Czech Interview with Martin Sust

Where was born your love for Africa?

When I was 9 or 10 years old, I came across two books by an American who’d been one of the earliest professional hunters in Africa. His name was Alexander Lake, and the books were Killers in Africa and Hunter’s Choice. Despite the titles they weren’t endless stories about killing big game. One had to do with filling a zoo’s orders for 60 apes by getting them drunk. Another tells you how to prepare and cook that animal you’ve just shot for the pot. Relatively few of his reminiscences have to do with actually shooting anything. He loved Africa, and that love was transmitted to the reader. From the day I discovered his books, I’ve shared his fascination with Africa. I’ve read hundreds of other books on the subject, but Lake was the impetus that got me to take six (non-hunting) safaris, and write maybe ten science fiction novels and twenty science fiction stories about Africa or African analogs. (Half a century after first reading him, I brought Alexander Lake back into print in The Resnick Library of African Adventure, a series I edited for Alexander Books.)

What do you mean about the success about the Kirinyaga stories? Before them you was known only as novelist and now you are one of most awarded short stories authors.

I was never very interested in short stories until the late 1980s. I thought you needed 75,000 words to say something Important (note the capital “I”). Then I wrote “Kirinyaga” and realized that I was wrong, that I could do meaningful work at shorter lengths. That was 5 Hugos, 34 Hugo nominations, and about 250 stories ago.

Where isn’t much more english or american science fiction about African continent, for example Ian McDonald’s Chaga saga, but it’s only one of a few exceptions. Where is the reason of that ovelooking of that continent?

I can’t speak for the British, but most Americans don’t know much about Africa, and I think the major reason is that we’ve never had any African colonies. The only time we’ve ever had a major presence was in North Africa in World War II, when we were busy fighting Rommel and not learning about the continent. And until the advent jet passenger planes, it was a long trip. Robert Ruark’s memoir of his first safari, Horn of the Hunter, points out that it took five days to fly from New York to Nairobi.

Why do you return to Kirinyaga stories in Kilimanjaro novella? That novella is like the whole Kirinyaga saga in one story about the new African tribe and it works.

One of my American publishers, Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press, a very good personal friend as well as a publisher, kept nagging me to write something more about Kirinyaga. I kept explaining that the story was done, that there was nothing left to say. During one such conversation I mentioned—again—that Kirinyaga’s story was complete, and that if I had to write something, it would be about another Utopian colony that hoped to learn from Kirinyaga’s mistakes. That night he deposited the money for a novella in my PayPal account and told me that now that I’d been paid I owed him the story. So I sat down and wrote “Kilimanjaro.” (He’s done this twice more to me, for the African novellas “Shaka II” and “Six Blind Men and an Alien.” About once a year he decides he wants a new African novella, pays me in advance, and makes me feel so guilty about taking his money that I write it.)

What is the most important thing for short story writer? Do you have some simple advice for beginners?

He has to remember that in a short story, there are no digressions; he has to make every word count. He can’t spend too much time drawing the reader into the story, and he can’t linger very long after the end of it. The other thing is that he does not have to moderate his ambition; in the hands of a good writer a short story can be every bit as powerful as a 100,000-word novel.

The best advice I have is that writers write, and would-be writers who are never going to be successful talk about writing.

The other advice is to never do an editor’s job for him, by which I mean, never be afraid to send a story to an editor because you’ve seen examples of his taste and you think he won’t like it. Maybe he won’t—but let him reject it. Don’t you reject it for him by not submitting it.

What was your biggest experience or adventure from your African tours? You can pick one or two, if it is necessary...

We were charged by a rather angry elephant in Botswana (she stopped about six or seven meters away from us), and by a rhino in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater (he put a large dent in the door of the Land Rover). In Zimbabwe we had to chase a pretty big snake out of our tent.

And I remember the graveyard in Nairobi. Just reading the headstones would give anyone stories to tell: “Killed by a lion,” “Killed by the Maasai,” “Died from Cholera,” “Killed by a leopard,” “Killed by a Nandi spear.” I spent 2 or 3 hours there one day with my video camera, just capturing those brief and tragic stories.

You like the fables or legends and many of your stories are told in that manner. Why are you attracted in this type of the story?

I suppose as a young boy I grew up with fables and legends of the American frontier—true ones like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and the saga of Billy the Kid, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And also fables like Paul Bunyon and his blue ox Babe, and Johnny Appleseed, and similar tales. They stirred my imagination and sense of wonder, and I suppose they encouraged me to try to stir others’ as well.

If we imagine various types of Utopias on Earth orbit, on which of them will you move from our planet?

The easy answer would be one with gorgeous naked women and no men. But the truth is that my Utopia is very much like a World Science Fiction Convention, filled with friends of a lifetime, books everywhere, parties (by which I mean animated discussions) all night long, and people with whom I share a number of interests. So I guess I visit my Utopia for a week almost every year.