais ficará completa sem o nome de Pat Cadigan. O seu conto Rock On integrou a célebre antologia Mirrorshades, editada em 1986 por Bruce Sterling, que reuniu alguns dos mais irreverentes autores de ficção científica dos anos 80 (como William Gibson, Greg Bear, James Patrick Kelly e o próprio Sterling) e que, juntamente com Neuromancer, constitui uma das pedras de toque do movimento cyberpunk na literatura. Synners (1991) e Fools (1992) estão entre as suas obras mais marcantes; e este ano viu a sua noveleta The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi vencer o Prémio Hugo na respectiva categoria. Numa entrevista a Stephen Fergus, do blogue Civilian Reader, Cadigan fala sobre a sua recente incursão no horror com o livreto Chalk, editado pela small press britânica This Is Horror, sobre a sua escrita e sobre o que a atraiu para a ficção de género. Alguns excertos:

Stephen Fergus / Civilian Reader: What inspired you to write this particular story? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?

Pat Cadigan: Michael Wilson asked me if I’d be interested in doing a chapbook and I said yes. I’d never done a chapbook before and I’m always up for a new experience. I read the previous ones from This Is Horror and found them all satisfyingly variegated (and quite good). So I prayed to the Story Fairy (Dept. of Horror) and this is what I got.

I know how that must sound. My creative process is a black-box operation and I’ve been at this long enough (34 years professionally) to know what works best for me: tell brain to think, consider the elements involved – genre, length, my personal taste; allow the associations to marinate overnight in REM sleep; return to task the next day, try writing a paragraph, see what happens. The first paragraph written isn’t always the first paragraph of the story and it usually undergoes editing if not outright retro-fitting, depending on what I discover in the course of writing the story.

Paragraphs that don’t work end up in my fragment box for recycling.

SF/CR: How were you introduced to genre fiction?

PC: We met in the dark. We’d already been making out for some time before I said, “Say honey, what’s your name?”

I had a library card for longer than I can remember. My mother would take me to the library with her and find books to read to me. Eventually, I learned to read myself and discovered that all the cool stuff was in the science fiction section. In those days – when dinosaurs roamed the net, before the discovery of flame – the genre wasn’t as stratified as it is now. Everything was science fiction – Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, Tolkien, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney – anything with a fantastic element was science fiction. Judith Merrill used to edit a best-of-the-year anthology that was the same way – pure-quill hard SF by Mack Reynolds and Walter M. Miller, Jr., sat cheek-by-jowl with oddities from Bernard Malamud, John Cheever, and Tuli Kupferberg. My ambition was to be good enough to get into one of those anthologies. I still want to be that good.

A entrevista completa pode ser lida aqui.

Fonte: SF Signal