Description

Due to rights issues, the audio of this interview is not available online. Please contact San Diego State University, Special Collections and Archives if you wish to be granted access to the original audio. Larry McCaffery interviews Joanna Russ in her office at the University of Washington. Russ begins by discussing the use of inter-connected stories in her most recent collection, Extra(ordinary) People, as well as its use by author science fiction and fantasy authors. Russ explains that she finds herself “seeking out very commonplace ideas, very ordinary story lines and assumptions, and doing something else with them.” Russ discusses her use of anti-utopian ideas to counter-act the notion that utopias would easily be found. She discusses her issues with “polemical fiction” and the problems that it causes for science fiction writers. She discusses her history, beginning as a fan of the genre as a teenager and how as she became a published writer she would often find herself pigeon-hold because of her work. She explains her preference of writing science fiction rather than fantasy because she feels that fantasy actually has more constrictions and rules to abide by. Much of the later part of the conversation covers the work of herself and other female science fiction writers and their place in the genre. She concluded the interview by answering a question about the anger that permeates through her work. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 176 to 210 of Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers, ed. Larry McCaffery, 1990, University of Illinois Press.