University Daily Kansan, June 30, 1980
Joy and immortality in professor's science fiction
By SHAWN McKAY Staff Reporter
"He thought of him, trying to adjust to immortality in the midst of death, and he thought that immortality—the greatest gift, surety, that a man could receive—demanded payment in kind. He said he was grateful; you must surrender the right to live."
The man lives, pursued for his life-giving blood in James Gunn's book, "The Immortals."
Gunn, professor of English, gained popularity as a science fiction writer when his best-selling novel, "The Joy Makers" was published in 1961. "The Immortals" was used as the basis for an hour-long television series on ABC. Gunn, 57, published his first book in 1955.
James Gunn, professor of English, displays his own science fiction books in his office. DREW TORRESKANSA
"Of course the cynical answer to why I write," Gunn said, "is for the money and fame. Samuel Johnson once said 'No one but a blockhead ever wrote for anything but money.' What I write ought to be what somebody wants to buy and I have a great reluctance to give anything away."
GUNN SAID MONEY was not the only reason he continued to write.
"When I'm writing I feel more like myself. When I'm not writing, I feel like I'm not justifying my existence," he said.
Gunn's career in science fiction began "partly by accident."
"It was the first field I was successful in as a writer," he said. "It's a natural tendency to continue doing those things
that are rewarded. I've enjoyed reading science fiction since the age of 7 or 8. B. There was a period during which all of my reading was science fiction."
Gunn said he did not worry about the statements his books made because those types of worries were reserved for critics.
"I think most of the things in my work emerge out of my own background," he said. "Life is difficult, but if we use our abilities we can find solutions.
"THEE ARE ALSO side issues that people can perceive in my work. There are no real villains that are evil just for evil's sake. The characters turn out to be villains because they want something that everybody else wants, but they want it enough to be willing to do anything to get it."
Gunn defended the genre of science fiction. He said most people tended to judge it by its worst examples instead of its best.
"Science fiction has become a kind of ghetto literature," he said. "Written by people in the ghetto, read by people in the ghetto, spoken by people in the ghetto. As the walls have started crumbling, the world outside the ghetto has started to look inside the restricted areas and to perceive the vitality that can persist in other areas of literature."
GUNN CREDITED the rise in the popularity of science fiction to questions of life that the literature dealt with.
"Science fiction writers of the '30s
were dealing with what has become a real world of today," he said. "They were the only ones dealing with the climate change in population, pollution, energy shortages
What once seemed escapist such as space flight and the atomic bomb, are now facts, he said.
and future crises that haven't even been explored."
"Young people find it in not only narrative excitement which is found in most other literature, but also additional reasons that seem to be important," he said.
Gunn's total book sales have passed two million, but he said he had never taken the time to add up the exact number of copies his 20 books had sold.
Gunn said writing was an arduous task.
GUNN SAID HIS ideas came from a variety of sources, usually from reading something that set off a chain of events. I read about the came out of an Encyclopaedia Britania article which said that 'a true science of happiness is not yet born. I started thinking what kind of world it might be if we had a science of happiness.'
"Sitting down and turning ideas into words is more difficult than anything I have ever done," he said. "You can figure that you are going to be sitting there in front of the typewriter for over 2,000 hours just working on one book. It's a long time to be working on anything."
Although Gunn said he didn't have a favorite book he had written, he did have a favorite passage from the conclusion of "The Jov Makers":
"How could they be sure that this was reality, not another wishful-fulfillment dream from the council-mech? How could they be sure that they had really conquered it and were not just living an illusion in a watery cell?"
"The answer was: They could never be sure.
"D'glass looked up into the night sky and shrugged. What did it matter? One god or another?"
"The rest was lies."
"All a man had was himself and his faith in himself and such illusions as he chose to believe.
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