Texas Almanac, 1990-1991 Page: 465
611 p. : col. ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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CULTURE 465
the experiences of movie-goers at an East Texas
drive-in theater, which is whisked off into outer
space.
The Drive In and another novel, Dead In the
West, a tale of the undead in 19th century East Tex-
as, have been optioned as possible movies.
Lansdale no longer writes to specific markets
as he once did. Now he first creates stories and
then finds the proper market. The low point in his
career came in 1983 when his work wasn't selling
and other problems arose. "Now the things I
couldn't sell then are marketable," he says.
At one time in his career, Lansdale turned out
a short story a day, although the yarns didn't sell.
The experience was invaluable, he says, because he
got the cliches out of his system. He also would
work on two novels at a time, one in one typewriter
and another in a second machine. "If I bogged
down in one, I'd turn to the other typewriter," he
explains. Now the pace is a little more leisurely, if
working six hours a day, seven days a week can be
called leisurely.
Ardath Mayhar began her writing career as a
poet, while running her father's dairy farm after
graduation from high school. But storytelling had
been part of life from childhood. She and her fath-
er, a Scotch-Irishman from Mississippi, created
many epics concerning grasshoppers and such.
"He would give me a line, and I would answer it in
rhyme," Mayhar recalls. She began selling poetry
at age 19 and eventually sold 500 poems. But "sell'
isn't a good verb to use in describing the trans-
action, Mayhar says. "It's more like giving it
away."
Always a voracious reader, she credits books
with bringing she and her husband, Joe, together.
She operated a bookstore in Nacogdoches in 1958,
and Joe would borrow science-fiction novels from
her. "I couldn't have set a better trap," she says
with a smile.
While living in Oregon in the early 1970s, she
began writing fiction. Her first story came to her
when she was preparing to bathe. The bath was
postponed, and forty-five minutes later, she had
written the story about a red-neck male chauvinist
who murdered his wife and tossed her body in a
river. The story, Crawfish, first appeared in Psycho-
logical Perspectives, a Jungian psycho-literary
journal, and has been anthologized several other
times.
Part of the credit for her early success is givendclude The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix, Islands In the Mist
and Involution Ocean. In addition, he has written two doz-
en short stories, some of which will appear in a forthcom-
ing collection, Crystal Express, and has edited several
anthologies.
Lewis Shiner probably got the earliest start at writing
of any Texas author. His parents, tired of reading the
same things over to him, taught young Shiner to read at
age three. Shortly thereafter, he also learned to write and
began writing short stories. At age seven, he started his
first novel. In 1978, he sold his first short story.
Shiner has written mystery, horror, and mainstream
stories, as well as SF. His first book, Frontera, was an SF
novel, but the second, Deserted Cities of the Heart, while it
has a fantasy element, is pretty much mainstream. An-
other novel, Slam, is expected to be published in 1990.
Shiner also has published 40-odd short stories.
The new energy that was generated in the early 1980s
attracted Shiner to the SF field. He and Sterling hashed
out many ideas together, and through this relationship
Shiner became identified with the cyberpunk writers. "1
never minded the label. But sooner or later, people real-
ized that I did not exactly fit the mold of others," Shiner
says.
For good or evil, the impact of technology on the indi-
vidual, more than on the whole society, attracts the atten-
tion of the cyberpunk writers. A work may as likely be set
at a rock concert at Stonehenge or a floating city of plea-
sure in the Mediterranean as in a high-tech laboratory in
California or Massachusetts. The protagonist may be a
rock star or drug artist, as well as a white-jacketed scien-
tist.
If any Texas science fiction writer was born to the
calling, Justin Leiber has the credentials. His father,
Fritz, is a legend in the field. So good, in fact, that Justin
purposefully stayed away from writing science fiction
until he was 40. Once started, however, Leiber has been
prolific. Since 1980 when Beyond Rejection was published,
he done two more SF novels in the trilogy - Beyond Hu-
manity and Beyond Gravity - and two sword-and-sorceryto yoga. '"When I got upside-down and got the blood
running to my head, I began writing books," she jok-
es. Writing, to her, is now as necessary as breathing
is to others. "I knew I was a writer when I began tak-
ing mental notes on the service at the funeral of a
great-uncle," Mayhar says.
Most of her 27 books have been on science fic-
tion, although one, The Wall, was a horror novel. She
also has marketed 125 short stories, about half of
which were horror stories and many of which have
been reprinted in anthologies.
Mayhar writes in several genre, although she
uses a male pseudonym when writing Westerns.
Science fiction is the most comfortable genre for
Mayhar, who began reading in the field at age 15.
"It's a wide-ranging, free-wheeling genre," she
explains. "You can call people anything you want, as
long as you put them on another planet. Even an eas-
ily identifiable character. But ideas can come from
anywhere. A writer never wastes anything," she
says.
One idea came when she strode past two securi-
ty men and came within striking distance of a prom-
inent politician in an Austin hotel lobby. "People
don't take little old ladies seriously," Mayhar says.
The experience gave her the idea of creating a fic-
tional little-old-lady assassin, who dispatches victims
with knitting needles.
Mayhar's horror stories are more conventional
than Lansdale's. She is no splatterpunker. "Blood
holds no fascination for me," she explains. "I saw
enough of that on the dairy. What you don't see is
more terrifying than what you do see."
She writes about seven hours a day and can
work in the middle of a tornado or an elephant stam-
pede - "If I'm not directly involved," Mayhar quips
with a twinkle in her eye. Raising four boys (Joe had
two by a previous marriage, and she and Joe had
two more) helped develop the concentration.
Although she enjoys her two grandchildren,
Mayhar says she likes children in small doses now.
In addition to writing, Mayhar works in the fam-
ily's View From Orbit Bookstore and is an instructor
in the Writers Digest School.
Despite the horror stories that originate in its
community, the Nacogdoches Chamber of Com-
merce would probably assure us all that every day
isn't Halloween in the East Texas city. But you
couldn't tell that by Joe Lansdale's or Ardath May-
har's output.
-MIKE KINGSTON.novels -The Sword and the Eye and The Sword and the
Tower. Leiber, a professor of philosophy at the Universi-
ty of Houston, also has written four non-fiction books
and has another novel in the works.
Three of the novels have a Texas angle, a big cat,
suggested by UH's mascot, Shasta IV, a cougar, which
Leiber has helped maintain. Leiber is not involved in
the Cyberpunk movement, considering his science
fiction more traditional.
With much fiction writing in Texas looking back-
ward to the good old days, the science fiction produced
in the state is refreshing. And probably reflective of the
state's maturing as a high-tech center. Writers tend to
deal with society as they experience it. Texas' society is
becoming much more oriented toward high technology,
as the petroleum industry retreats in economic impor-
tance and the farms and ranches lose their lure to new
generations of urbanites.
But will science fiction be embraced by mainstream
fiction writers? Texas SF writers are split on that ques-
tion.
Oliver is not optimistic. Science fiction is sort of a
literary ghetto, although there is no longer an automatic
exclusion, Oliver observes, pointing to the panel pre-
sented to the governor's conference on Texas literature
in Denton in 1986. Science-fiction writers, however, tend
to mingle with other science-fiction writers and not with
mainstream writers. And that may impede acceptance.
In fact, science fiction may have problems in the future
because TV is so popular. "A literature of ideas is at a
disadvantage in that medium," he says.
Proctor disagrees with the idea that Texas' mains-
tream fiction writers are a cut below those nationally. A
good story is a good story, no matter the genre, he says.
People from his generation turned out stories that sold,
and that has sparked the generation of Lansdale, Ster-
ling, and Shiner. It was a sign that said, "It can be
done."
-MIKE KINGSTON.
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Kingston, Mike. Texas Almanac, 1990-1991, book, 1989; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth162512/m1/467/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.