Science Fiction Book Club
Interview with Richard Wilhelm (April 2024)
Richard Wilhelm is the son of Kate Wilhelm and the stepson of
Damon Knight. Richard runs InfinityBox Press a publishing company that Kate
started with him, his wife, Sue Arbuthnot, and brother, Jonathan Knight. You
can purchase many of her novels and short fiction from their website,
infinityboxpress.com
Damo Mac Choiligh: Did Kate Wilhelm enjoy writing the crime
novels she produced, especially from the 80s on, as much as her SF output? Did
she consider it to be as meaningful? Or was it all still storytelling? Would
you recommend this SF aficionado to read her crime work?
From childhood, Kate loved storytelling. She loved compelling
characters and complex plots. She moved from genre to genre, never claiming one
as her first and only love. It was always about the story that was trying to
get out—some were mysteries, some Science Fiction, some a combination, and
still some that were less easy to categorize. Her first published novel, More
Bitter Than Death, 1963, Simon & Schuster, was a mystery even though
she had also, by that time, written nearly 20 shorter Science Fiction stories.
The mystery genre stuck with her though her career, but so did the Science
Fiction, Speculative, Psychological, and Mimetic Fiction, and Comedy. She
combined Science Fiction and Mystery in the first of her 14 edition Barbara
Holloway Mystery series, Death Qualified, 1991, St. Martin's Press, and
she would also mix the genres in her Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl
series. For her, the wall between genres was porous. If she had a paintbrush,
she would paint; if she had clay, she would sculpt. While one may be an
aficionado of one genre, I would always recommend trying something new. In this
case, I'd recommend Death Qualified for an introduction to the Barbara
Holloway mysteries, and I'd point one to The Dark Door, The Hamlet
Trap, and Smart House for the C&C Mysteries. And then, the rest.
Connie Marshall Thompson: Kate Wilhelm is a genre-crossing
author with success in the science fiction, suspense and mystery genres. Did
she have a personal preference for a particular genre or did she equally enjoy
them all?
Writing in one genre, while considering another was normal for Kate.
It was always about the characters who populate the world she envisioned and
how they interact with each other and their situation. She told me once that
writing about spacecraft hardware limited the speculative and character-driven nature
of the stories she had to tell. What if her characters didn't have a spaceship
and didn't have to describe every nut and bolt—what would their story be? Later,
in her career, she moved into the serialization of courtroom mysteries with her
main character, attorney Barbara Holloway, and in another series, with former
arson inspector Charlie Meiklejohn and his wife, psychologist Constance Leidl
and the supernatural thread she occasionally sewed into their cases. As Kate
summed it up in her introduction to The Infinity Box, in 1975, "The
problem with labels is that they all too quickly become eroded; they cannot
cope with borderline cases." And she loved the borderline cases.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Wilhelm is often regarded as being a
feminist writer, in a similar vein as Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr., Josephine
Saxton et al. Would she agree with this assessment? Was it an important
influence for her in her work? If so, did she regard herself and these writers
as forming a trend or coherent group within SF of the time?
Kate didn't consider herself a feminist writer, per se. Although
she frequently wrote strong women into her stories, she didn't care much for
the label; strong women were natural for her, not special. She would say,
"I'm just me, and here's my story." Kate entered her writing career
in the mid-50s, when men dominated every aspect of publishing from writing to
printing. And though I don't remember her ever talking about belonging to a
coherent group of feminist writers pushing their influence, I know she
appreciated the company of Joanna Russ, Carol Emshwiller, and others, who in
their growing numbers and popularity (read sales), helped to move the
publishing industry considerably forward. I don't believe she ever questioned
that strong women can and should be the dominant voices in stories.
Damo Mac Choiligh: When I read her work, she is one of those
writers whose careful prose stands out for me, like Ursula LeGuin or Ted
Chiang. Who would have been her influences for her writing style, was there
anyone she tried to emulate or for that matter anyone whose style she would
have rejected?
In her teens, Kate told stories to her five siblings after school
while their mom worked in a munitions factory in Louisville. That offered the
first level of refinement to her storytelling abilities as she had to hold
their attention. That was during WWII, the pulp fiction era was in full bloom,
and magazines such as Amazing Stories (Analog), F&SF, and others were publishing
exciting works by both established authors and relative newcomers. And then
there was a push to move science fiction into a more literary tent by a few
influential people, especially Damon Knight, Kate's future husband and first
reader of her stories. While she never spoke of emulating anyone, I believe her
second and most influential level of storytelling refinement occurred after she
was invited by Damon to the Milford Writers Conference in the early 60s. There,
she met established, hardcore authors, who for two weeks each summer, would
tear each other's works to shreds, of course in the mostly congenial,
constructive manner possible. It was through these fiery workshop settings that
she gained the confidence that she, too, was a hardcore writer. She didn't
reject anyone for their style, but she knew what worked and what didn't, and
more importantly, how to fix it.
John Grayshaw: Who were some of the writers your mother grew
up reading? And who are some writers that were your mother’s contemporaries
that she enjoyed/admired?
Kate was a proud library-card-carrying ecumenical reader. When I
was very young, she would take me to the main library in Louisville where she
would attend "stargazers" astronomy meetings, and I would be set
loose among the stacks. We would both return home with our limit of books. There
was always a partially read pile of books on the side table next to her
favorite couch. Sometimes the top book may be a Garbriel Garcia Márquez title,
other times it might be a primer on organic gardening. As with her writing, she
didn't favor one genre over another, but she once told me she enjoyed reading
nonfiction more than she did fiction, because in those books were the seeds of
her story garden.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Wilhelm occasionally collaborated with
other writers (especially Theodore Thomas) and she and Damon Knight put out a
collection of short stories together, but did they ever collaborate on a novel
or shorter work?
She and Ted Thomas collaborated on two books, The Clone,
and The Year of the Cloud. It was early in her career, and Ted was a
family friend and a patent attorney with a deep science and engineering
background. After those two books, she decided not to enter into further
collaborations. Although Kate and Damon were each other's first reader, they
tried and failed miserably at collaboration. The best they could do was publish
their discrete stories in a single volume.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Much of the collection 'Again, Dangerous
Visions' seems dated and not remotely as shocking as Harlan Ellison thought,
except in the juvenile sense, but one of the standout stories there is the
brilliant 'The Funeral' by KW. She said once that she was angry when she wrote
it, angry at the way societies treat their young. 'The Village' was even more
an overtly angry story. Did an anger at the state of the world inform much of
her thinking or her work?
The My Lai massacre had happened a few years prior to the
completion of The Village. Kate's ire was laser focused on the insanity
of our government's role in pursuing a war it started to prove a policy point.
Kate had two sons of draft age, one of whom had already been packed of to
Vietnam. She was hyper-aware of the possibility the other would be drafted,
too, and wondered, in The Village, what would happen if the geography
was switched and it was her hometown that was under threat of annihilation. The
Funeral comes out of the same era, but Kate used her own experience
attending a girls school in Louisville to craft a story about authoritarianism,
which she imagined, even then, being only one election away. She could be a
harsh critic and few of her other stories reflect that. By Stone, By Blade,
By Fire is another example of her veiled criticism; this time her focus was
on religion.
Philip Bonner: I’ve
been working my way through the Orbit anthologies (which is something anyone
into good, solid literary SF should do— these thoughtfully curated books
out-dangerous vision Dangerous Visions. Each one has been surprising for me. )
I’m
on Orbit 4. So far every book has a story by Kate Wilhelm and each one is much
better than the last. I wasn’t
too knocked out by ‘Staras
Flonderans’, but I felt she was zeroing in on something with ‘Baby, You
Were Great’. By the time she makes it to ‘The Planners’ and ‘Windsong’ there’s a really strong voice— great character portraiture,
disturbing idea-driven settings with satirical undertones. ‘Windsong’ in particular was great.
Did Kate Wilhelm use the Orbit books as a laboratory for
workshopping new ideas and techniques?
While Kate had an "in" with Damon for having her work
selected for Orbit, she never assumed that would assure her a spot in
the anthologies. She enjoyed stretching her style and poking the boundaries of
Science Fiction, and the series was a perfect petri dish for these experiments.
Some of her best short fiction was published in those anthologies. In Orbit,
she was in the company of the best of the "New Wave" of Science
Fiction authors and her skillful wordsmithing shone.
John Grayshaw: What made her write novels? Was she a
storyteller at heart?
She started out writing short stories, because she could write
them relatively quickly in the middle of the night, as we all slept, and she
found a willing set of buyers in the Science Fiction magazines at the time. She
was a master short story writer, but sometimes there would be too many side
rooms that needed to be explored and a novel or novella was needed for those. She
said that the story would tell her. In all, she wrote about 50 novels and about
130 titles of shorter fiction.
John Grayshaw: Did your mom tell you stories? What were they
about? Did she read books with you? Which were her favorites?
Owing to her years telling stories to her siblings while their
parents were at work, by the time we came along, Kate was already an amazing
oral storyteller. She would tell us stories in the evening as we kids, Damon's
and Kate's combined, gathered in the living room. We listened to these stories
while huddled around the fireplace in a creaky house we all at one time or another—or
to this day—believed was haunted. The house was a huge, old Victorian, which
Damon bought in the early 1960s, and it had all the spooky, dark nooks and
crannies one might imagine in a 100-year-old house. Kate kept the tension high
with her storytelling; most tales were Science Fiction-y, and they were rich
with characters, set in fantastic places, and plots that wound in unexpected
and exciting directions. And, for our added pleasure, she would make them
slightly scary. She serialized these with some going on for weeks; each
evening's episode ending in a cliffhanger. She always remembered where she left
the story and started the next episode at that precise point. The living room
was on the main floor at the north end of the house; our bedrooms were at the
south end, on the third and fourth floors. After her evening storytelling
session ended, it felt as though we had to track a mile through the maze of our
house to reach our bedrooms. There was typically a lot of sprinting and
screaming involved. And we could all hear the stairs creak for a half hour
afterward.
John Grayshaw: Scott Bradfield said about your mom’s
writing and why she didn’t
have the same mainstream popularity as Le Guin, Russ, or Tiptree (aka Alice
Sheldon). “Wilhelm’s
fiction couldn’t
be easily categorized or summarized; she explored people rather than ideas; and
her style was-like the style of many good writers-so lucid, seamless and
convincing that it seemed invisible.” Why do you think she didn’t
have the same popularity?
I think Scott pegged it. Kate likely sent her agents and editors
into conniptions from one title to the next. She mused that she had a difficult
time staying within defined genre boundaries, when people populating her
imagination wouldn't stay within theirs. So, while one of her titles may be in
the Science Fiction section in a bookstore, another may be in Mysteries. And
some were hard to define as either, so they would end up wherever the seller
thought they looked good. She was told more than once that if she had only
stayed within the borders of one genre, she would have enjoyed much more
popularity. That wasn't her goal.
John Grayshaw: Your mother once claimed that her decision to
write SF was entirely serendipitous. She said, “I was a housewife with
two young children, and I’d
been reading an anthology, and I put it down and said to myself, ‘I
can do that.’
And I wrote ‘The
Mile-Long Spaceship,’
and sold it.” Did your mother fall in love with the genre over time?
At the time she began to write the space race had just started.
We lived on Star Lane in Louisville, and Dr. Moore, a professor of astronomy at
the University of Louisville had built an observatory—round, white, silver
dome, 20-inch telescope, and all—just a couple hundred yards up the hill from
our house. I remember a number of cold nights when he would invite us to peer
into space, and it was fantastic! That was during the 50s and the world was in
the middle of a technological sea change, and the stories being written and
published in the magazines at the time reflected that. Most were 'nuts and
bolts' Science Fiction. The Mile-Long Spaceship [1956] was Kate's first
published story and was solidly Science Fiction. ("The Pint-Sized
Genie" was also published that same year, and there is some question about
which came first. She told me she wrote "Genie" first.) She wandered
among genres a little during that time, but her Science Fiction stories were
selling. But she was already showing signs that she might not be contained
within the Science Fiction genre with her short stories from the 50s and early
60s, including "A is For Automation," "One for the Road,"
"The Last Threshold," "The Ecstasy of It," "Brace
Yourself for Mother," and "Gift from the Stars." They reflect
her earliest interests in the decisions people make when confronted with
difficult predicaments. I don't know that she ever fell in love with the
Science Fiction genre as much as she did being genre-fluid.
John Grayshaw: Did your mom talk to you about having a harder
time getting published because she was a female writer?
Of
course she did, especially at the beginning of her career. She was told as she
started out, that she should write under a pseudonym—male, of course. She
didn't follow that advice, and in time, she was recognized for her talent—and
her own name. As quoted from a Bob Thaves' "Frank and Ernest"
cartoon: "Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don't forget that Ginger
Rogers did everything he did…backwards and in high heels." One
note Kate added to her bio sketch: The "Mile-Long Spaceship,"
my first story, sold to Astounding Science Fiction in 1956, [and was] chosen as the best short
story of the year. I had to have an affidavit notarized that I was the author
before I received a check. I used the money to buy the portable typewriter I
had rented to copy the story, written on lined notebook paper. Women were
not supposed to write Science Fiction, plain and simple. But she and others
did, and the publishing industry slowly changed. Just a few years later she
could afford an IBM Model B typewriter.
John Grayshaw: What was it like when you were growing up, were
your mom and stepdad talking about science fiction stories and writer’s
workshops at the dinner table?
Kate and Damon tried to keep their work lives separate from
family life, so at dinner time, they talked more about the mashed potatoes than
about their work. It was a different story when they invited guests to visit.
Most were also writers or had some kind of connection. Those conversations,
although I don't remember specifics, were always entertaining and usually
involved names of people I knew, heard of, or read the works of. But, after
dinner, if I had nothing better to do, I'd sit with them in the living room and
listen to their critiques of stories they had just finished or complain about a
stinky contract they had been offered, or whatever else was on their minds. Damon
was considered one of the country's leading Science Fiction critics in those
days, and though I wasn't especially aware of his stature, I was amazed at his
depth of knowledge and the ease with which he could connect dots between the
arcane and obvious. In the middle of his occasionally savage dissection of a
story, he'd compose a limerick or tell an elephant joke to clear the air. Kate
was equally sharp with her story analysis, and it was a real education, far
more interesting than the American Lit classes I suffered through in high
school. Each summer, Kate and Damon hosted the Milford Science Fiction Writers
Conference, and I would sometimes sit in the adjoining library to listen to the
discussions, critiques, laughter, and yelling that would go on into the wee
hours. The next day, everyone would make their way to our kitchen for coffee
and some kind of treat Kate would make, and the conversation, argument, rancor,
resignation, and agreement would start anew.
John Grayshaw: What are some of your fondest memories of your
mother and what are some of the funniest memories?
There are things that parents keep from kids, for whatever
reason. Sometimes, it's to protect, sometimes it's not particularly important
and just doesn't come up. In 1979, Kate invited me to collaborate on a book
with her. She didn't know what it would be, just that she had the idea of
borders and boundaries crashing around in her head for some time and wanted
those words—borders and boundaries—to crash around in my head, too. What do
those words mean to each of us? I was a developing photographer (sorry, couldn't
help it), and she thought each of us could use our medium to express our ideas,
then combine those into a volume. So, off we went. Over the several years, we
traveled together around Oregon for a week or two at a time, exploring and camping
mostly on public lands far away from towns. I knew many of Oregon's backroads
by the time we started our project, so I plotted our trips, chose our
campsites, and checked the weather regularly since many of the roads I wanted
us to travel on were considered all-weather roads, but in reality, were
impassible after a rain. We saw places and things most people living here their
entire lives have not seen, including some of the gnarliest roads I'd ever been
on to reach some of the most magical locations. Kate was game and seemed to
always be scanning the horizon when we were fortunate enough to have one.
Toward the end of one of our final trips, I asked what she was looking for as
she would stare straight ahead. She said, "A way out!" She then told
me of her near paralyzing acrophobia suffered since childhood. The aha!
moment for me was that that information had never come up in conversation over
the decades. Within seconds, my mind drew a detailed picture of every bad-to-worse
road I had taken her on over the past four years, all the non-guard-railed,
switchbacked canyon two-tracks we had climbed, all the summits we drove to the
edge of for a better look at the terrain a mile below, and of the huge windows
in my VW van to see it all through. We stayed on lower-level roads through the
end of our travels. And she forgave me, which was about the fondest memory I
have. Oh, and the book is titled, The Hills Are Dancing, 1985, Corroboree
Press.
John Grayshaw: When did you first read your mother’s
writing?
I wasn't much interested in Science Fiction as a kid, and I
didn't begin to read her work until about the mid-60s, when I pulled a copy of More
Bitter Than Death (a mystery) from the shelf and read it. After that, it
was hit or miss on reading her work. I would read several in a row, then take a
break for a year or two, then go back in. Since opening InfinityBox Press in
2012, I've reread most of her stories.
John Grayshaw: What are your personal favorites of your mother’s
works? And why? And did she have favorites of her own?
It's tough for me to choose favorites among her nearly 200
titles. Without going into detail, I appreciate some more than others on a
given day. Then they reshuffle.
John Grayshaw: What are some of your mother’s works that you feel should be better known than they
are?
Of course, I believe everyone should read Kate's work—all of it.
As I mentioned earlier, her cross-genre approach to writing was a bit of a bane
for publishers and shop owners. But somehow, Kate's stories continue to find a
wonderful audience of new readers and her long-time fans. Since we opened
InfinityBox Press in 2012, we've reintroduced dozens of her earlier titles in
collections, novellas, and novels, including first editions of her last two
Barbara Holloway Mysteries.
John Grayshaw: What can you tell me about your mom and
stepfather establishing the Clarion workshops?
Kate first met Damon in Milford. After she submitted a manuscript
for the Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference, he invited her to
participate. It was her first workshop and her story was deftly, but brutally
taken apart by the others. Damon had started the Milford Writers Conference a
few years earlier with Judith Merril, also a Milfordite, and by time Kate was
invited, the workshoppers included many of the brightest stars in the Science
Fiction universe. So, into the fire she was thrown. She came out of it
relatively unscarred but with a much better sense for how the world of intense
critical review sessions works and became a huge promoter of the constructive
critique. Robin Wilson invited Kate and Damon into a conversation about
starting a six-week long, intensive writing workshop at his college, Clarion,
in northwestern Pennsylvania. Robin envisioned having prominent writers lead
the workshop for one week each. Kate and Damon said they would do it with one
condition: that they would lead the last two weeks together, which was
immediately agreed to. The workshop moved around the country as funding and
school policies shifted, landing it in Michigan, New Orleans, and finally
California. Kate and Damon were the anchor writers of Clarion for 27 years.
Kate's 2005 book, Storyteller, is all about Clarion. Side note: I
designed the Clarion Foundation's logo.
John Grayshaw: What can you tell me about your mom and
stepfather establishing the SFWA?
Damon Knight was the force behind SFWA (Science Fiction Writers
of America). He started his career when pulp fiction was still the thing. In
fact, when we moved into the Anchorage in the early 60s, the huge old Victorian
house in Milford, there were two walk-in closets along the third-floor hallway
that were stuffed to the ceiling with ratty boxes filled with pulp fiction
magazines that Damon had collected over the years. He had read each cover to
cover, often adding notes in the margins. The pages were dark yellow and close
to disintegration by time I found them. Damon had plotted for years to raise
the public's and the publishers' view of Science Fiction from pulp magazines to
a more mainstream acceptance. After all, how can a story be considered
important if it has a lifespan only slightly longer than a mayfly before it
turns to dust? By 1965, when he started SFWA, he had been one of the most
influential critics in the genre, and he knew everyone. He found a lot of
encouragement among his colleagues, and soon many of these contemporaries
joined his new organization. Aside from helping with the organization of this
new start-up, one of Kate's contributions to SFWA was the illustration she
doodled—literally on a napkin in a restaurant—which would become the basis art
for the Nebula Award. Damon succeeded in his dream of pulling Science Fiction
out of the pulps and into mainstream. He disdained the term "sci-fi,"
because it cheapened the genre, in his mind: it was Science Fiction! And he
remained a fierce champion of the genre throughout his life.
John Grayshaw: Who are some of the authors your mom mentored?
Kate taught two weeks of Clarion for 27 summers, so the numbers
of writers she mentored in those workshops would be in the hundreds. She and
Damon also hosted monthly workshops at their homes in Madeira Beach, Florida
and Eugene, Oregon from the early-70s onward. After Damon passed away in 2002,
Kate continued these workshops until 2017. These workshops witnessed 40+ years
of writers filtering in and out. And then, there were the annual Milford
Writers Conferences plus their overseas workshops and conferences. Her
influence and mentoring spanned more than a half century. Among her students,
workshoppers, and colleagues, whose stars have risen markedly, are Nina Kiriki
Hoffman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Vonda McIntyre, George Alec Effinger, Lucius
Shepard, Cory Doctorow, Ted Chiang, Leslie What, Edward Bryant, Octavia Butler,
and many others.
John Grayshaw: Who are some of the science fiction writers she
had correspondence/friendships with? Any stories about those relationships?
Kate's friends mostly included the people she interacted with
during workshops and other teaching sessions, but there were others, too. She
favored a meaningful conversation over small talk, although she could carry a
conversation on just about any topic. Many of her long-time friends were
participants in critique sessions she would lead, where emotions run high and
invite deep connections. The names I provided under the previous question
provide a good start to a long list.
John Grayshaw: Did you go with your mother to science fiction
conventions? Any memories of these? Did you and/or your mom
attend the ceremony when she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy
Hall of Fame in 2003?
I've never attended a Science Fiction convention. When Kate told
me about her upcoming induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, in 2003,
I invited her to go on a road trip with my wife, Sue, and me to Seattle for the
ceremony. We sat with Neil Gaiman and shared stories for a couple hours. At the
same ceremony, Damon was also inducted (posthumously) into the Hall of Fame,
along with Edgar Rice Burroughs. Pretty good company, I'd say.
John Grayshaw: Do you know of any future adaptations of your
mother’s
works in TV or movies?
Unfortunately, I can't talk about any options or plans for
adaptations that might be in the works. But if some were interested, we own the
rights to all of her and Damon's stories. Among those titles are many gems
waiting to be adapted for screen.
John Grayshaw: What were some of your mother’s hobbies other than writing?
With each move—Pennsylvania to Florida; Florida to Oregon—Kate's
main decision on the precise location was based on good soil, good sun, and
space; all for her garden. Her garden was her story nursery; it's where she
would work the soil and nurture her characters, plotlines, and locations. In
earlier years, she was drawn to astronomy, even to the point that she ground
and polished her own telescope mirror, which she traded for a stereo system
with her brother. Years later, the mirror found its way back to me. Kate was
also a crack chess player, who beat Damon so often that he stopped playing with
her. In earlier years, she would also play chess remotely with her brother by
way of writing moves in the corners of postcards they would send to each other,
waiting weeks or months for the next move to arrive.
John Grayshaw: Did your mother have a writing routine she
stuck to?
Kate's routine was built around her family schedule. When we were
young, she would work late at night. During our school years, she would work mid-morning
to mid-afternoon and then return to it after we'd go to bed often keeping at it
until 2 or 3 A.M. She more or less kept that schedule through the rest of her
life.
John Grayshaw: What is your mother’s legacy? Why was her work significant at the time? And
why is it still important today?
Kate etched her name and those of other women writers in the
glass ceiling of the publishing industry. She didn't do it alone, but she
worked hard, through a transition time for publishing to make sure the voices
of women and others would be heard equally. Her mentorship of new writers and
sharp critical analysis of their stories helped shape at least two generations
of excellent storytellers. Her own work spanned genres, but her fascination
with the psychology of humans' decision-making processes helped to grow the
genre of Speculative Fiction and free it as simply an "alternate"
name for Science Fiction, as Heinlein had defined the term mid-20th century, or
as a catchall name for other genres such as fantasy, or apocalyptic tales. She
helped to set it on its own trajectory. And the genre hopping she performed
opened a huge door for other restless authors with stories not fitting neatly
into an existing template.