IGMS Issue 9 Page 19

  Are you paying attention? That's rubies.

  SCHWEITZER: I saw it done at a Phrolicon.

  FRIESNER: Yes, that was the second time.

  SCHWEITZER: I have always appreciated your ability to move on before the gag goes stale. For example, we are beyond Cyberprep now. But it was great while it lasted, a response to Cyberpunk, and a way to promote good manners and niceness in science fiction in the 1980s.

  FRIESNER: I am, I confess it, sometimes a curmudgeon. I now hear people laughing and going, "Sometimes? Sometimes? she says. The sun sometimes rises in the east."

  But, long, long ago, when Cyberpunk first started, there were a number of its advocates who being very vehement about the fact this was it. This was what science fiction was going to be. This was the one, true science fiction. There could be no other. Anyone who thinks there can be any other kind of science fiction -- insert rant here.

  And I was just listening to this, and my curmudgeonly nature took over, which is basically expressed in the mantra, "Well says you." I thought about it, and having observed the way the world works, I concluded that things get accomplished -- whether it's the exploration of space or whatever -- when there is money to be made for someone. So probably the conquest and exploration of space isn't going to be accomplished so much by the people with the chips in their heads as by the people who have the money to start with and want more of it. At the time, "Preppie" was a kind of icon. It was the days of The Preppie Handbook. So, instead of Cyberpunk, all this nitty-gritty, I thought we should start Cyberprep, because if space will be conquered, it will be conquered by the trust fundees who are terribly polite about it. But you don't want to get in their way. They can be ruthless.

  So, it was a very nice joke. I was in this with Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr as well. Once we had the core idea, we started riffing on it. I wrote the Cyberprep manifesto --

  SCHWEITZER: It wasn't --

  FRIESNER: It wasn't a manifesto. Pronunciamento because a manifesto is ever so Red and well, Communism is just so inconvenient to our interests. I went around a convention getting people to sign it. I got Isaac Asimov's signature. I still have that document, so it is probably now worth, oh, many rubies.

  And we had a party to launch Cyberprep. From then on we started having other parties to continue it. Pink and green were the Cyberprep colors. The alligator was our symbol. We had very lovely tea parties. We had a butler at one. It was just a good joke, and then after a while, as with after a good joke, we decided it was funny enough and we stopped it. But it was fun while it lasted.

  SCHWEITZER: I was one of the signers. My Cyberprep name was "DC." John Betancourt was "Biff."

  FRIESNER: Yes.

  SCHWEITZER: Do you remember the Cyberprep blazer? There was going to be a final Cyberprep blowout at, I think, the Atlanta Worldcon in 1986, or it might have been New Orleans two years later. There was a power failure and the party was not held.

  FRIESNER: I wasn't even there.

  SCHWEITZER: Then I can tell you a story. I had worked out the proper male Cyberpreppie attire for this. I was wearing a green blazer with a pink alligator on the pocket, which I had made by drawing it on an piece of pink cloth and cutting it out, because I couldn't find a pink Izod alligator. The party was cancelled but I decided to wear this getup anyway. I was wearing a pink shirt, green spaces, a green tie, and penny-loafers, along with my Cyberprep button, and I got into an elevator with Susan Shwartz, who just lost it . . . and missed her floor.

  FRIESNER: [Laughs.] Oh . . . my . . . goodness. . . . Now I do remember that when we had a Cyberprep party at a World Fantasy Convention, Susan brought a bread in the shape of an alligator, and we gave Jane Yolen the first Lizzie Award. It's a big lizard like the one on all those preppie shirts. But just before we served the alligator-shaped bread, Susan raised a knife and yelled, "Think of the New Sun, Alligator!" and chopped its head right off. It was grand.

  SCHWEITZER: We almost reach a serious point here. The essence of comedy is timing, and the essence of timing is knowing when to stop. This must be the essence of comedy writing too.

  FRIESNER: It depends on the type of comedy. But sometimes people get tired of a joke. You can't tell the same joke over and over unless you're making that movie, The Aristocrats, I suppose. But there is always something new to write comedy about, because there is always something new that annoys me. Good comedy, as many people have said, makes you think about things. I always wind up citing Terry Pratchett, because he writes wonderful comedy, and it does make you think about certain things you've just kind of sailed through unconsciously in your day-to-day life. He actually makes you pay attention, and say, "Wait a minute. Is that right? Is that good? Why are we doing this again?"

  But before Terry Pratchett, what my father used to read to me for bedtime stories was Walt Kelly's Pogo. And Pogo, some of it sailed right over my head, all of the stuff he wrote during the McCarthy Era. He had a character, a wildcat who was a caricature of Joseph McCarthy, known as Simple J. Malarkey who started a witch-hunt in the swamp. It was a blood-curdling thing if you knew what was going on in politics. But I was six years old or something, and I just thought it was funny. And then they had the Jack-Assed Society. I didn't know about the John Birch Society. I didn't know why my father was laughing hysterically reading about that. But there was enough for him to think about and appreciate, and for me to appreciate as a kid.

  That's another thing about good comedy. Some things are "in" jokes. You can't do something solely based on an "in" joke unless you know that your entire audience is going to get the "in" joke. For instance, if you say "Red Shirts," from Star Trek, more and more people know the joke about the red shirts. Whoever wears the red shirt in classic Star Trek on an away mission, if he's not one of the main characters, that guy's not coming back. If you wear the red shirt, you're gonna die. Ensign Expendable.

  This joke has gotten so accessible that on an episode of the cartoon show Kim Possible -- it's always fun, though it is a repetitive gimmick where the characters get sucked into a television and go through all the shows. She winds up in a Star Trek type universe. She contacts the kid who is her anchorman. He is a prodigy at the computer. His name is Wade. She says, "I'm in some kind of sci-fi show and I am stuck in this shirt," and he says, "What color is it?" "Red." "Oh my God! I've got to get you out of there in a hurry!" And, apparently enough people know the red shirt joke. Years ago, there wouldn't have been enough people who did for it to work.

  So you have to have something to make everyone laugh, those who know the "in" jokes, and those who don't know the "in" jokes.

  SCHWEITZER: As we edge into satire, it would seem that a lot of successful comedy is complaint. Comedy is in effect the use of laughter to prevent things from becoming too bitter. You're talking about your curmudgeonly side. So, have you written a lot of comedy as a form of complaint?

  FRIESNER: Oh, you bet. I am not particularly meek, but I am small and slow, so my ability to effect any sort of change could result in my getting hurt by the people I am complaining about. So, if I can't do anything else, I can at least point out some of the things I find to be ridiculous and hurtful.

  One of the stories I wrote was called "'White,' Said Fred." I was driving home, listening to public radio, and they had a story about how in England skinheads were now not merely targeting Pakistani immigrants; they were targeting the children. These full grown men were harassing Pakistani schoolchildren.

  I was livid. Now, obviously, even if I were in England, what could I do about it? I am not exactly the sort to go over to a skinhead and say, "And you must stop that now." So I just had to get rid of all the anger I felt about this, and I wrote "'White,' Said Fred," in which three skinheads, who are definitely "We are the master race" supremacists, find a genie in a bottle who turns out to be a skinhead as well, and he gives them the requisite three wishes. Of course they try to change the world to fit their prejudices, and hijinks ensue. I got to do dreadful things to them and that is the closest
I'll ever come, but gosh, it was fun.

  SCHWEITZER: Lately you're been writing lots of fiction based on Greek mythology. Would you say something about that?

  FRIESNER: I don't know why, but I have lately been on quite the Helen of Troy kick, and other Greek mythology aside from Helen too. I don't know why. I think it might be, "Oh, I've got a new toy," or it might be that there is so little told about her. In the stories of the Trojan War she is portrayed as not much more than "This is the woman who started it all. She is so beautiful." Even at the end of the war her husband doesn't kill her when he gets her back, because she exposes her breasts to him, and he drops his sword. "Oh, ten years of war. You ran off with that guy. All these other guys are dead, but -- wow!" He takes her back.

  I wondered, first of all, is that all there is to her, just a pretty face and a pretty . . . what she exposed? I wanted to explore the character in both historical directions. I wrote a story called "Helen Remembers the Stork Club." I took Helen of Troy because she's half divine. Well, she probably wouldn't have died so young. So I said, "What happens to a woman whose whole identity is that of the most beautiful woman in the world, but she continues to age?" She doesn't age at the normal rate, but she does age. Now here she is in New York City where, if you are a woman of a certain age, people tend to turn you invisible on the street. They bump into you. What if you are that woman of a certain age, and you have been so beautiful that no one would dare overlook you? How does she cope with this new identity? It's almost like Gloria Swanson's role [Norma Desmond] in Sunset Boulevard. She used to be this gorgeous movie-star, glamorous, and now all she's got are her memories and her delusions. I did not turn Helen of Troy into Norma Desmond, but I had fun exploring how the character would deal with being there and being who she was and who she had been.

  I am also doing the backstory of Helen of Troy, which hasn't been told. What we have of Helen's story, Troy aside, is her conception -- Leda and the swan -- her birth, coming out of an egg, and her twin, Clytemnestra, who was the only half divine. There were four children born of the union of Leda, Zeus, and Tyndareos of Sparta. Two of the children were Tyndareos's children. Two were Zeus's. So two of the twins were mortal: Helen's sister Clytemnestra, and I forget whether Castor of Polydeuces was the mortal of those two. But the other boy was, like Helen, half-divine.

  Helen in the myths is abducted at a very young age by Theseus. She is about twelve years old, and in studying this I learned some kind of creepy (to modern sensibilities) facts. In one of the stories, by the time Helen has been rescued by her brothers from Theseus, she has borne Theseus a child, and that child is Iphigenia, who was sacrificed on the altar by Agamemnon, because Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, adopted Iphigenia and raised her as her own daughter.

  So I am sitting there saying, "Twelve years old. May have been all right then. Creepy now."

  SCHWEITZER: A little early even then. They could have waited a couple more years.

  FRIESNER: Yeah, still pretty creepy. So I wrote a story about Helen of Troy as a girl being abducted to Athens. I thought, well, you know, she's not a classical Spartan. She's not of the era of the Three Hundred. She is pre-classical. She is a Minoan-Mycenaean era Spartan. But I thought that maybe the whole thing of educating the daughters in throwing the javelin, the whole physical fitness thing, training them almost as much as they trained the boys -- almost; the boys had it much harder. Maybe that didn't come out of nowhere. Maybe there was a tradition of giving the girls some kind of physical training. So I had Helen be beautiful, but why can you not be beautiful and smart? She's smart. She's got some idea of how to take care of herself physically. So instead of waiting for her brothers to rescue her from Theseus, she rescues herself.

  This story was in the Young Warriors anthology from Random House, and I got a letter back saying, "We really liked the story. We'd love to see a novel." And now I have two novels about young Helen of Troy's backstory. One is called Nobody's Princess and the other is called Nobody's Prize. That's coming out this April. [2008 -- DS] And I've just had so much fun playing in the field of Greek mythology with Helen, giving her something more to do than just sitting around being beautiful and a pawn. She is an intelligent young girl and she has adventures.

  SCHWEITZER: Are you going to take her into adulthood and retell the classical story?

  FRIESNER: These are YA books, so nope, we stop it before she becomes an adult, before she gets married to Menelaus. But we did have Clytemnestra's first marriage, because I found, reading deeper into mythology, that Agamemnon was not Clytemnestra's first husband. She was first married . . . this gets into a very complicated thing. Let's just leave it at that before I tell the whole darn myth about the House of Atreus, which is definitely not YA material, a lot of that. It's bloody, scary stuff.

  SCHWEITZER: There's the spike through the head --

  FRIESNER: Not even that. There is the killing, cooking, and serving the sons of one of the two brothers [Thyestes and Atreus, who was the father of Menelaus and Agamenon] to their father. Thyestes is fed his own children and he doesn't know it until his brother tells him, "Oh, guess what you just ate." Not exactly your functional family. I think even Jerry Springer would be hard-pressed to deal with the House of Atreus.

  SCHWEITZER: You could do another series, unless you're becoming typecast. I could see it happening that, from another publisher, you did an adult, bloody account of the House of Atreus, but there might be concern that the readers of the YA books or the librarians of the YA books might find the adult version and put it on the same shelf. Is this an actual concern when you become a YA author? You are known as "the Queen of Silly," I'll have you know. [Friesner laughs.] So, if you made such a departure, would you have to use another byline?

  FRIESNER: My reputation seems to still be very much about the comedy. And yet I have almost a shadow-reputation of being able to write very dark things, or certainly serious, if not dark things. Both of my Nebula Award stories were dark stories, especially "A Birthday." That was super-dark. It was also about dealing with a social issue. I think that the whole worry about librarians putting a dark, scary, inappropriate book next to the rest comes down to the individual librarian. If the librarian is paying attention -- I know they don't have time to read every single book that comes in -- but if they just take the time to look at the precis of the plot that comes with the material, they'll make the right decision. I know they can do that. I trust the librarians.

  Also, I don't think I'm getting typecast because I am doing another YA series about Nefertiti. Helen of Troy, I have written a story for YA. I have written a story for the general populace. I have written two YA novels. Now I want to do something else. I am moving on. No one can typecast me but me.

  SCHWEITZER: All writers should agonize over the terrible nightmare that begins when somebody says, "Here's a half a million bucks. I want another one just like the last one, and another, and another." [Friesner laughs.] And it keeps going on. It is possible to be trapped by success. Perhaps both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frank Herbert were.

  FRIESNER: True, but you mention the nightmare of being trapped in the millions of dollars . . . well, look at J.K. Rowling. She said, "I'm going to be done at number 7." Now, granted, we don't know what will happen within the next ten years, but, so far, she seems to be sticking to her guns.

  SCHWEITZER: She can't be tempted by a mere half million the way many of us could be.

  FRIESNER: It really comes down to the personality and also the financial necessity of the author. One of my favorite things about D.H. Lawrence, and perhaps my only favorite thing about D.H. Lawrence was a little poem he wrote:

  He found the formula for drawing comic rabbits.

  The formula for drawing comic rabbits paid.

  So in the end he could not shake the tragic habits

  the formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

  I think I'd get bored if I had to do the same thing. Yes, I'd like to have a half a million dollars. I'd like to have a million
dollars. I could have an awful lot of fun with that kind of money. But if I am not enjoying what I am doing, it will show in what I am writing. If I am not having a good time, the reader will not have a good time. The reader will not buy the book and the next time they come around they're not going to say, "Here's a half a million dollars, or a million dollars. Do it again." Readers should be given credit for being smart. They know what's good. They know what's bad. People do not really want junk food. Sometimes they want a little candy, just a totally relaxing thing to read, no need to put in any critical input, but they don't want to be talked down to. They can tell when the author is just phoning it in, like "Here's the slop, give me my check." I don't want that done to me and I don't want it done to the readers. I'm a reader too.

  SCHWEITZER: I am sure you would never never allow your books to be franchised out. That's when the tired hacks show up.

  FRIESNER: Oh my gosh, I never even thought of that.

  SCHWEITZER: In the World of Esther Friesner . . .

  FRIESNER: Or even worse, can you imagine I'm dead and I'm V.C. Andrews. I'm dead and still the books come out. When you said being franchised, I was sitting there thinking, "Oh I'd love to have McDonald's toys and happy meals from one of my books," which probably wouldn't happen if I wrote the Dark House of Atreus. You wouldn't want to be eating any hamburger that came with the House of Atreus.

  SCHWEITZER: I think a certain number of twelve or thirteen year old boys might go for that.

  FRIESNER: And you're going to be wanting to watch those boys. Really watch them. But I think it would be great fun to see what they would do with a book of mine if they translated it to the screen. When Who Framed Roger Rabbit? came out, I went to see it. I bought the book. The book was quite different from the movie, and the author said he was really pleased with how they changed it. It was a good movie, different from the book but still good. I like happy surprises. I realize I might sit there and see one of my books up on the screen and it's just "What did they do to that?" or it could be, "Wow, that's pretty cool. I didn't know Johnny Depp could do that."