Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!
Interviews with Science Fiction Legends
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In these highly-candid radio interviews, more than fifty legendary, larger-than-life personalities trade anecdotes about the Golden Age of science fiction. Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Frank Kelly Freas, and many more, depict the wild personalities, sparks of contention, and vivid imagination that made science fiction thrive.
"Amazing, astounding, fantastic." -Jonathan Lethem
Today, depictions of aliens, rocket ships, and awe-inspiring, futuristic space operas are everywhere. Why is there so much science fiction, and where did it come from anyway? Radio producer and author Richard Wolinsky has found answers in the Golden Age of science fiction, between 1920 and 1960.
Wolinsky and his fellow writers and co-hosts Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, interviewed a veritable who's who of famous (and infamous) science-fiction publishers, pulp magazines, editors, cover artists, and fans. The interviews themselves, which aired on the public radio, Probabilities, span over twenty years, from just before the release of Star Wars through the dawn of Y2K.
Probabilities was the home of a vivid cross-section of the early science fiction world, with radio guests offering a wide range of tales, opinions, theory, and gossip. It speaks to how, in the early days, they were free to define science fiction for themselves and push the genre to explore new ideas and new tropes in creative (and sometimes questionable) ways.
Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! is ultimately a love letter to fandom. Science fiction wouldn't have survived as a genre if there weren't devoted fanatics who wrote fanzines, organized conventions, and built relationships for fandom to flourish.
About this Author
Richard Wolinsky co-hosted and produced Probabilities, a half-hour public radio program devoted to science fiction, mystery and mainstream fiction, from 1977 to 1995 on KPFA-FM. He took the program solo in 2002, renamed it Bookwaves, and it is still running. Along the way, he has spoken with most of the English-speaking world's leading authors, including Peter Carey, Joseph Heller, William Kennedy, Margaret Atwood, Anne Rice, Gore Vidal, James Ellroy, Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie, E.L. Doctorow, and many others. Wolinsky's interviews have been published in numerous venues, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Heavy Metal, Mystery Scene Magazine, and in such books as Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King, The Louis L'Amour Companion, and Macabre II: Stephen King & Clive Barker. Wolinsky was born and raised in New York City and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978.
Reviews
Advance Praise for Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods!
"It's a gaudy patchwork quilt of raw gossip and old radio chatter, but it's also the world's most authentic portrait of the real-life of professional SF fantasists."
--Bruce Sterling, Hugo Award winning author of Pirate Utopia
"20th-century U.S. science fiction culture, as incubated in the pulp magazines, is arguably as formative on our 21st century techno-media-sphere as anything could possibly be."
--Jonathan Lethem
"Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! is a rollicking oral history of science fiction. Richard Wolinsky was--and is!--an incredible interviewer. As editor of this volume, he has pulled together origin stories, gossip, and tales of writing and publishing from the titans of the genre, including Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kurt Vonnegut, and many more."
--Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author
"This is the book I've always wanted to read without knowing it--a gossipy, beautifully assembled oral history of American science fiction from the pulp era to the early sixties. A gold mine of anecdote, advice, and invective."
--Alec Nevala-Lee, Hugo Award finalist for Astounding
"Chronicling creative ferment and surging with insights, this oral genre history achieves liftoff from the first page and shoots for the stars."
--Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, Hugo Award finalist
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