Close to the EDGE....

Kilian Melloy, Assistant Arts Editor for EDGE, poses some difficult questions for me in this Alien Contact interview, originally posted on EDGE:Boston.

When Kilian asked:

As a follow-up to last year's Is Anybody Out There? (which you co-edited with Nick Gevers for Daw Books), Alien Contact is a logical theme. Both books pose big philosophical questions. Is Anybody Out There? examined the paradox of why, if there is alien intelligence in the galaxy (as, mathematically, there ought to be) no extraterrestrial race has yet, to our knowledge, paid Earth a visit. Do you have a personal opinion on the best explanation for this conundrum?

I responded:

There are others who are far more qualified to respond to this question than I am... I would have to agree with Paul Davies¹, whose book The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was published nearly simultaneously with Is Anybody Out There? Davies states that focusing on radio signals for 50 years of the SETI project has been to no avail; we need to start thinking out of the box. One suggestion Davies makes is that ET might use biological organisms as a means of sending information, so we should dispatch retroviruses that would insert DNA into any found DNA-based organism. Coincidentally, the British edition of The Eerie Silence from Allen Lane Publishers is subtitled Are We Alone in the Universe?

You can read the full interview, including my response to this, the last question:

The collection includes a story by a well-known anti-gay writer, as well as one whose remarks on a blog got her disinvited as Guest of Honor from a convention a couple of years ago because some people saw her remarks as bigoted. When it comes to publishing a story by a writer who has generated such controversy, do you simply ignore his politics and rely on the quality of his work? Or do you have to weigh the political against the artistic when making your choices?

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Footnote:

1. My previous blog post, just prior to the publication of Is Anybody Out There? on Paul Davies and his book The Eerie Silence.

The Marty Halpern Interview on Suvudu.com

Publicist Matt Staggs (@mattstaggs) interviews me for Suvudu.com. Matt writes: "...When Halpern told me that he had finished a new anthology called Alien Contact, I thought now would be a good time for us to have a conversation about his career as an award-winning editor¹ and what it takes to get a start in the business today."

Here's a taste:

Tell me about your new project. How did it come together? Who is involved?

When I queried authors about contributing to the Fermi paradox anthology (the previously mentioned Is Anybody Out There?), a few responded with similar comments: they had already written what they felt was their best alien contact story, and they didn’t wish to write yet another. So this got me thinking about all the incredible alien contact stories that have been written in the past, say, thirty years — and wouldn’t it be great to have these all (or at least as many as possible) collected in one volume. And thus Alien Contact was born. After much perseverance, I sold the anthology to Night Shade Books. (Note: I actually have enough quality stories to easily fill another volume!)

Please check out Matt's interview with me on Suvudu.com.

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Footnote:

1. Actually, that should be "award-nominated editor" -- though I'm a winner in my own heart!

Marty Halpern Interview

Charles Tan interviews me today on his acclaimed blog Bibliophile Stalker. Charles asks a number of questions including how I got started in the field, my current projects, what, in my opinion, are the necessary skills for the various editor roles, and so on. I think I'm fairly straight forward with my answers, though pages would be required to fully respond to most of the questions. Regardless, the interview is more than 3,400 words so there is still plenty of content for inquiring minds.

If you should happen to read the interview, and have some additional questions or issues or comments for me, I would be most grateful if you would post them here on "More Red Ink" at the end of this blog entry. This will allow me easier access to respond, and in addition I will automatically be notified so that I will be able to respond in a timely fashion.

So I hope you'll click over to Bibliophile Stalker and check out the interview. It's my first online interview since early 2003, when Golden Gryphon Press publisher Gary Turner and I were interviewed on SF Site by Nick Gevers (with whom I am currently co-editing an original anthology), upon the publication of The Silver Gryphon anthology.