Ahrvid Engholm recalls...

Meeting Doris Lessing

During the 1987 Worldcon (Conspiracy 87, in Brighton) I met and interviewed the now Nobel-prize winning Doris Lessing. I have the text as I originally published it in my Swedish translation, but I’ll be be damned if I can find the original tape.

Lessing doesn’t think in genres, and didn’t think her first SF books as “science fiction.” She prefers the term “space fiction.” Yes, she reads SF, books that friends of hers recommend (for example, she has read Asimov’s Foundation).

She thinks the literary establihement is ignorant when they don’t recognize SF. “Conspiracy” was her first SF con (but friends had told her about SF cons before that), and she felt honoured to be invited.

SF has importance in the way it can bridge the gap between “the two cultures,” humanism and technology. SF may also give insight into technology and views about the future. She likes film, including Star Wars, which she enjoyed, but doesn’t see it as opposed to literature.

She’s interested in space, doesn’t know enough about Reagan’s “Star Wars” program to comment, but seems worried: we are inefficient in handling technology. She was in Italy after the Chernobyl accident, when Italians were banned from eating vegetables and fruit, and she’s worried that a Chernobyl will happen again.

She tends not to be a member of any clubs or groups and doesn’t like to think of literature in the terms of “movements.”

That was, briefly, some of her views. My interview isn’t very “in-depth”; I jump between subjects etc., but I had very limited time. Of course, I’m thrilled that this charming, intelligent woman — who also has written quite a lot within our genre and is fully aware of what it is and does — has won the Nobel prize. And I have met her!

Ahrvid Engholm