Fantasy Author’s Handbook Interviews SF Legend Mike Resnick

As part of the process of writing The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction, I interviewed a few key players in the SF/fantasy community. Their wisdom and generosity is liberally sprinkled throughout the book, but I couldn’t use every word–and wanted to do some follow-ups. This is an expanded interview with science fiction and fantasy author Mike Resnick, presented with my sincere thanks for all his help.

Mike Resnick, according to Locus magazine, is the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for speculative short fiction. A 53-year veteran of the professional writing game, Mike sold his first article in 1957 and his first book five years later. His first published SF novel was 1967’s The Goddess of Ganymede, which also happens to be the first of his books I actually read. He’s also been an active SF/fantasy fan since 1962. His daughter, Laura Resnick, is herself an accomplished author of fantasy and romance novels, including The Purifying Fire, which I had a small hand in publishing for Wizards of the Coast.
The first question was one I asked everyone who completed an interview for The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction:
Athans: Please define “fantasy” in 25 words or less.
Resnick: Fantasy is fiction that purposely and knowingly breaks one or more of the known laws governing the universe.
Athans: Please define “science fiction” in 25 words or less.
Resnick: Science fiction is concerned with an alternative past, an altered present, or an imagined future and obeys the known laws governing the universe.
Athans: What advice can you give an aspiring fantasy author on how to approach action scenes? Is there such a thing as too much action?
Resnick: I’d tell him to study the particular market he’s considering, and put in a little more or a little less action than the competition–not so much or so little that it doesn’t fit the format–to make his story stand out a bit.
Yes, you can have too much of anything. Look at the movie Van Helsing. One supernatural creature can be fascinating and/or terrifying; hundreds of them are simply boring. As for action scenes, you have to make them subjective. Getting hit or cut hurts, and hero or not, if your character doesn’t feel pain, there’s no reason why your reader should feel apprehension.
Athans: How do you approach the creation of monsters and/or aliens? When do you know you’ve created something worthy of exploring in greater detail?
Resnick: First, they have to fulfill the needs of the story. Second, I try to create monsters or aliens that are not quite what the reader is expecting. Mainly, I try to keep them from ever being considered generic.
I try to make my non-sentient life forms fit the ecology in which they have evolved. As for aliens, they have to be alien; they can’t just be men and women in funny costumes.
Read the rest of the interview at Fantasy Author’s Handook. . . .