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Dann: The da Vinci book was The Memory Cathedral, which I’ve had really good luck with. It was about the time that the book came out in the States that I moved to Australia. HarperCollins Australia also bought the book, and it was a bestseller there. It topped the bestseller list on The Age magazine. The other big surprise was Germany, where it sold heavy-duty numbers—for me anyway. The cover price was 49.5 deutchmarks, which is about $50 Australian. When I heard what the price was going to be, I asked, “Are people going to pay $50 for a hardcover book?” I guess they did. So that book went into about ten languages. The next book was a Civil War novel called The Silent. It isn’t a genre novel. It was published here, and it was also published in Australia and Germany. While I was writing The Silent, I was also editing Dreaming Down-Under with Janeen Webb. That’s the Australian anthology. Again we were lucky. It won a Ditmar Award in Australia and the World Fantasy Award here. One of our purposes in doing the anthology was to try to get Australian genre writing noticed in the States and Great Britain. I think we succeeded in our small way. I’m still doing the Magic Tales anthologies with Gardner Dozois. Those are still coming out at the rate of about two a year. And I’m working on a big James Dean/Hollywood novel that I sold to HarperCollins US. It’s basically the story of James Dean after his accident. So I am doing this as a mainstream, alternate-time novel.
Q: You seem to be moving very much to the fringes of traditional science fiction, or beyond it completely. Is this an intentional career strategy, or are things just working out that way?
Dann: I think it’s just things working that way. When I’m told I’m this kind of a writer or that kind of a writer, my response—like Harlan Ellison’s—is that “I’m a writer.” I guess a politically correct way of saying it is that I write “across the genres”. That will probably translate into “out of genre.” This Quixotic course is a marketing nightmare. I’ve actually been very lucky in Australia, because HarperCollins has been publishing me there as a Flamingo author—that’s their literary line—and they have also been pulling in my science fiction readers. My early science fiction novels such as Starhiker and Junction and The Man Who Melted were on the far-out edges of the genre. Junction was a weird, fringe, where-do-you-put-it novel, although The Man Who Melted was a straight science-fiction novel. (I thought so, anyway!) As for The Memory Cathedral, some people are calling it fantasy, some are calling it SF, and some are saying that it isn’t genre at all. So I just don’t worry about it. I think of my novel-in-progress about James Dean as mainstream in intent, but it really is an extrapolation of what could have happened if James Dean had lived. He goes into politics. He hangs around with the Kennedys. He beats Reagan in California.. I wanted to play around with the idea of cultural icons and myths. If Dean had lived, would he have the same iconic stature that he does now? I don’t think so. Look at Brando. If he had died young, he, too, would have become a cultural icon. So I am dealing with stuff like that, with Marilyn Monroe, with Elvis Presley and Bobby and Jack Kennedy—they’re all major characters.
Am I intentionally moving my career into the mainstream? I think I am intentionally trying not to be categorized, but that’s just because of the kind of writer I am: I get interested in something and want to write it, and it may be genre, or, as is usually the case, it may not be.
Q: I guess you could say the James Dean book is a non-category fantasy, which means it’s a fantasy but you don’t tell anyone it’s a fantasy. I understand that Mark Helprin, for example, is very defensive about not being labeled a fantasy writer, because everybody assumes fantasy means elves and unicorns. Of course fantastic literature is much broader. But as we well know from all those books that you haven’t heard of before they win World Fantasy Awards, there is a great deal of interesting fantasy being published outside of the fantasy category. So I guess you’re very lucky to be able to publish fantasy as mainstream. Great work if you can get it.
Dann: Certainly with The Memory Cathedral I am doing the same sort of thing that John Crowley is doing. And there is the same sort of problem of where to categorize it. But, you see, I love the genre, so it’s not as if I don’t want to be associated with it. I just want to have any given book reach its audience. I’ll give you an example. When The Memory Cathedral won the Aurealis Award in Australia, it was selling very well there, and it was selling as a mainstream, historical novel. I was very lucky. It got full-page photo reviews. When it won the Aurealis Award, my publisher decided to do a sticker, which I thought was a great idea. It read, “Winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy.” Within two weeks, the books disappeared from the center shelves, where they had been selling very well. I asked bookstore clerks and managers what had happened, and they told me, “People who read historical novels want everything to be real. Of course we know that this is a historical novel about Leonardo da Vinci. But the sticker says ‘fantasy’, so historical-novel readers won’t buy it.” I had effectively lost the mainstream audience. So when my novella “Da Vinci Rising”, which was adapted from the novel, won the Nebula Award, Harper made a bigger sticker, which read “Winner of the Aurealis/Nebula Award.” It had “Aurealis” on top, “Nebula” on the bottom, but it said nothing about fantasy. Two weeks later, the books were right back in the center and they were reaching that audience again. True story. Now you and I both know that this is insanity, but it’s the way that stuff gets categorized. So when I say I don’t want to be categorized, I try to make sure that when one of my non-genre or cross-genre books comes out, it’s going to be able to reach that mainstream audience.
Q: There are others who luck out like this. James Morrow, for example, is reviewed as mainstream but also sells as fantasy. Harlan Ellison has certainly made a very vocal point throughout his career of not being categorized as one type of writer. But there are many others who may strive their whole careers and never be discovered outside of the SF/fantasy field, no matter what they write.
Dann: Again, I’ve been lucky. I’ve had publishers who were willing to work with me, and so far I have been able to walk the tightrope.
Q: Did it make any difference because you moved to Australia? Norman Spinrad refers to the “prince from another land” strategy. Were you able to do some of that?
Dann: I wouldn’t call it a strategy, because for me it wasn’t a strategy. I have always been very lucky in that here in the States, and also in Australia, I have had editors and publishers who really believed in the work. This has been a huge help and has made me feel very secure, shall we say, as I am not one of those writers who can knock out a novel or two a year.
The irony is that since I’ve been living in Australia—it’s been about seven years—I have more of a presence in the United States. I was at a convention and Bob Silverberg said, “You’re 50...and you’re hot.” [Laughs.] When I lived in Binghamton, in upstate New York, George R. R. Martin referred to me, correctly, as the hermit of Binghamton, because you couldn’t get me out of upstate New York. I am more present now in terms of a public person, and in terms of just being around in the country, here in the States, than when I lived here. When I travel now, I make a point to be “out there.” I’m in New York and I’m in LA, and I’m at this convention.
Since I’ve been living in Australia, my career has been doing well. In the “bad old days” I would spin off other jobs to stay afloat. I’d say, “I’ll try marketing,” and before I knew it I’d have a viable company that was demanding time. Would you believe it? I took a job in insurance because the hours were good, and after I left, I was asked to be on the board of directors. Crazy stuff. In Australia, I just write and pay attention to the writing. That made a big difference. I was able to make enough money by focusing on the writing.
Q: How has moving to Australia affected your writing? I notice that the first book you wrote after going there was about the American Civil War. Do you have a different perspective, viewing the United States from the outside now?
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