hen asked why he writes science fiction, Joe Haldeman will say, "It's a living." Once you get him talking, though, it seems to be much more than that.
Haldeman's writing career began more than 30 years ago, and has produced over 14 novels and scores of short stories and poetry since. This includes The Forever War (1975, St. Martin's Press) and Forever Peace (1997, Berkley), both of which won the Hugo and Nebula awards. In addition, several short stories have won these prestigious awards, as well as the Rhysling and Ditmar awards. The Hemingway Hoax (1990, Morrow) won the Italian "Futuro Remoto" award.
Born in Oklahoma on June 9, 1949, Haldeman fought in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, where he received the Purple Heart and an influence on his writing that would persist long after the war ended. He currently resides in Gainesville, Fla., with his wife, Gay Haldeman. They also have a residence in Cambridge, Mass., where Haldeman teaches writing courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the fall.
Joe Haldeman's first novel, War Year, was published in 1972. Besides writing, he travels extensively. His journeys have taken him across the United States, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. In 1982, he visited the former U.S.S.R. as a guest of the Soviet Writer's Union. Haldeman's career continues with his latest novel Guardian (December 2002, Ace Books). Sitting in an international airport with the smell of French fries lingering in the air, Joe Haldeman took the time to answer a few questions.
How did you reach the decision to become a professional writer?
Haldeman: I was always going to be a writer, but I thought it would be poetry, and of course I never expected to make a living from that. After I sold a couple of stories and went to the Milford conference, I made a deal with my wife—she would teach full-time while I wrote for two years. Then we'd assess whether I should keep up with it, or get a job.
As it turned out, she decided to quit teaching—her school was being run by a lunatic—and we both got assistantships at the University of Iowa. The Forever War was my master's thesis, and by the time I left there was no doubt I would write for a living.
What was the decision-making process that led you away from poetry and into fiction? Do you still write poetry?
Haldeman: I sold a few stories and decided to try to make a living at it, and thought I'd better not spend time and energy on work that paid in copies of obscure journals. After about 12 years, I loosened up and started writing poetry again. I average about two or three poems a month.
Your first novel was accepted upon first submission. How rare is that in this industry, and how often have you experienced the same circumstances?
Haldeman: I suspect it happens every now and then; a wild guess would be one out of 10 people who continue to write for a living. It is encouraging. A lot of people who would be good writers can't handle rejection. For all I know, I would have been one of them.
Do you write as often as you did in your earlier career?
Haldeman: I guess for about the past 25 years, I've finished a novel every 18 months or so. Not a huge output, but enough to keep groceries on the table. For most of the past 32 years, I've written every morning, seven days a week. Every now and then I take a week or two off, usually because of the difficulties of travel, sometimes illness. (Though some of the best stuff I've written was on the road or while I was feeling lousy.) Sometimes I'll give myself a week off when I finish a book, but usually I don't make the full week. It's partly deadlines and partly feeling as if there's something vaguely wrong with the day if it doesn't start off with writing.
I'm pretty sure I would write every day even if somebody handed me a million bucks. I might write more poetry, and take more time with the novels.
That's something I would love to put to the test!
One of the major tools of any writer has to be reading. Do you read often, and if so, what are your current book interests?
Haldeman: I read constantly, mostly nonfiction, about half or so of that related to the current novel. Science, biography, history, criticism, art, humor, poetry. Not much fiction. Right now, I'm reading short stories from a half-dozen anthologies for the course I'm teaching.
Your early work of the '70s remains as much science fiction today as it was then, whereas a lot of science-fiction elements have become reality. Do you write with an effort to stay considerably in the future, and do you think that in the sci-fi world life imitates art or art imitates life?
Haldeman: There's no doubt that some of the things science-fiction writers write about do come true, and sometimes that's because a bright reader made it so. More often, I attribute it to the "shotgun effect"—if you predict a lot of things, some of your predictions will be right.
As to "art imitates life," there are two answers. The first one is that science fiction is like any other kind of fiction in that it uses mimesis, the reflection of reality, in order to be believable. The other one is that science fiction is usually about the present, not the future—it's a literary device for examining what we are, rather than where we are going.
You teach courses at MIT, as well as participate in various writer's workshops. What inspired you to take up teaching? What do you try to instill in your students more than anything else?
Haldeman: What initially "inspired" me to take up teaching, back in 1970, was a sincere desire to pay the rent. Now it's sort of a compulsive hobby. I lose money, overall, teaching at MIT, but it's satisfying.
I try to instill in my students a respect for good writing. I try to give them an ear for it.
Do you review past works and try to write better, or stick with inspiration and set yesterday's work behind you?
Haldeman: That's not really an either/or question. Yes, I occasionally reread things I wrote years ago, but it's not to say "I can do it better now"—of course I can. What rereading does is reassure me that I can do it at all; that I've faced these narrative challenges before and somehow worked my way through them.
Before and after your time in the Army, what other means have you used to make a living?
Haldeman: I never had an actual job. I worked part time and summers as a statistician's assistant, librarian, mathematician (just grad-student stuff, helping a guy do Hamiltonians for his Ph.D.), programmer, punch-card drone, classical guitar teacher, tutor, laborer.
It has been said that your experiences in Vietnam influenced your writing. Is this an accurate statement?
Haldeman: Absolutely. That was true of most of the male writers in the two or three generations that preceded me: Their first novel was about the war they had to fight in. Now it's about graduate school.
Besides The Forever War, what other works came from the war, and what inspired some of the work that did not have that influence?
Haldeman: War Year and 1968 are set in Vietnam. Forever Peace is about war and its effects on soldiers and society. Buying Time is very much about violence, and living with its aftereffects, as is Tools of the Trade. Normally it's hard to say what "inspires" a book. Most professional writers don't need a specific inspiration. Put me in a room with a stack of paper and I'll write a book; it's in my nature. There's often a specific thing that starts a book, like an article you read or something that happened to you, but that's not the same as inspiration. You do have to start somewhere, after all.
The one I'm working on now, Sea Change, came from an article in New Scientist about global clusters. The one just released, Guardian, was from an interest in the Tingit religion and folk tradition. The one before that, The Coming, was a structural experiment based on Rashomon [the movie] and The Alexandria Quartet.
What influence do you credit in this century?
Haldeman: The 21st? None who wasn't an influence in the 20th. Hemingway is obvious, and Heinlein. Vonnegut and Heller. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the writer I most admire, and always read, though our styles are different. Lawrence Durrell, John McDonald. Ted Sturgeon, Avram Davidson, Fred Brown ... lots of people. A lot of previous-century guys, like Poe, Stevenson, Twain, Crane. The Romantic poets.
Everyone you read influences you, trivially true, whether you like their work or not.
Your travel agenda seems to be well rounded and quite busy. Is the majority of this work mandated, and would you call it a fringe benefit?
Haldeman: Most of the travel is related to work, but most of it also has an element of pleasure. I love it when I can have a few weeks at home, and not be scrambling all over with suitcases and passports. But I think the exposure to different environments does help me as a science-fiction writer.
Several philosophers have said some version of this: You aren't a successful adult until you can no longer distinguish work from play. I'm pretty close to this. I enjoy my work, and my play is challenging, and fuels the work.
Do your novels do better overseas, and if so, do you have an idea why?
Haldeman: I have more books in print in some European countries, but I think that has more to do with publishing practices than my own literary abilities. I'm basically a mid-list writer, which is a vanishing species in the U.S., but still can be found lurking in the bookstores of Europe.
The poem "Saul's Death" appeared in February '83 Omni magazine. What inspired this particular piece?
Haldeman: I wrote almost nothing but poetry until I started writing fiction in the late '60s. When I started writing for a living, I made a conscious decision to stop writing poetry and concentrate on fiction.
Sometime around 1980, I began to regret the decision, and thought I might ease back into poetry by writing a long narrative poem, and came up with the plot of "Saul's Death." At first, I'd intended to do it along the lines of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." But I was reading through Ottone Riccio's The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry, reading about forms, and came across Ezra Pound's fierce "Sestinas: Altaforte," and the next day I was off and running.
I wrote and rewrote it and sold it to Omni magazine.
Here's the unbelievable part: A couple of years later, I came up to Boston to teach for a year at MIT. I saw in a catalog for the Boston Center for Continuing Education that Ottone Riccio was giving a poetry workshop. It had been going for a couple of weeks, but I went down and signed up anyhow. When I went upstairs, the class was almost over, and Riccio had brought in a copy of the current Omni, with the poem that he couldn't have known he had inspired—as an example of how formal poetry was not dead.
I sat down and he asked whether I had read it. I had to say, "You won't believe this. ..."
Is The Forever War series finished?
Haldeman: I don't think I'll write another novel in it. It isn't "finished," because we're still working on the graphic novel adaptation of Forever Free.
When you wrote War Year, did you see yourself writing, even getting published in 2002? What about the next 30 years?
Haldeman: When I wrote War Year in 1970, I couldn't conceive of living till 2002. Young people are like that. If I live till 2032, I'll be younger than Jack Williamson is now, and hope to be as productive.
Besides Guardian, what other projects are in the works? Do you work on one novel at a time?
Haldeman: I do one novel at a time; Sea Change is the current one. I'm also writing some short fiction, aiming at a collection to come out in '05. Compiling a poetry collection for the University of Tampa press. Screenplay for Mindbridge.
For many years, I've worked on one novel at a time, in terms of actually creating text. I work on several others in the sense of making notes for future use.
What can you tell me about your latest book?
Haldeman: The book is titled Guardian, out December 4 from Ace Books. Here is an excerpt from the book jacket:
Rosa Coleman has not had an easy life. Uprooted from her Southern home during the Civil War, she settled in Philadelphia; eventually she married a man of wealth whose compassion quickly turned to cruelty. But once that cruelty was inflicted upon their only son, Daniel, she picked up and fled with the boy across the uncivilized Western frontier—and into Alaska to start anew among the region's gold fields.
But even the harsh journey across America has not prepared Rosa for the infinite possibilities that await her. Something not of this world has approached her. ... It will take her on an extraordinary odyssey as she discovers that she has a role to play in bringing peace to Earth. ...
Can you describe a day in the life of Joe Haldeman?
Haldeman: I get up between 3:30 and 4:30 and make a pot of tea, and go out on the screened porch to write by lamplight. (No electricity out there.) I write with a fountain pen, in blank bound books. I write a few hours, usually until it starts getting light, and then retire to the computer. I spend a couple of hours there, doing correspondence and updating my diary (which is published daily online). Break for breakfast sometime in there.
If the weather's good, I bike for an hour or so. Usually I have some errands to run, so I don't feel completely self-indulgent. On Saturdays, in Florida, or Sundays, in Mass., I spend three hours drawing and painting at a figure studio.
Afternoons I fiddle with research, outlining, woolgathering. I usually read in the tub for an hour or so. Once or twice a week we go to a movie in the afternoon or evening.
I enjoy cooking, and spend an hour or so preparing dinner while listening to music. We often have company; if not, we probably waste most of the evening watching TV. A few nights a week I play the guitar; sometimes I work on paintings.
In the best of all possible worlds, I would give over most nights to amateur astronomy. Our neighborhood, though, has become so light-polluted that it's become almost pointless to look for anything outside the solar system. Sometimes I load the 100-pound-plus telescope into the van and go out of town, but that's usually for a special event.
Any final thoughts to share?
Haldeman: Every time I've taken on a project just for money, it's been a mistake. I would have made more money and had a better time doing my normal writing.
Don't worry about writer's block. Almost everybody gets it, and it goes away.
Try not to let negative criticism get you down. The best books in the world are despised by some people. What's harder is to put compliments in proper perspective. If someone says you're the best writer since Shakespeare, he or she is probably more interested in your body or your wallet than your writing.
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