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I have been reading Elizabeth Moon's Science Fiction for years. I picked up and read one
of the early books in "The Serrano Legacy" and promptly went looking for
pre-cursor novels and sequels. There weren't as many as there are now.
Ms. Moon rather quickly became one of those authors whose work I will purchase
wherever and whenever I find it. Hardcover, no problem! Who could wait another six months (or
horribly, even a year) to find out what happens next?
She writes about strong women with an authenticity that Bob Heinlein would have envied.
Her people are more well-rounded than most authors, let alone Science Fiction authors. Her
characters don't just have tactical or engineering problems, they have emotional problems
to be overcome as well. Her work makes me think about things I never considered before . . .
and makes me think about common things in a new manner.
So, when the Editor here asked me to interview Elizabeth Moon, there was only one answer.
Paul:
For all of the people that aren't that familiar with you, I'd like to get a little background.
You were in the Marines.
Elizabeth Moon:
Yes, I was, from 1968 to 1971, Active Duty.
Paul:
In Viet Nam, or here at home?
Elizabeth Moon:
No, I was stationed at Headquarters, Marine Corps, most of that time and at Quantico the rest of the time.
Paul:
Why did you enlist in the Marines?
Elizabeth Moon:
That is one of those questions that gets more complicated to answer the older I get. I had always planned to serve in the military, one way or the other. And when I graduated from college, I went and talked to recruiters in all the branches. Three of the branches said, "Oh, how wonderful . . . we're so excited . . . it will be wonderful for you . . . we'll give you this and we'll give you that and we'll give you the other thing . . ." And the Marine recruiter looked at me and said, "You might make it through OCS . . ." So, guess what I picked!
Paul:
*laughing* So it was a challenge.
Elizabeth Moon:
It was a challenge! Boy, was it a challenge!
Paul:
In your Familias Regnant novels, the Heris Serrano stuff, you have a lot of ship-board military action. So, if you were stationed on land, instead of on board ship . . .
Elizabeth Moon:
Well, I have friends who were in the Navy. Of course, serving in that period of time, I knew people in all the branches.And I've had friends since who served in the Navy, and so when I need something I go and say, "Oh, so-and-so, would you please let me know about . . ." And a lot of them are mentioned, although many of them don't want their full names used, they're in the acknowledgements as my faithful helpers.
Paul:
Personally, I want to thank you for your service.
Elizabeth Moon:
Paul:
I feel that it is important for us to acknowledge the people that do serve. I signed up, but they sent me home early.
Elizabeth Moon:
Well, it happens to some people.
Paul:
You also worked as a paramedic . . .
Elizabeth Moon:
Yes, we moved to this small town which was in need of volunteers for its EMS Service and I took the first class thinking that I wouldn't really like it . . . I wouldn't be any good at it, but they needed help. So, I took this first-responder class and realized I enjoyed emergency medical work. Its very exciting, its a very high-tension kind of thing much of the time. It also puts you in direct contact with people. You're the first line of response, particularly in a rural area. So, I liked it. I went on and got my EMT Special Skills paramedic certifications. And until realized that you cannot really take an ambulance run and strap your infant into the front seat while you're working in the back, I stayed with it. But then it became impossible because you can't just pick up and leave an 11-month-old autistic kid to go take the ambulance out. So I had to quit.
Paul:
Did you read Science Fiction in High School?
Elizabeth Moon:
Oh, yes! I was introduced to Science Fiction in the 9th grade by a girl who transferred from the local parochial school. I had never read it before. I had a very arrogant attitude about it that I had picked up . . I don't know where. Because it turned out that my mother had liked Science Fiction -- pre-war Science Fiction. But I thought it was silly stuff. And my friend Mary said, "If you haven't read it how do you know you don't like it?" And she told me three particular books to read. One was an Andre Norton, one was a Heinlein, and one was an Asimov. She said, "Don't talk about it 'til you've read them." So I read them very fast, because I was always a fast reader, and came back and said, "Hey, is there more of this? I want more! I want more!"
Paul:
Those are three of my favorites, as well, along with Arthur Clark from back in the '50s.
Elizabeth Moon:
Arthur C. Clark . . . Sturgeon was another favorite of mine . . . Zenna Henderson, later . . .
Paul:
Elizabeth Moon:
Uh-huh, the People stuff . . . Ray Bradbury, as soon as I discovered him. Now, he actually had a story in one of our literature books in our English classes in school. "The Pedestrian," I don't know if you remember that story of his. Its about a guy goes out for a walk. Everyone else is inside watching TV. And he's eventually arrested because he's not doing what everyone else is doing. It was a nice meaningful story. They could ask us the right kind of questions about it. But then I discovered that Bradbury wrote many other wonderful things. Most of those, I would say, I read later in High School and in college.
Paul:you begin writing Science Fiction?
Elizabeth Moon:
I had been writing since I was a child -- a small child. I was trying to write stories in the first grade. They were horrible, They were bad, in fact, they continued to be bad for years. But, as soon as I started writing Science Fiction, I'd say within six months, of starting reading it, I was writing it. It had always been that way. I read dog stories -- I wrote dog stories. I read horse stories, so I wrote horse stories. If I read a book, I would then write something similar. Typical of young writers who are just feeding stuff right back out.
Paul:
So you originally started writing stories like Heinlein and Asimov . . .
Elizabeth Moon:
. . . Norton and Sturgeon trying to make something that "felt right." And I didn't have the skills. I didn't know what I was doing. Once, at a convention I read the one surviving copy that I have of any of this, a story called "Top Secret." And I read it as a joke. I said, "You are used to me reading something serious -- last year I read something really serious. This year I'm going to show you what kind of writer I was at 15 -- really really bad." And they howled in the aisles.
Paul:
You're one of the few authors I've read that tries to deal with the ethics of people living longer. Not just taking a one-sided view, but taking a more complete picture of it. Was there something specific that brought that to mind?
Elizabeth Moon:
Several things -- and I don't remember now which came first. One was a long discussion in Military History of the difference between young military people and older military people and the fact that they will approach the same military problem very differently. The young ones are very reactive, they just react to something. The older ones begin to learn more about tactics and as they get older, they learn more about strategy. And then, if they're smart enough and survive long enough, they get stupid again. Because they become so concerned about losing resources -- they become so prudent -- that they can't intervene. And I began to notice as I got older that each age group handles problems differently. Something that is a serious major threat to a 20-year-old, a 40-year-old will say, "Oh, I know what to do about that," and work right around it and its a minor blip in the road. So that interested me just as a point of characterization.
Then I noticed that the difference in average life-span in different countries between poor and rich were quite extreme. And maximal life-span. I noticed in reading about different cultures, how people make their decisions -- if you know that you have the possibility of having a very long life, you make different decisions in your early life than if you expect to die by 40. And I remember that when I was very young . . . a lot of my friends, as well as me . . . we were all convinced that there was going to be another nuclear war and we were all going to be blown up. And so, why do we worry about this, this, and this, because we're all going to die by the time we're 35. And this changes how you approach problems. The person who knows that they are going to live a very long time will try to set thigns up so that things stay nice for their whole life. Its the people who expect to live on the land a long time that worry about ecology, for instance -- who worry about how's the land going to be in 20 years? 30 years? 40 years? The person who does not expect to be there or who's constantly moving around and doesn't expect to come back, doesn't care!
You buy a house, you live in in three years, you get transferred, you go somewhere else. Why bother to plant? Why bother to worry about the roof or anything else? And I put those together and thought: People have dealt with extended life-span or living forever in terms of how much can you learn, how much information can you hold in your head. I didn't think anyone had really dealt with the effects on society as a whole -- what it was going to do to the structure of society.
Also, another thing that got into there was the British Royal family. Here is the Queen, living on and living on and living on. And the man who's going to be King has nothing to do. I mean, he can go out and do some ceremonial stuff. But when you're a young person, you expect to go into business or go into your career or go into your occupation, and take it on and grow with your occupation up to a certain point. But, if the older generation doesn't get out of your way, you have no place to go. You're stuck. The glass cieling becomes an iron cieling, in a sense. So that was also one of the factors that I worked into it.
Paul:
That's really interesting. The one thing that really struck me about that set of books was this fact: you had a really big build-up the last two or three books with Esmay. Everybody's getting ready for a war. Esmay and her boyfriend get married. They ship out, and then . . . I waiting for the next book!
Elizabeth Moon:
Well, that series kinda belongs to a publisher that I'm not with any more.
Paul:
Elizabeth Moon:
And the difficulty if you try to carry the same series from one publisher to another -- is that it helps readers if, when you bring out the new book, you make sure that all the old ones are in print. So that someone who discovers book ten can go back and find book seven and eight and nine. If you're not with the same publisher, your former publisher has no incentive whatsoever to work in sync with your new publisher. Why would they? Its not going to be that big a profit for them. Their part is going to be a very small part of anything new. So, its better to start a new series, I was told.
Paul:
Elizabeth Moon:
Well, good, I'm glad you do!
Paul:
It was really exciting to see something different, because you had Kylara in the Academy first, and I was expecting another military thing. And then you just took a left turn and headed off into the wild blue yonder. It was wonderful!
Elizabeth Moon:
She's sneaking back toward the military. Because its in her nature. And one of the thing I wanted to play with was how much innate character determines where you end up. Or does it? How much effect does your innate personality have to do with where you end up? Can life really "know you out of your path?" Obviously, it can if you get thrown in a concentration camp and die. But, in fiction, I hava a character that I'm not going to kill of until the end of the series, if then. Well, if I like them enough, I don't kill them off until the end.
Paul:
So, you're not giving anything away . . .
Elizabeth Moon:
No! But, she is innately suited for a military type of career and she has been knocked out of it. So will her personality and her abilities and her talents pull her back in that direction as strongly as they (right now) seem to be doing? Or, is the fact that what got her in trouble . . . what got her kicked out . . . is that going to become an influence again? Is she really that suited for a military career, or not.
Paul:
You also had a real fine legal point with the marque and reprisal . . . the way you address that. In America, we would say that its a constitutional issue. So that was sort of surprising that in Science Fiction that there would be that depth to everything . . .
Elizabeth Moon:
Paul:is fun, but how did you get the understanding that led to all of that? Marque and reprisal is a real obscure part of our history.
Elizabeth Moon:
Well, I have friends who are into Naval History in a big way. And I had been interested in the whole concept of Letters of Marque from back when I was studying History. They were used widely for maybe 100, 150 years, then they disappeared pretty much. Was it a matter of the law changing? Was it a matter of the legal or the military circumstances changing that made that usage no longer as useful? What changed? Was it the law leading, or was it practicality leading? And so, I don't know the answer, because I'm not a Naval Historian, myself, its just something I play with. I am free to think about it and think, "OK, why would star systems have it? Why would they begin to abandon it? What would they put in place of it? What if what they put in place of it didn't work?
Paul:
So, what's next for Kylara?
Elizabeth Moon:
Well the new book is Engaging the Enemy and its coming out next spring. I have just finished the revisions on it, and she will be faced with trying to do something about these bad guys. Bad guys who have now moved from simply being pirates, to simply disrupting the communication system, to actually attacking systems. And taking over systems -- moving in and saying, "We are the power structure." Very much in an organized crime type way. Seriously organized crime type way.
Paul:
So, that's what she's going to deal with next?
Elizabeth Moon:
That's what she has to deal with. Well, she's been dealing with the results, now she's working toward being able to do something about it. And she runs into family problems, because not all family members think this is a good idea. She runs into political problems from systems whose governments don't want things stirred up. They're afraid that she will bring attention to them. That they will become targets because she is making a noise. And problems from people she would like to be allies with, because while she is very talented, very gifted, she's not very experienced. There's a lot she doesn't know and assessing the quality of potential allies is one of the things she doesn't know.
Paul:
Thank you so much for the interview. I'm looking forward to that book!
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