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Roll the Dice :
An Interview with Bart Stewart
(the original interview)
by
Adam Jack
1. Do you gamble?
Of course! I am a writer in the United States! ... Oh, you mean these casino games? No, those are for suckers.
2. What is your favorite game?
Parcheesi.
3. Do you drink? Favorite beer/alcohol/cocktail?
In the past I drank. Let's just say enough to lift the Nimitz from dry dock. On advice from medical professionals I stopped. It is amazing how easy it was to stop in my case. There were no cravings - nothing! I just quit. That was several years ago and I almost never drink now. I used to smoke marijuana to great excess in the 1980's. I think that may have been the only way I could get through that decade. I cut that out too, and now I get high on my imagination, which is a very potent joint.
4. Describe yourself (what you look like or what you wish you looked like).
People say I look like Chevy Chase!
5. Are you uncomfortable talking while pissing?
No, just typing while pissing.
6. Have you ever seen a dead body (not at a funeral)?
Why this distinction about a funeral? I think a psychiatrist would find that fascinating! The answer is yes. A cab driver was shot to death in the parking lot of my apartment complex in Las Vegas late one night back in the 90's. His cab rolled to a stop right in front of my patio. Would you be uncomfortable around one? I was pretty upset at the sight of that poor cabbie!
7. How much do you normally spend at a casino?
Whatever the buffet costs. I try to get comped into the shows.
8. Where did you get the statuary cat idea?
I don't usually admit this because it makes me sound like a nut case, but I actually had a dream one night with a lot of the imagery that appears in that story, the first story of the trilogy. I basically dreamt it all but for a few scenes. I have pretty far out dreams. I hung a fig leaf of rationality on the story when I put it into writing. In the book they are just weird animals unknown to science.
9. How much does the Twilight Zone influence your work?
I credit that show with getting me interested in writing when I was a kid, and all these years later I still sometimes come up with stories in that style. Tales of Real and Dream Worlds was certainly influenced by Serling. Actually it was HG Wells who said take a realistic setting and inject one fantastic element. So the Twilight Zone style is really the HG Wells style, and I discovered both Serling and Wells around the same time in my long gone youth. I have a thing for the old classics. The fact that something comes from a past era does not necessarily turn me off at all. I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies, too.
10. Describe science fiction to me.
I acknowledge that true science fiction should involve science. Real, hard science. I call my book fantasy. The problem then becomes that I have to explain that it is not a bunch of elves and dragons and sword and sorcery stuff, which is not my bag. I admire someone who can produce true science fiction. I am not sufficiently educated in the sciences to do it. Oh, I guess maybe with enough research I could try my hand sometime. I once thought about writing a story set at a point in the future so far away that it would bear no resemblance to our world. Think about ten thousand years into the future. You could not retain any of the present world, really. Even our bodies would be radically different. It would be a very challenging story to write, to do it justice.
11. Do you read sf?
I have read my weight in it over the years. Unfortunately I am an omnivorous reader with not much of a pattern to what I read, except that I try to avoid the lightweight stuff. I remember reading Richard Matheson's Third from the Sun as a kid. And I have read many of the bigger names, like Vonnegut, Heinlein, Bradbury, and Ellison. I like science fiction that has well developed characters, and some literary merit apart from just the science. I read Michael Crichton's Timeline, and the characters were kind of two dimensional, and there were even some clunky, cliched phrases in the writing. I hope his other books are not similarly afflicted.
12. What do you do when you're not writing (profession or hobbies)?
When I am not writing I deal with the financial wolf at my door. He's reminiscent of Cujo, only bigger and more determined.
13. Do you believe in aliens?
Yes, just not that they have visited us.
14. Who's your fave author?
What a tough question. I always say that, in terms of describing human beings, nobody has topped what Truman Capote accomplished with In Cold Blood. By the end of that book you felt like you had known all those people all your life. If any of your SF readers out there have never experienced In Cold Blood, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I think George Orwell's 1984 is an extremely important book. I even read the strange Russian proto-science fiction novel that influenced it, We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The great fiction writers are all dead. In terms of non-fiction I recommend Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine, who has written some stellar books. Visit Skeptic.com sometime.
15. What are you reading now?
I found these poetry books by a guy named Hayden Carruth, and I have to tell you, they are fantastic. I am not usually into poetry, but consider this imagery. "TERRA - Tundra, the distant marches. And wind veering, clatter of steely grasses; Steady tramontane pummeling eye and bone. Between hummocks, the ice-shell, glinting, Splintered under our tread, slashing our shoes, the papery leather flaking, crumbling." -- Hayden Carruth.
16. Name some inspirational authors.
Hmm, the great authors always seem to deal more with issuing warnings about some peril, or at least about bad attitudes. Inspirational? I wish there was more that was. I'll work on it.
17. How do you feel about guns?
I think their protective quality is vastly oversold. A criminal attacker is going to employ stealth and deception to try to get the drop on you, and if he does, it would not matter if you have the entire arsenal of the Texas Rangers in your house. I think banning guns would have enormous practical problems that those who advocate it never address. There would be widespread non-compliance with such a ban, much like the ban on marijuana. I think the better approach would be to continue pointing out the inadequacies of the protection afforded by guns. Martial arts are a much more effective self-defense for women and children.
18. What's the strangest thing you've ever experienced?
Apart from trying to deal with the American publishing industry, I would have to say it would be certain great coincidences that I have had over the years. I love a really choice, one-in-a-million coincidence, and we all have them. Dreams that seem to come true, thinking about someone and then meeting them, that sort of thing.
19. Married? Kids? Pet?
In the past I never particularly wanted to get married. In recent years the idea is more appealing to me, but it would take a special woman. I would not want it to end in divorce. She would have to be able to put up with a creative type. I will never be a corporate cog. I have no kids that I am aware of. Pets? I have had some cats in the past. At present I have only a Sea Monkey in a glass of water.
20. What's the scariest thing you've ever experienced?
That recent Republican Party debate was fairly spine-chilling. Oh, and I almost drowned once at Jacksonville Beach. Got caught in a rip tide.
21. What's your opinion of the SF market these days?
The market for fiction in general is very close to impossible, especially for new writers. It has been said that it is easier to break into professional sports than to make it as a writer of fiction. I am sure the number of professional athletes far exceeds the number of people who make their living writing fiction. It is the toughest business there is, hands down. And that is a tragedy not just for the new writers who will never be known, but for the culture of this country. We don't read any more. We chase pixels on a screen. That is the extent of our intellectual lives and our emotional lives. There will be consequences for that.
22. What's your opinion of the webzine market?
Oh, great, just great.
23. What are you writing now?
I have a novel that is 90% finished. It is entirely different from the surreal Tales of Real and Dream Worlds. This one is all about real life, and if you are a creative person you will see moments from your life in it. I want to write in different styles, always changing. It would be smarter I'm sure to stick to one formula and always be a predictable product for a marketing department, but I can't do that. This novel will have a lot to say, but it may be a year before it appears. The title is not yet finalized, but the author will be Bart Stewart.
24. What's your book “Tales of Real & Dream Worlds” about?
The book is nine stories that range widely in time and location. The common thread is a dreamlike atmosphere of the surreal in real world settings. The first story deals with a family who gets caught up in Orson Wells' 1938 War of the Worlds radio hoax. They are thoroughly convinced that the world is under attack by Martians, as millions of Americans were on that night. Now, that story is fiction about an incident that really happened. And there is another story in the collection that brushes up against real history. The other Tales are more in realms of fantasy, although there are no cliches of the supernatural. The events in the stories are fantastic and amazing, without any mysticism or other such hooey.
5. Is it any good?
Atom Jack didn't think so! But my other reviews have been almost uniformly enthusiastic!
26. Are you an author who will tell a reader what really happened in a story?
Yes and no. I like to leave some unresolved gray area. This is the Twilight Zone, Jack. That's the sign post up ahead.
27. The statuary cats blurs the line between F & SF, and is the dominant storyline in the book.
Are there plans to continue the cat storyline (novella, novel, blockbuster epic trilogy from Peter Jackson)? There is a screenplay on paper for the first story in the trilogy, but I have not yet turned my attention to peddling it. Still promoting the book ... which by the way is Tales of Real and Dream Worlds by Bart Stewart, available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com ... Will there be any further Statuary Cats stories? No, just the three in the book.
28. Are you a religious man?
I am a devout Frisbeeterian. We believe when you die your soul slides under a van and you can't reach it.
29. Alright, that about does it. Anything more you'd like to say?
Yes. "Same shit, new millennium." -- Bart Stewart, 2001.
Tales of Real and Dream Worlds can be purchased at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com or any Rabies' Rusty Meat Books.
Atomjack would like to thank Bart for a great interview, the Adam Jack version of which can be read here.
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