tarting in the late 1960s, editor, critic and SF writer James Gunn began filming interviews and lectures with and from a variety of his peers, with the main, stated purpose of employing these films as curriculum aids at his college, and with a secondary purpose of presenting a public face for the literature of the fantastic. But in reality Gunn was embarked on an even larger quest: preserving a vast horde of knowledge locked up in the brains of these men (no women writers, alas, were selected during the brief flourishing of this project), invaluable knowledge and experiences from the first five decades of genre SF. In effect, Gunn was creating an oral history and exegesis of the genre that would preserve seminal information and critical thoughts about the field for all who came after.
Like Isaac Asimov's Hari Seldon, he strove to outwit the ignorance that comes with the passage of time, as pioneers and great men fade and die. And, as with Seldon's Foundation, numerous obstacles to his scheme transpired. Money evaporated, and copies of the films began to rot and disappear. Only the heroic preservation efforts of Eric Solstein at DMZ have today brought us near-immaculate digital versions of these 10 films. (Both the early and later parts of this behind-the-scenes saga are told onscreen in the text introductions to this series.)
Each disc contains five films, running an average of half an hour apiece. Disc one begins with Poul Anderson's "Plot in Science Fiction" (1970). Anderson illustrates his ideas on plot and its inextricability from other fictional components, with examples from his own work (the van Rijn and Dominic Flandry stories) and that of Twain, among many others. The second presentation finds Asimov talking about "The History of Science Fiction after 1938" (1971). Seated before his typewriter, Asimov gleefully recounts the pre-Campbell state of the art, then segues into the burgeoning Golden Age, before coming right up to his present. John Brunner, posed before an array of paintings, compares and contrasts "Science Fiction and the Mainstream" (1975). Employing Anthony Burgess as his model for an author who brings consumate craftsmanship to a variety of modes, Brunner also speaks of the nature of experimentalism in prose. "Theme in Science Fiction" (1975) is conducted interview-style, with Gunn onscreen with Gordon Dickson. Together, the men work their way through over a dozen topics, such as "Cataclysms" and "War/Armageddon." Finally on the first disc, we hear from Jack Williamson, whose topic is "The Early Days of SF Magazines" (1975). With his firsthand anecdotes of such pioneers as author Edmond Hamilton and editor Farnsworth Wright, Williamson reveals both the pleasures and pains of the earliest SF authors.
Disc two opens up with Forrest J. Ackerman talking about "Science Fiction Films" (1971). With the backdrop of the Ackermansion's overflowing shelves, the uber-fan runs through the high and low points of the SF cinema, which at that point numbered approximately 2,500 films. Next on the screen blazes Harlan Ellison—a "volcano," Gunn calls him—to speak of "New Directions in Science Fiction" (1970). Seated at a table with Gunn and students, Ellison tears through the cultural landscape, culminating with a discussion of his Dangerous Visions books. Damon Knight goes furthest back in time, to classical roots, in his discussion of "The Early History of Science Fiction" (1973). Lucian of Samosata and Jonathan Swift light the way for 20th-century practitioners. "The Ideas in Science Fiction" (1975) finds Frederik Pohl covering some of the same ground as in the Dickson piece, but with his own unique perspective. And, finally, in one of the shorter segments, "A Life in Science Fiction" (1975), Clifford Simak responds to Gunn's questioning and paints a portrait of his long, multifold career, some 40 years in length at that point.
Journey with a living, breathing time capsule
We are now 33 years removed from the oldest of these films. That is just as far from the period when these films were made as the authors involved were distant from the Golden Age about which they mainly reminisce. Such a distancing lends an air of nostalgia and piquancy to any contemporary viewing of these films. Six of the men involved are dead; five (I'm counting Gunn as the 11th participant) are still with us, but burdened by the intervening three decades. The Ackermansion collection is broken up and scattered. Fred Pohl no longer produces a novel a year. And despite his best efforts, Ellison's Last Dangerous Visions has not yet materialized.
Nonetheless, thanks to the time machine of film and digital technology, we can journey backward and listen to these men in their prime. And what a journey it is. It seems to me that the kind of talk and discussion engaged in by these authors is a kind no longer extant in the field. With the demise of major critical 'zines and the fragmentation of the genre, musings and ponderings of this nature—both overarching and particular—seem to have dried up. No longer is anyone thrashing out the lineaments of the genre, analyzing its roots and potentials. Perhaps such critical speculations are no longer necessary: All might have been said and categorized. Or maybe the attention of the field's writers and readers are now completely dominated by the marketplace, by selling trilogies and by mindless consumerism. Perhaps the lack of any post-cyberpunk "movement" can be attributed directly to such lack of discourse.
But whatever the causes and effects of such a drought of discourse, it is possible, thanks to these wonderfully preserved films, to return to an age when such discussions were part and parcel of the SF medium. Gunn did a fine job in assigning or eliciting topics from his respondents, and there's not a lot of overlap in these films. A nice, wide range of material is covered. Visually, a certain amount of interest is maintained by shifting camera angles, altering backdrops and the insertion of film clips and still photos (of books, magazines, writers, film props, etc.). Gunn's cameramen and technicians deserve plenty of credit for what they accomplished on a limited budget. Also amazing is how the different personalities of these authors come across despite the "objective" and "academic" tone most of them assume. Of course, Harlan Ellison offers the most fiery performance, but Brunner's cosmopolitan dapperness, Ackerman's hambone fannishness and Anderson's awkward yet sincere enthusiasm all come across vibrantly.
Eric Solstein himself is currently working on a similar series of interviews, and we must applaud his efforts to capture the voices of our era just as Gunn so presciently captured the voices of his.
