Lovelock

Foreword: On Collaboration

1. Leavetaking

2. Off Earth

3. The Ark

4. Odie’s Funeral

5. The Apple and the Coconut

6. Freefall

7. Rebellion

8. Independence

9. Subterfuge

10. Cages

11. Discoveries

12. Animals

O
N
C
OLLABORATION

Science fiction has a long, proud tradition of collaboration between first-rate writers, who, together, produce work that is different from—and sometimes better than—what either of them produces alone. My first exposure to the power of collaboration was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s brilliant
The Mote in God’s Eye
. I soon read both authors’ solo work as well, and was surprised to discover that
Mote
was not just an average of the two styles. The result of the collaboration was a new “virtual author” who was neither Niven nor Pournelle. Neither could have produced the novel alone.

Since those days, however, a new kind of “collaboration” has sprung up in the science fiction field. I realized this when a book packager approached me with the idea of putting together a series of “collaborations.” My job would be to come up with a plot outline and some basic world creation for a science fiction novel. Then a young, unknown (i.e., desperate) writer would be engaged to do the actual word-by-word writing. I would have approval of all chapters and could reject any of them or ask for whatever changes I wanted. I could nominate my novice collaborator, or the packager would be glad to find someone for me. This would be good for the young writers, said the packager, because the commercial value of my name would get them far more exposure than they could otherwise hope for. It would be good for me, because it would help keep my name constantly before the public and would bring in some extra royalties without my having to do all that hard work.

Needless to say, this was a flattering proposal, not least because I was not then and am not now convinced that my name has any particular commercial value. American Express has not yet called me to do one of their TV ads. Naturally, to have a packager treat me as if the mere presence of my name on the cover of a book would guarantee sales was heady stuff. Also, I’m lazy. I keep wishing somebody else could do the work of writing my books. And wasn’t this sort of thing right in the tradition of the Renaissance artist’s workshop? An apprentice writer, learning from the (ahem) master even as he helps take some of the burden from the master’s shoulders…

The trouble was, as a reviewer in those days for
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, I had actually read some of these collaborations and reviewed one of them in print. The one I reviewed happened to be the first in Isaac Asimov’s “Robot City” series, and Asimov’s young collaborator was no novice—it was Michael Kube-McDowell, who had already published his own Trigon Disunity trilogy to much critical praise and reader enthusiasm. Imagine my surprise, then, when the resulting novel turned out to be far below either writer’s standards. It was as if neither writer felt responsible for the quality of the product. If he had any misgivings, Kube-McDowell’s unconscious could always whisper to him, Hey, it’s Asimov’s story, not mine; and Asimov might unconsciously say, Oh well, I didn’t really write it anyway. Whatever the reason, the result was pretty thin. And in the months and years to come, I found that Kube-McDowell’s and Asimov’s “collaboration” was the
best
of these master-apprentice works.

I didn’t want to do that.

But I
did
want to do something like what Harlan Ellison depicted in his great collection
Partners in Wonder
. His project, back in the 70s, was to collaborate with other leading sf writers on a single story each. He talked about each writer composing first drafts of various sections and then passing them to the other for rewrites. Each had to show respect for the other’s work—but also could freely expand upon or reshape what the other had done. It sounded like a wonderful process, akin to the experiences I had had in theatre back at the beginning of my career, where playwright, director, and actors all push and pull on the story to give it a final shape that none of them could have produced on their own.

So instead of agreeing to the packager’s proposal, I began to think of a writer whose work I admired, and who could do things with fiction that I didn’t know how to do. There were obvious choices within the field, of course—I would have loved to see what John Kessel and I might produce together, or Nancy Kress, or Karen Joy Fowler. The trouble was that I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be interested, and I’m just shy enough that I didn’t have the courage to ask. (One of them has since made it very clear that my instinct was correct, and there would have been no interest.) And outside the field of science fiction, the chances were even slimmer. I didn’t think Anne Tyler or Harry Crews or Tom Gavin or François Camoin or John Hersey or James Clavell would want to collaborate with me on a science fiction story, let alone a novel.

When I stopped fantasizing, I realized that I
did
know one writer whose work I admired and who was doing things I didn’t know how to do; and best of all, I knew she wouldn’t laugh in my face when I proposed the collaboration. Kathy Helms Kidd had been my friend since back in the days when she was a reporter for the
Deseret News
and I was an assistant editor at
The Ensign
in Salt Lake City. I had been a witness at her wedding to Clark Kidd. And I had goaded her into writing a Mormon novel to help me launch my small publishing company, Hatrack River Publications. That first novel of hers,
Paradise Vue
, has gone through three printings and has given a new shape to Mormon publishing—it’s been fun to watch other publishers come out with novels clearly attempting to imitate Kathy’s inimitable humor and incisive truthfulness of vision. They always fall short; and Hatrack River has prospered.

Since then Kathy had written other excellent books for Hatrack River, and was also working on a mainstream novel,
Crayola Country
. She had strengths that I couldn’t match, among them her natural humor; her ability to create a whole community of quirky, fascinating people; her deft handling of pain. I wanted to see what the two of us would produce through collaboration. So I proposed the idea, and we began to develop a storyline, starting with the basic premise of “small towns in space.”

We talked it back and forth during the days I was hiding out with her and Clark while I worked on another novel (I often have to change environments to kick-start a new project). Neither of us can remember which of us thought of the ideas we ended up keeping. But at the end of the process, we had characters and situations that we, at least, found compelling. The story had grown larger than the original concept—the small towns are still there, but while the story takes place within those small towns, it is not really
about
them. Instead, our narrator, an enhanced capuchin monkey named Lovelock, had graduated from observer to protagonist, and the novel you are holding in your hands was born.

The process we worked with was a true collaboration. As you read this novel, you will have no way of knowing which of us wrote the first draft of any chapter; in fact, I don’t remember myself anymore, except that my impression is that we each did first draft on about half. And both of us felt free to make changes in the other’s work. We each had respect for the strengths the other brought to the project and valued each other’s contributions. And we both felt keenly responsible for the quality of the outcome.

The trouble was, we knew perfectly well that in today’s publishing climate, when sf readers saw that this book was by Orson Scott Card, whom they have probably heard of, and Kathryn H. Kidd, whom they have almost certainly not (since her publications have been in another genre) these readers would naturally conclude that this was another of those master-apprentice “collaborations,” and therefore not likely to be very good.

Well, we can’t be sure that you’ll think this novel is good—though
we
do, or we wouldn’t have sent it off to be published. But we wanted you to know that whatever flaws this book might have did not result from having a junior writer do the real work on an outline written by the senior one. This is a true collaboration from beginning to end.

Ellison also warned that collaboration, when done well, isn’t easier than writing alone—it’s harder. Twice as much work for half the money, is the way I remember him putting it. I mentioned that to Kathy at the beginning of our project, and we both laughed. It would be different for us.

As in so many other things, Ellison was right. But you don’t collaborate in order to save time or avoid work. You collaborate in order to create a story that neither of you could have created as well alone.

(Just think, Kathy. We only have to do this two more times.)

—Orson Scott Card
Greensboro, 16 September 1993