{"id":6080,"date":"2023-11-19T00:07:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T06:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=6080"},"modified":"2023-09-18T19:54:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T00:54:02","slug":"two-time-prometheus-winner-james-hogan-the-long-lost-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/two-time-prometheus-winner-james-hogan-the-long-lost-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Two-time Prometheus winner James Hogan: The long-lost interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
James P. Hogan (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two-time Prometheus winner James P. Hogan died in 2010, but his ideas, words and novels live on.<\/p>\n

For the first time in print, here is the wide-ranging, full-fledged uncut interview (recently rediscovered among some boxes of papers and memorabilia) that Hogan gave in 2001 to LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Just a small fraction of that interview appeared in a local newspaper on the eve of Hogan\u2019s appearance as a 2001 guest of honor at Marcon, Ohio\u2019s oldest and largest science fiction and fantasy convention.<\/p>\n

For the sake of posterity and as a reader\u2019s guide to the late great sf author, here is the first part of that interview:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Q: Working for years as an electrical engineer and digital-information executive before you decided to try tackling fiction, how did you begin to learn all the skills needed to write Inherit the Stars<\/em>, you first science fiction novel?<\/p>\n

A: Writing a first novel is a long uphill experience. It takes years to find your way. I taught myself computing and I taught myself writing.<\/p>\n

I try to capture what I would find captivating and interesting and keep me reading, if I were a reader.<\/p>\n

Q: Working at Digital without any knowledge or contacts within the publishing or sf field, how hard was it to find a publisher and an editor for your first novel?<\/p>\n

A: I had no idea whether it was publishable.
\nHoneywell and IBM were very formal structured companies, but Digital people came in to work with T-shirts and guitars. It was a loose laid-back company with some brilliant people. Asking around the company, I tried to find someone who had connections with publishing and the science-fiction field.\u00a0I found a fellow employee Ashley Grayson in Maynard, Massachusetts. He was an sf buff. He told me that he went to these strange things called conventions.<\/p>\n

Q: So where was your first sf-con experience?
\nA: I registered to attend with Grayson the next sf con on Cape Cod.
\nI showed up with a copy of the Inherit the Stars\u00a0<\/em>manuscript in my suitcase, then I went back to England.<\/p>\n

How green I was… I forgot all about it.<\/p>\n

Q: Then what happened?
\nA: I received a letter from Judy-Lynn Del Rey, who said she wanted to publish the novel and offered me a contract.
\nThat was a big boost.<\/p>\n

Q: Once Inherit the Stars\u00a0<\/em>was published, it received good reviews, but that\u2019s often not enough to make a book a bestseller. How did most fans discover a novel written by an unknown newbie?<\/p>\n

A: A groundswell of interest began building. Mail started coming in from readers, but also from scientific professionals.\u00a0Isaac Asimov sent me a fan letter. So did Carl Sagan, and Bevan French, then director of NASA\u2019s lunar program.<\/p>\n

Judy didn\u2019t just run Del Rey SF. She made sure that her writers and their works were brought to the attention of such people.<\/p>\n

She had charisma. Physically she was small, but she made up for it with her intelligence, charisma and personality.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nQ: Inherit the Stars<\/em>, completed in 1976 and published in 1977 by Judy-Lynn Del Rey at Ballantine Books, revolves around paleontologists, physicists, biologists, linguists and other scientists trying to solve an incredible mystery: the discovery on the moon of a 50,000-year-old human skeleton dressed in a spacesuit.\u00a0How did you come up with that premise and story?<\/p>\n

A: I envisioned Inherit the Stars <\/em>as a novel, straight away. I just wrote what I thought would please me…. A lot of people liked the novel because it was positive, constructive and creative \u2013 humans fighting an intellectual battle against ignorance.<\/p>\n

Every story had to have tension, but there wasn\u2019t a bad guy in Inherit the Stars<\/em>. In the movies, the problem has to be physical and the solution has to be violent. But the most exciting things, to my mind, didn\u2019t involve violence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Knowledge is a mind-altering drug. My book\u2019s theme is a reminder that acquiring knowledge is still one of the greatest human adventures.<\/p>\n

Note: Stay tuned to the Prometheus Blog for further excerpts from this previously unpublished interview with Hogan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.<\/p>\n

* Read\u00a0\u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch\u00a0 <\/strong>videos <\/strong>of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards,\u00a0join\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital, and in some ways even more powerful than politics in the long run, by sparking innovation, better ideas, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights and differences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg Two-time Prometheus winner James P. Hogan died in 2010, but his ideas, words and novels live on. For the first time in print, here is the wide-ranging, full-fledged uncut interview (recently rediscovered among some boxes of papers and memorabilia) that Hogan gave in 2001 to LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,36,2045],"tags":[2036,2035,102,567,161,2034,1503,2060],"class_list":["post-6080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-interviews","category-james-p-hogan","tag-bevan-french","tag-carl-sagan","tag-inherit-the-stars","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-james-p-hogan","tag-judy-lynn-del-rey","tag-marcon","tag-the-giants-novels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-1A4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6080"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6535,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions\/6535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}