Prime Time Replay:
Douglas E. Winter
on Revelations
MsgId: *omni_visions(8)
Date: Thu May 1 20:34:37 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Good evening, everyone (unless you're a long way east or west--and then it's good morning), and welcome to what promises to be a splendid prime time edition of Omni Visions. My guest tonight is writer, editor, and critic, Douglas E. Winter. Doug's responsible for close to a dozen books now, including nonfiction works such as *Stephen King: the Art of Darkness* and *Faces of Fear*, as well as the original anthology that pretty much defined horror in the '80s, *Prime Evil*. His most recent work is the monumental editorship of *Revelations*, a new anthology-cum-braided-meganovel from HarperPrism. More about that later. First, good evening, Doug, and welcome. We'll talk for an hour or so; then my producer will open up the chatware so all with questions may participate.
MsgId: *omni_visions(9)
Date: Thu May 1 20:37:55 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Hi Ed and everyone. Physically I'm in Los Angeles tonight, watching and waiting for the Big One.
MsgId: *omni_visions(10)
Date: Thu May 1 20:41:39 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
The playoffs? The Rapture? The change of guard at the LAPD? In Southern California, there are so many choices... Okay, speaking of big ones: *Revelations* is a substantial work, and not just in terms of wordage. From the wrap-around short novel by Clive Barker to the other tales by the likes of Whitley Strieber, David Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, and all the rest. Two things. Can you give us some idea of your vision in assembling the book as you did? And will that help answer the question of why it took something like seven years?
MsgId: *omni_visions(11)
Date: Thu May 1 20:48:40 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
My ambition for the book was to offer a different way of presenting short fiction. For years, I've heard talk among writers about the idea of the ultimate collaboration: a novel written by a group of the best talents in "dark" fiction. I wanted to create an "anthology/novel" -- a way of allowing writers to work with a lot of creative freedom while providing readers with the narrative structure of a novel. The idea was easy, but the execution took a _lot_ of time. I'm also vitally interested in the idea of apocalypse -- and by that, I'm talking about the original meaning of the word: as revelation.
MsgId: *omni_visions(12)
Date: Thu May 1 20:50:42 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
So did this require a lot of editorial help in balance and coordination, as per shared world anthologies such as *Wild Cards* and *Thieves World*, or were your contributors in a position to take the central idea and simply run with it?
MsgId: *omni_visions(15)
Date: Thu May 1 20:56:03 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
The book took more coordination than a "shared world" anthology because it was not a situation where I could provide the writers with a set of rules to work from . . . I spent a lot of time discussing -- and, later, editing -- the stories with the writers, trying to find the balance between the creative freedom I like to have as a writer and the kind of genre-transcending fiction that would fulfill my ambition for the book. Indeed, the one thing I did _not_ want was to create a "shared world" . . . other than the very one in which we live.
MsgId: *omni_visions(14)
Date: Thu May 1 20:53:59 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Revelation from an especially spiritual stance? Or with a more secular frame of reference? Certainly the turning not only of centuries but of millennia would seem to be loaded with symbolic mass in regard to the definition of revelation you're suggesting.
MsgId: *omni_visions(18)
Date: Thu May 1 21:06:12 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
"Revelations" in all of its meanings . . . secular and metaphysical. The book begins with a quote from George MacDonald and closes with one from The Apocalypse of St John the Divine -- that delirious rant also known as *The Book of Revelation*. Certainly the oncoming end of the "second millennium" played a role in the concept and structure of the book. But the book was meant to show that we've also been confronted by (and lived through) apocalyptic events. It's only the approach of all those zeroes that causes some people to start to think about such things as "end times" . . .
MsgId: *omni_visions(17)
Date: Thu May 1 21:05:34 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
The stories are striking, one to the next, each centering on a different decade of the 20th century. All are contenders... And they're all your editorial children. But is there one you would, if you could, tell the audience to pay special attention to, read it more carefully because it's more of a Q-ship than the rest?
MsgId: *omni_visions(19)
Date: Thu May 1 21:16:07 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
A QE2-ship??
MsgId: *omni_visions(20)
Date: Thu May 1 21:19:14 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Oops, I'm betraying my age. Q-ships were junky tramp steamers the WWII allies loaded with lumber and sent them out to be torpedoed by U-boats. But a torpedo wouldn't ordinarily sink such a floatable ship; the sub would surface to finish things off; the screens from the heavy armament on deck would drop away, and the gunnery crews would blow heck out of the German predator. So the image I was trying to get across, was a gentle, elliptical, or cleverly subdued story that secretly bears a time bomb, that doesn't draw too much attention to itself until the charge explodes.
MsgId: *omni_visions(21)
Date: Thu May 1 21:20:00 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Actually, Ed, I'd like folks to read the entire book with interest. . . I think it's the kind of book that offers diverse kinds of fiction,and that everyone will have their own favorite story. That's been the nice thing about the reaction thus far . . . everyone I talk to seems to have a different favorite, for their own personal reasons.As for Q-ships (thanks, oldtimer): Because the writers were able to work at such length -- none of the stories is shorter than 12,000 words, so they're perhaps best described as "short novels," there is a lot of room for plot development, twists, turns, blind alleys and the like.
MsgId: *omni_visions(24)
Date: Thu May 1 21:30:10 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Okay, then. I should mention that when I don one of my other caps, reviewing for *Locus Magazine*, I anticipate giving *Revelations* an unreserved rave notice. So much for tipping my hand. But Doug, with the book just out and the readers and accolades rolling in, have you started thinking how you'll follow up *Prime Evil* in the '80s and *Revelations* in the '90s with something startling and defining for the next decade?
MsgId: *omni_visions(27)
Date: Thu May 1 21:38:56 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
At the moment I worrying about other, non-anthology projects, but it's a good question and certainly one that my publisher, HarperCollins, will hopefully be asking me soon. But I should say that,after editing these two books with some level of critical and commercial success, I've become concerned about the state of the short story. . . not from a creative standpoint but from a commercial one. Both books were uphill battles with the chains, who have the misguided belief that "anthologies don't sell" . . . Both books are proof to the contrary, but if given a better chance by the chains,they could have achieved even higher levels of sales -- and that, in turn, would have helped the many other good, strong anthologies that have been published over the past decade.
MsgId: *omni_visions(25)
Date: Thu May 1 21:34:22 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 206.175.223.60
Have you given any thought to setting one of your stories in that Motor City gothic, the Detroit Club? jwm
MsgId: *omni_visions(28)
Date: Thu May 1 21:42:45 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
That's another book but one that no one would believe. That question comes from one of my law partners -- he and I were part of a team of lawyers who handled a nineteen-month jury trial in Detroit, arising from the second worst air disaster in US history -- the crash of Northwest Flight 255 on takeoff at Detroit. The Detroit Club was (and still is) a wonderfully creepy place were we worked and lived for the duration.
MsgId: *omni_visions(29)
Date: Thu May 1 21:46:21 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Doug, I'm curious about your view of the field from the other side of the editor's desk. You're also an extremely accomplished fiction writer. Tell me something about the *American Zombie* book, if you will.
MsgId: *omni_visions(30)
Date: Thu May 1 21:49:04 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
*American Zombie* collects my "zombie trilogy" -- the bleak parodies I wrote originally for the BOOKS OF THE DEAD. JK Potter has done some amazing photo/artwork for the book, and it's my paean to the zombie (it's dedicated to Lucio Fulci).
MsgId: *omni_visions(31)
Date: Thu May 1 21:51:30 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 153.34.45.85
I just finished REVELATIONS this afternoon and was very impressed by the quality of the stories within. However, I noticed that - at least in my opinion - the earlier stories had more style and substance, more of a feel of the period it was set within (Joe Lansdale's piece is a perfect example). Do you feel the earlier part of the century had more tangibility, more identifiable traits for the confines of fiction? r.c.
MsgId: *omni_visions(34)
Date: Thu May 1 21:56:23 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
No, I think what you're experiencing is . . . history. The second half of the Twentieth Century is very, very familiar to us because it's been recorded in film and television -- and we've lived through those years. So more recent decades are much less distinguishable from the nineties than the decades before World War Two. Inevitably there is a greater sense of "history" in the trappings of times more distant from our own.
MsgId: *omni_visions(32)
Date: Thu May 1 21:51:50 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Okay, so that's a sort of unified story collection, then. Borderlands Press, I believe. Publication some time before the snow flies this year. How about an out-and-out novel? Whether in outright horror or (as in, I gather, that suggested horrific law case) the mainstream?
MsgId: *omni_visions(35)
Date: Thu May 1 21:59:29 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
I've just completed a novel, which I've written without the safety net of a contract. I suspect that those people who tend to identify my writing with "horror" will be surprised by its content. I think of the book as a horror novel,but most readers (and certainly all publishers) would not think of it in those terms . . . for want of a better word, it might be called "criminal suspense" . . . but from my point of view, it's just a novel.
MsgId: *omni_visions(33)
Date: Thu May 1 21:52:22 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 152.163.197.37
Are you afan of any classic literature?
MsgId: *omni_visions(37)
Date: Thu May 1 22:04:37 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Yes,and I still read it. It's important not only to read the so-called "classics" but to understand the ways in which they've worked their particular magic on the popular culture. One of the things I note in the afterword to REVELATIONS is the intriguing fact that, at the close of the 19th Century, many of the books and stories that are the classics of horror and supernatural fiction were published. In the space of about ten years, the entire landscape of terror was mapped for the 20th Century. I would hope that something similar is happening now, that the conscientious writers and editors and readers are setting the stage for the new horrors of the 21st Century.
MsgId: *omni_visions(36)
Date: Thu May 1 22:02:02 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Doug, that you wrote an entire novel without a "safety net." Does that suggest a great deal of passion for the material? Or...?
MsgId: *omni_visions(39)
Date: Thu May 1 22:08:28 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Ed, yes . . . a lot of passion. I think I had to have that kind of enthusiasm,in order to write the novel while attending to my other obligations in life. But I also wrote the book without a contract for *fun*. Sometimes books become "work" because you have to meet deadlines or certain desires of the publisher. In this case, I could do what I wanted to do, so for a long time I would only work on the book when I felt like having a good time. I didn't want to do it because I "had" to do it . . .
MsgId: *omni_visions(38)
Date: Thu May 1 22:04:57 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 153.34.45.85
Any likely date of publication should everything go just the way you'd like it to? And, Ed, just received the flyer from CD Publications regarding your upcoming collection. Not to stray from the topic at hand *too* much, but any idea when *your* date of publication will be? I'm really looking forward to it... r.c.
MsgId: *omni_visions(40)
Date: Thu May 1 22:08:31 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
R.c., thanks for asking. I'll only mention in brief that my collection *Flirting With Death* is waiting for me to finish the last half of a new novelette about middle schools, strange practices, and (I think) a new version of vampirism. And now...back to Doug. We've got about 20 minutes left--keep those questions rolling in.Another of your personas, Doug, is that of the critical biographer. You come across as friendly and perceptive without ever being slavishly adulatory. How's the Clive Barker volume coming along? What's it called, and do you have a scheduled publication?
MsgId: *omni_visions(42)
Date: Thu May 1 22:10:48 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Ed, I like the sound of that novella . . . and,of course,the collection. On the subject of CD Publications, they are prodcing a deluxe limited edition of REVELATIONS with original artwork (cover and frontispiece) by Clive Barker. It's going to be a very handsome book.Hopefully my book about Clive Barker will be published next year. I delivered a long first draft to HarperCollins last year, and I'm turning now to the final version. It's much more biographical than my book on Stephen King,and hopefully I've matured as a writer in the years since *Art of Darkness*, so that the book will be even more enjoyable . . . The book is tentatively titled CLIVE BARKER: THE DARK FANTASTIC.
Although Christa Faust has suggested calling it CLIVE BARKER'S MEXICAN HAYRIDE.
MsgId: *omni_visions(45)
Date: Thu May 1 22:21:09 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
It's quiet . . . too quiet.
MsgId: *omni_visions(46)
Date: Thu May 1 22:23:42 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Okay . . . my turn to ask a question: Can anyone name the horror movie that starred Anthony Newley?
MsgId: *omni_visions(47)
Date: Thu May 1 22:24:02 PDT 1997
From: guest At: 153.34.45.85
Any piece from REVELATIONS that you feel particularly typifies what you were trying to achieve with the collection? r.c.
MsgId: *omni_visions(51)
Date: Thu May 1 22:30:23 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
R.C. -- Again, it's difficult to speak in those kinds of terms about this book. Part of my intent was to create, through chronological insistence and the apocalyptic theme, was an integrated work by a number of very talented writers who otherwise were working independently. I see the book as a mosaic, and it's difficult to try to separate out individual stories as particularly representative. I want readers and reviewers to come to the book as a whole, rather than as a traditional anthology.
MsgId: *omni_visions(50)
Date: Thu May 1 22:28:16 PDT 1997
From: ed_bryant_mod At: 204.133.96.1
Doug, it *wasn't* too quiet. I just got back in from investigating a bit of noise outside my urban homestead. Some guy took a streetsign and smashed in my car window and extracted my radio. I accosted him (no doubt unwisely), said I had a gun (I didn't), told him the cops were alerted and on their way (they weren't--not yet...I only have one line), and he better drop the radio (he did). He then escaped on a bicycle. So I gotta go and do the insurance/cop thing. Sorry. Ah, the real life horror of urban life. So thank you, Doug Winter, thanks for being a marvelous guest. Keep on answering questions from others if you care to. And to the rest of you, tune in next week when Jim Freund will inverview James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, and in two weeks when I talk with Brand New Cherry Flavor author, Todd Grimson. Good night and good grief...
MsgId: *omni_visions(52)
Date: Thu May 1 22:35:59 PDT 1997
From: dewinter At: 207.217.5.7
Ed, what can I say? Take care of business and check the guy's ID, he may be a member of HWA. Thanks for your kind words and your questions. Good night, all.
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