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Sylvia Louise Engdahl
Where do you live?
Since 1988 my home has been in Eugene, Oregon. Before that, I lived in Portland, and earlier, in Los Angeles, with short stays in other places. I like Eugene best and am settled here permanently.
Do you have a family?
No, not since my mother died at the age of 90. For many years we lived together; she too was a writer (under her maiden name, Mildred Allen Butler). Now my only family is my cat, Marigold, as
I have no close relatives.
When and where were you born?
Apparently this is something teachers feel should be stated in school book reports, since students write and ask me! It's no secret: I was born in Los Angeles in 1933.
Where did you go to college?
I got my degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1955. Before that, I briefly attended Pomona College in Claremont, California; Reed College in Portland; and the University of Oregon in Eugene. Later, I did graduate work at Portland State University.
What do you do besides write?
From 1985 until 1997 I was a part-time online staff and faculty member of Connected Education, Inc. of White Plains, New York, which offered online courses for college credit. I'm active in volunteer work for the Eugene Public Library and for Community Time Share, a service exchange program for senior citizens run by Eugene's branch of RSVP, the Retired & Senior Volunteer Program. (Among other things, I produce newsletters and/or Web pages for these and other organizations.) Also, I'm now accepting freelance jobs in Web site design, desktop publishing, manuscript editing--anything I can do with my computer.
What online courses did you teach?
I taught "Science Fiction and Space Age Mythology" several times through Connected Education for graduate credit from New York's New School for Social Research. That course (which dealt with pop-culture rather than literary SF) covered some of the topics I'm dealing with in the nonfiction book I'm now working on, and is based partly on my background in anthropology, a field in which I did graduate study in the late 70s. I have also taught "Technology and 21st Century Medicine" and team-taught "Computer Conferencing in Business and Education"
through Connect Ed for New School credit. All of these were Media Studies courses, focused on analysis of our culture's outlook.
Did you ever have a career other than writing?
In my youth I taught 4th grade for a year. After that, from 1957 to 1967, I was a programmer and then computer systems specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System, at a time when programming was a brand new field and trainees with degrees in other areas were being hired. I worked entirely in assembly language, doing mainly what's now called systems programming; higher level languages did not yet exist. Times have changed . . . I wrote a series for a BBS once titled "Rip Van Winkle Visits Microcomputing" and even that is now very ancient history.
Have you done any programming since then?
In the early 80s I wrote and attempted to sell assembly-language software for my TRS-80 computer, but I couldn't pay for enough advertising to get the venture off the ground. Then when I first got an IBM compatible in 1987, I quit programming, because all the software I needed was already available as shareware and there seemed to be no point in reinventing the wheel. I miss it sometimes, but my knowledge is now far too obsolete to update without more time than I could devote to it.
What books do you like to read? What SF and/or fantasy has influenced you most?
My all-time fantasy favorites are Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea, and The King Must Die by Mary Renault. As for science fiction, in my youth I especially enjoyed Robert Heinlein's YA novels--which I read one by one as they came out--and some of his other early fiction (I didn't like his later novels as well). I was also particularly fond of Zenna Henderson's "People" stories, Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow, and some of the work of Arthur Clarke and Chad Oliver. In mainstream fiction, I loved the novels of
Nevil Shute (not On the Beach, but his lesser-known and more optimistic ones).
I haven't read a great deal of fiction in the past few decades, and haven't kept up with the SF/fantasy field; I've concentrated on nonfiction. But for relaxation I've enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, Katherine Kurtz, Anne McCaffrey, M. K. Wren's Phoenix Legacy trilogy, Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Sime/Gen series--and lately Dean Koontz (whose books are not exactly SF, but certainly not "horror" in most cases, and which I like for their affirmative view of human nature). Quite recently I've been impressed by David Feintuch's Seafort Saga, which has more substance than seems to be generally recognized.
As I guess this list shows, I prefer novels that focus less on adventure or "far-out" concepts than on the feelings and moral dilemmas of the characters. And however great its literary quality may be, I have no patience with fiction that presents a pessimistic--and therefore, in my opinion, false--view of human progress or of humanity's place in the universe.
What are your hobbies?
I can't say that I have any other than reading--except for the Internet, of course! Online communication has meant a lot to me since I got my first modem in 1984; while caring for my aging mother I wasn't able to leave the house often and had few outside personal contacts. Now, though I can't afford travel and have low physical energy, through the Internet I'm in touch with the world. I welcome e-mail from anyone who wants to discuss my books or the subjects in which I have special interest.
What subjects are those?
Space colonization; extraterrestrial life; all aspects of Space Age mythology, which I consider a positive force in our culture (including pop-culture science fiction such as Star Wars, Star Trek and other space-centered movies or TV, UFO lore, the Gaia myth); comparative mythology; parapsychology (you knew that from Enchantress!); consciousness research; human evolution; genetic engineering; philosophy of science; complexity theory; psychoneuroimmunology and mind-body medicine; dissenting views of our society's medical philosophy (currently
my greatest social concern); near-death experiences; mysticism and unorthodox religion. I'm aware that this is a somewhat unusual mixture of enthusiasms!
Books:
Enchantress from the Stars
Children of the Star
Author's Homepage:
http://www.sylviaengdahl.com
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