I’ve worked both sides of the street for some time. which everybody thinks, anyway, is pretty far from science fiction. Some of them had dwelled in obscurity for several years, and the thing I was mainly known for at the time I did The Man Who Fell to Earth was The Hustler, which is. You know, maybe he didn’t know about those stories. WT: I was pissed, and I thought he was wrong. In view of the fact that The Man Who Fell to Earth was published in 1963, if you had been publishing stories in Galaxy, If and Fantasy and Science Fic tion since 1957, how do you feel about the appellation of SF novice? RAL: Norman Spinrad called The Man Who Fell to Earth a single-entry novel into the science fiction genre by a so-called mainstream novelist. He did, however, turn prolific over the next three years-until his untimely death in 1984-publishing three more novels: The Steps of the Sun, another science fiction novel a sequel to The Hustler, titled The Color of Money (with only a faint resemblance to the film of the same name a few years later) and The Queen’s Gambit, a novel about chess that, over the course of the past two decades, has developed its own cult following. We all hoped he’d return while on tour for his next book, but that never happened. Afterwards, Tevis was ex tremely gracious (he signed my copy of Far From Home with the word “affectionately”) and gave an excellent reading.
Though shy and reserved, and clearly ill at ease with all the adulation, he was remarkably forthcoming about his life, the illnesses, the alcoholism-this at a time when fame still was not considered a licence to blab one’s deep est, darkest secrets to the world. Through it all, Tevis remained a trooper. As we talked, the stairwell got hotter and hotter, the air ever staler.
The echo was horrendous and the space cramped. Ross’s office was locked, Ross was on vacation, and nobody with a key was available.įinally, there being no alternative, we were forced to interview Tevis in the stairwell outside Ross’s office.
#HUSTLER MAGAZINE COVERS 1981 PROFESSIONAL#
Davidson and I admired his three novels and enjoyed the new collection.īecause of time constraints and studio availability, we’d decided to hold the interview at Cody’s itself, just prior to Tevis’s public reading, in owner Andy Ross’s office, using a small professional tape recorder. Lupoff had loved Tevis’s work for years, having read pretty much everything he’d published. When we learned that Tevis was coming to Cody’s Books to read and sign copies of Far From Home, it was cause for some jubilation. Originally a program dedicated to sci ence fiction interviews, the show had expanded to include other genre and general fiction authors as our tastes, as co-hosts, began to change, but mostly it still focused on its original theme. In 1981, these stories were collected, along with newer material, in Far From Home.īy 1981, the radio show that Dick Lupoff, Lawrence Davidson, and I co-hosted, Probabilities, had been on the airwaves of Berkeley, California’s KPFA for four years. But those who knew Tevis’s work had special regard for his small pool of short stories, published from the late 1950s through to the 1970s in such magazines as Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 1980, Tevis returned with his third novel, Mockingbird, another science fiction work, this one set in a dystopian future. His second novel, 1963’s science fiction gem The Man Who Fell to Earth, became a cult classic and a 1976 film by British auteur Nico las Roeg (Don’t Look Now) featuring rock star David Bowie. His acclaimed first novel, The Hustler, which delved into the world of pool sharks and was published in 1959, was turned into an even more acclaimed film two years later starring Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason. Walter Tevis straddled the science fiction and mainstream worlds.
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