Jonathan Lethem discusses his story from the latest issue of the magazine: “The tone I struck here . . . may seem almost to beg a reader’s own anxieties into play. Or a reader’s condemnation.”
.” It’s the second story from the anthology that you’ve used as a departure point for your own fiction. Why did you choose this one?the second story in the anthology. About ten years ago, I came up with a plan to write a cycle of stories that were responses to each of the ten stories in Silverberg’s anthology, and I set out doing it in order. At the present rate, I’ll finish in 2062.
But this was decades later. By that time, I’d moved through many phases. First, reading S.F. in a more lucid, daylight way, knowing the names and chronologies that made sense of some of the surrealist bewilderment I’d experienced at that first immersion. I’d become a fan of Bester and Heinlein. I’d read and either cared for or not especially cared for others on the book’s contents page: Lafferty , Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley G. Weinbaum, etc.
I’m grateful that you put this question directly, rather than leaving it present only by implication. The obvious answer is yes. The tone I struck here—that of nervous guilty riffing in the treacherous realm of “appropriation”—may seem almost to beg a reader’s own anxieties into play. Or a reader’s condemnation. That risk is one of the subjects of the story, really. I hope that saying this doesn’t come off in any way as blasé, let alone defiant.
What’s striking—to bring things full circle—is that many writing students lately appear to find science fiction attractive, as a palette that offers replenishing possibilities for their efforts.