Feature: An interview with
Ben Bova
Conducted by Ernest Lilley
Feature Book:
Rock Rats by Ben Bova
Previously in SFRevu:
The
Precipice (Asteroid Wars, Book 1):
SFRevu Oct. 2001 /
Jupiter:
SFRevu Jan. 2001 / Moonwar:
SFRevu March 98 /
Moonrise:
SFRevu March 98 / 2001:
Time for a few words about Arthur C. Clarke:
Ben Bova's Comments
Bibliography (sfsite):
Ben Bova Biography / Website:
http://www.benbova.net/
More Info:
Other Sources
SFRevu: How
old were you when you started reading SF? What was the first book you read and
how did it affect you? Who were your favorite
authors growing up?
Bova:
I started reading science
fiction in my early teen years, with Astounding Science Fiction
magazine. Among the first SF books I read were Bradbury’s The Martian
Chronicles (brand new it cost $5 hardcover), and the first three of Edgar
Rice Burroughs’
Barsoom novels.
SFRevu: When did you first get interested in
Science? When you first went to the Philadelphia Planetarium, did it seem like
something out of Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall”?
Bova:
When I first visited
the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia Isaac hadn't yet
written "Nightfall!" We're talking Stone Age here! My school class went to the
Franklin Institute, Philadelphia's wonderful science museum, whether we wanted
to or not. Seeing a show at the Fels Planetarium was part of the day's
activities. That's when I got interested in astronomy, and as things progressed,
in science in general, astronautics in particular and - eventually - science
fiction.
SFRevu: When
did you submit your first story? Who published it?
Bova:
I submitted a story to a local Philadelphia
magazine, in 1949 or 1950. They bought it, but went bankrupt
before they could publish it. At that time I had finished my first
novel and was sending it to book publishers. Nobody
wanted it because the plot was too fantastic, they
thought. In my novel the Russians started putting satellites
into Earth orbit, so the U.S. launched a crash program to get Americans
to the Moon before the Russians could get there. In
1950 that was wild stuff for New York publishers. One of the editors
who rejected the novel told me that anti-Communist witch-hunters such
as Sen.Joseph McCarthy would crucify anyone connected with a book that
suggests the Russians are smarter than we are.
 SFRevu: The
first SF I read was in a Winston SF Classic, that series of YASF from the 50s
with awesome cover art. I noticed that you wrote a volume yourself. How long
had you been writing when you wrote THE STAR CONQUERORS (1959)? Was doing a
Winston SF Classic a big thing for you?
Bova:
No, actually it was done in
some anger. When my first novel went unpublished, the editor who told
me about the Joe McCarthy problem suggested I write
a novel that was set so far in the future that there
would be no possible connection with contemporary politics.
So I took a biography of Alexander the Great (by Harold Lamb) and
projected the story into an interstellar background.
That astronomical background, by the way, so
intrigued my editor that he asked me to do a nonfiction book on stellar
astronomy. That became my first nonfiction book, The Milky Way
Galaxy.
SFRevu: Was
there any editor that helped you learn your craft?
Bova:
John W. Campbell Jr.. the
editor of Astounding (later Analog) magazine. He was THE editor in the
field of science fiction. There has never been another
like him.
SFRevu: How
many times have you been an editor? How did the first editorship come about?
Bova:
I edited Analog for seven years (1971-78) after John Campbell died. The
magazine’s publisher at that time
was The Condè Nast Publications, Inc., publishers of Vogue,
Glamour,
and a lot of other big, national women’s magazines.
They had acquired Analog when they bought out Street &
Smith Publications in 1960. All they knew about Analog
was that it made a modest profit every month, and Campbell ran it. When
Campbell died, they asked a number of the magazine’s regular
contributors to draw up lists of people who had
written both fiction and nonfiction for the
magazine. There were some very famous people on that list, but they selected
me. When I asked why, the company executive who made the choice said my
writings were the only ones he could understand! I have always felt
grateful for my early training in newspapers: clarity
is important.
SFRevu: Rock
Rats seems to be the middle of a trilogy...the developmental book. How much of
what you do to your main characters did you know about before hand? How much
will get resolved in the next book?
Bova:
I hardly ever know beforehand what my characters are
going to do. That’s boring! I start a novel by
creating two strong characters and putting them in conflict with each other.
That generates the plot. I hope to resolve just about all of the
problems in The Rock Rats in its sequel,
The Silent War. But we’ll just have to see what
the characters have to say about that.
SFRevu:
Government doesn't seem to come off very well in
your books. Earth's seems inept, especially in the face of the ecological
meltdown of the planet. Are the Rock Rats doomed to the same fate?
Can't they all just get along?
Bova:
If people “got along” we wouldn’t need fiction.
Governments often look inept when facing a new set of
problems because governments, like almost all human institutions, are
created to protect the status quo. New situations
are difficult for them to handle. Science, on the
other hand, is always coming up with new ideas, new discoveries, and
creating new capabilities. That’s why politicians distrust scientists.
 SFR: Who
came up with the "Grand Tour" name for your current solar system series?
Bova: My readers, bless ‘em.
SFR:
How many books there will be? I saw on your website that
you've listed out all the planets (and Pluto)
though some are under construction. Just out of curiosity, do you have any
ideas for your Pluto plot? I mean, why would anyone want to go to Pluto?
Except me, of course.
 Bova:
I
have a story arc for the whole Grand Tour series,
which includes the Asteroid Wars novels, but
I don’t have
any hard-and-fast plan to do each and every planet in the solar system. At
the moment I’m working on Saturn. But remember, the settings
for these novels are backgrounds. Interesting though
they may be, the novels are about people in conflict. Pluto
might be an interesting place, but if I do a novel set there it will
still be a novel about people, with the setting as a
background. Now, the background can certainly
interact in very meaningful ways with the characters, and even define
the limits of what the characters can and cannot do. But my novels are
about human beings, just like you and me, who happen
to be in extraordinary places.
SFR:
Who else you like? Are there any trends in
SF/Fantasy that you would like to encourage?
Bova:
Science fiction always seems, to me, to be heading
off in many directions at once. I think that’s all
to the good. I’d like to see more SF based solidly on real science and
believable human characters, but the field is so large and there are so
many people working in it that perhaps the best hope
is just to sit back and let the chips fall where
they may.
SFR: I
saw in an interview that you were a fan of "The Man in the White Suit".
I'm proud to say I have a copy myself and recommend
it to friends often. What is it that you like about it?
Bova:
It is the only movie I have seen that shows what a
thrill a scientist gets when he finally is allowed to do
the work he wants to do. Although it’s a comedy, it does a better job
of showing what scientists are really like than any
other film I’ve seen.
SFR:
Can you name three other Science Fiction films that you like?
Bova:
Other than The Man in the White Suit, I’d
have to say: 2001, A Space Odyssey, The Day the
Earth Stood Still, and Galaxy Quest. There are few others, but
pitifully few. Most of what Hollywood calls “sci-fi” is terrible.
SFRevu: What
makes you cringe more in SF Film...bad science or bad scriptwriting?
Bova: My cringes are based on
something more fundamental. Most “sci-fi”
movies have no relationship to science fiction. They are cartoon strips that have
alienated the majority of movie-goers from looking into published science
fiction.
 SFRevu: I
remember reading your novel
Cyberbooks, a story about
how e-books might transform the publishing industry. So far, they
don't seem to have lived up to that promise. Will
they ever take off?
Bova: I think e-books will become
the major medium for publishing, sooner or
later. The costs of paper and its distribution keep going up, the costs of
electronic books keeps coming down while the quality of the devices gets better.
Just as paper replaced clay tablets, electronics will eventually replace paper.
SFRevu: How
did you come to work on the CTV series "Starlost"
as Science Advisor? Did they take your advice?
Bova: Harlan Ellison, the series’
creator and a dear friend, asked me. And
no, they didn’t take my advice. Or his, come to think of it. Read my novel
The Starcrossed. Only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty.
SFRevu: Are
people still interested in science? Are we experiencing a flight from reason?
Why? What can we or
should we do about it?
Bova: Science has always been
done by a small group of people, most of whom
are so dedicated to science that they accept a lesser life style than they could
have had they went into plumbing, or stock brokering, or lawyering. Our public school
systems are really poor, especially in science and math. That’s the root cause of
a lot of today’s problems.
SFRevu: Will the web change education?
Bova: Yes,
but the changes are small, to date. But they
will grow.
SFRevu: Is
it time to throw in the towel on manned space exploration, or can humanity
still get out there? Should we?
Bova: We will be forced to
develop space. As human population grows and we
need more and more resources, we will be forced to begin using the resources of
energy and raw materials that exist in space. The Harvard entymologist E. O.
Wilson recently estimated that to bring everyone on Earth up to the standard of
living of the average American would require four times the resources of our
planet. Wilson concluded that we have to cut down on our consumption. Well, we’ve
seen and measured resources that are THOUSANDS of times more than planet Earth
can provide. Sooner or later we will go out and begin to develop them. That’s
what my Grand Tour novels are all about.
SFRevu:
Global warming is a central issue in your
Asteroid Wars series. What is the current thinking on it?
Are scientists divided along party lines over
whether it actually exists? The last I heard computer weather models tend to
result in global winter. Do we currently have the modeling capacity to examine
it in simulation? Will we ever?
Bova:
Most scientists are convinced global warming is real, and our own
outpouring of greenhouse gases is contributing significantly to it. A small but
vocal group of scientists (including several friends of mine) disagree. The
measurements, however, show higher temperatures, earlier arrival of spring,
melting glaciers, rising sea levels. I just hope that the increase is gradual,
and not an abrupt discontinuity like the “greenhouse cliff” in my novels.
SFRevu: Now
that we're living in the "next" century, does it
look anything like the future you expected when you were a boy?
What's surprised you for the better and the worse?
Bova: Best
surprise: That we got to the Moon so early. Worst
surprise: That we stopped going there.
Other
Sources:
Ben Bova Online:
http://www.benbova.com/
1999 Book Page
Interveiw:
http://www.bookpage.com/9906bp/ben_bova.html
Galaxy Online:
http://www.galaxyonline.com/
Winston Science Fiction Classics:
http://home.att.net/~maychap/
Cyberhaven
Interview:
http://www.cyberhaven.com/books/benbova2.html
Starlost
:
http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/starlostf/starweek/index.html
An Aussie Interveiw:
http://www.thei.aust.com/isite/btl/btlinbova.html
Locus Online (Nov 2000 Interview):http://www.locusmag.com/2000/Issues/11/Bova.html
Fantastic Fiction (UK):
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Ben_Bova.htm
Mars Review (Book-a-Minute):
http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/bova.mars.shtml
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