D. Scott Apel (2024 Hilaritas Press podcast photo)
Many of you know D. Scott Apel as Robert Anton Wilson's friend and business partner. Apel co-produced the Trajectories newsletter with RAW, handling the production chores while RAW served as the editorial director. Material from that newsletter is collected in two books: Chaos and Beyond, and also Beyond Chaos and Beyond, both available from Hilaritas Press
But aside from that, Apel also is a prolific author; he has published about 20 books (getting an exact count is complicated), including 11 books of fiction.
My impetus for seeking a new interview with Scott came a few weeks ago, when I finally got around to reading his novel The Uncertainty Principle? It had been on my Kindle for years, but lots of stuff have been on my Kindle for years -- I read dozens of books every year, but it's hard to get around to everything I want to read!
Anyway, I did finally read it, and it was a good read, hard to put down. It concerns a detective, one Alec Smart, who is hired by a veteran science fiction writer. The client wants to know why the predictions in his fiction always come true. As with Illuminatus!, what seems at first like a straightforward detective story quickly gets very weird. The book includes portraits of Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Riley Wilson and Philip K. Dick, and a character who is a self-portrait of Apel himself. (The ebook is only 99 cents from Amazon, the paperback is $14.95. And if you don't want to buy from Amazon, the Nook ebook from Barnes and Noble, which you can read on the B&N Nook app on your phone or your Nook tablet, also is 99 cents.)
After I discovered I liked The Uncertainy Principle?, I had some questions about it and about Scott's fiction, which Scott agreed to take via email. So here it is.
I will soon publish the only publicly-available, accurate bibliography of Scott's books (the Wikipedia article is very incomplete.)
So here is my interview. See also my 2017 interview with Apel about Robert Anton Wilson, and also my interview with him about the book Beyond Chaos and Beyond. See also the Hilaritas Press podcast interview.
RAWILLUMINATION.NET: You have written quite a few works of fiction, is The Uncertainty Principle? your favorite novel?
D. Scott Apel: This is a trick question, on a par with asking a mother which of her children is her favorite. Like most writers, I tend to believe that my latest effort is not just my favorite, but also my best work. So, while I have a fondness for UP? if only because it took 35 years to finish and publish, at this point, my favorite would be Unfriendly Takeover at OzCo, which I love and which I truly do believe is my best work.
But I also have a deep soft spot in my heart for my first novel, E Attraction, written in 1975, partly because it might be the best idea I've ever had; partly because it was my first novel; partly because I devoted two years to its creation, totally upending my life to concentrate on writing it (like moving from California to Virginia to avoid being sidetracked by my dissolute friends); and partly because no less a critic than Joseph Campbell read the original ms. and wrote me saying it was "obviously a serious work of modern mythology." (That quote would have gone on the cover if I could have gotten it published.) Alas, it will forever remain unpublished: about 10 years ago, I exhumed the ms. with the intent of rewriting it, but after rereading it, I came away baffled as to how to accomplish that. (I do love to refer to it in other books, however, like UP? and Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men, and even OzCo.)
Speaking of Exemplary Lives of Impossible Men, I'm quite proud of that one. It's incredibly dense with 50 years' worth of ideas; it works on several levels; and it incorporates virtually every trope of post-modern novels. In the same vein, I'm also quite pleased with Escape from 50sville, which exhibits a lot of literary tricks I've always wanted to use in a novel (like digesting entire chapters into a few sentences as the alleged editor, to skip boring exposition; including a Study Guide; and allowing me to make use of my extensive knowledge of the old TV series The Prisoner). And I think my other two recent comic mysteries (Jobs of Work and Hollywood, Ending) have the best endings I've ever written.
As for non-fiction, I am always proud of the two volumes of Killer B's movie guides. Deep research and fun reviews.
RAWIllumination.net: I am confused about the history of The Uncertainty Principle?, as it has a 1979 copyright and also a 2015 copyright. Did you revise the book, and if so, how?
D. Scott Apel: While this is legally unnecessary, I wanted to add the date of the first version (entitled The Coincidence Caper at that point) to establish that I’d been working on that book for 35 years before publishing it. I also wanted to make sure no one could come around and say, “Oh, you stole that plot/character/scene/location from a novel published in 1980/85/90 (or whatever.)” Just a touch ultraparanoid (like most authors), but I do want credit for being there first, in case anyone finds similarities between UP? and anything published since 1979. I didn’t bother to do this with the two sequels (The Infinite Mistress and Detective, Comics), both of which were written in the 1980s (but unpublished until the 20-teens), or Science Fiction: An Oral History, which was compiled in 1978, since the dates of the interviews are included in the book.
RAWIllumination.net: What did Robert Anton Wilson think of The Uncertainty Principle? Did you get feedback from Arlen Wilson and from Philip K. Dick?
D. Scott Apel: Well, PKD died before I could get him a copy. He wasn't even a character in the book until a 1981 rewrite, when I realized that at only 60,000 words, The Coincidence Caper needed to be expanded, and his story fit nicely into the original plot. But oddly, I recently ran across a photo of PKD from about 1980, standing in front of one of his bookcases, and I recognized a copy of E Attraction on the top shelf, next to his head. I never had a chance to discuss it with him, however, for whatever reason.
Arlen Wilson had also passed before I finished the final version. I read much of this version to RAW when he was bedridden, and he gave me this quote: "Brilliant, original, and damned funny as well!" Bob also served as an inadvertent inspiration, since I intuited the whole backstory sipping Jameson on the terrace of his Capitola apartment.
RAWIllumination.net: The descriptions of the slightly fictionalized Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Wilson and Philip K. Dick are accurate and affectionate as far as I can tell (I never met any of them), but the portrait of the Robert Heinlein is not very flattering and noticeably wrong on some details; was this driven by the need of the plot, or were you unhappy with Heinlein?
D. Scott Apel: When I was a teen, like all teen boys who discover sci-fi, I read everything sci-fi by everyone writing sci-fi, from the space opera of Doc Smith to the literary stylings of Ray Bradbury. It took several college lit courses before I began to develop some discrimination and taste about what constituted good writing vs. hack writing. Early on, I consumed everything by the Big 3: Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. And as I began to discover and appreciate good literature, I realized that most sci-fi would not be included. But that didn't matter as a teen: sci-fi was the literature of ideas, not literary style, and Heinlein had some great ideas. Eventually, however, I began to see the flaws in his work: wooden writing, two-dimensional characters, etc. -- not to mention his reactionary/Libertarian philosophy and his demeaning treatment of women, both of which made me cringe as a young liberal/radical. The personal enmity enters when my college friend and then-roommate Kevin Briggs and I were conducting interviews for what was supposed to be the first book of interviews with sci-fi authors. Our agent insisted he couldn't sell the book without an interview with one of the Big 3. Well, Clarke was in Sri Lanka, and Asimov was in Boston, which required travel that was out of the question for a couple of poverty-stricken young wannabe authors to accomplish. (How much easier it is today with Zoom and FaceTime!). But Heinlein lived only a few miles away from our Silicon Valley home. We wrote personal letters to him and even had his peer and one of our interview subjects, Ted Sturgeon, call him, vouch for us, and encourage him to meet with us, all to no avail. So the book was never published until 35 years later as Science Fiction: An Oral History. (The whole story of the subversion that prevented that book from being published is included in the book.)
So to answer your specific question: I never knew Heinlein well enough to paint a realistic portrait of him in UP? The Harshlaw character is mostly based on the necessity of the plot -- I needed a famous old SF writer who realized everything he wrote has come true in some way, and an "alternate Heinlein" fit the bill. However, the analysis of his "works" roughly corresponds to my attitude towards his writing. (I mean, shit... Have you ever tried to read The Number of the Beast? I've tried three times, but always gave up in disgust. Absolute garbage.)
RAWIllumination.net: According to the Apel bibliography I am working on, you have written five books that feature private detective Alec Smart: The Uncertainty Principle?; The Infinite Mistress; Detective, Comics; Jobs of Work and Hollywood, Ending. Is that accurate?
D. Scott Apel: Yup. I have two more I'd like to write, but both are still in the research and brainstorming phase. You Killed Out There Last Night has Alec Smart hired in about 1981 by Don Rickles, who realizes that comedy is changing from his Old School/Catskill approach to a more observational approach, and who hires Alec to chauffeur him around to Bay Area comedy clubs to try out new material without the pressure of potentially bombing in a big city club. When he's still recognized and realizes everyone still wants the "old Rickles," he tutors Alec into delivering the new material, which provides the opportunity to discuss various theories and observations about humor and comedy. During the course of their comedy club gigs they cross paths with several rising standups of the time (which allows me the opportunity to use jokes I've written in their style). There is also a subplot concerning a teenage misfit who's built a dirty A-bomb in his garage, and a visit with Frank Sinatra, when Don and Rickles urge him to use his connections to persuade the Mafia to buy the bomb and dispose of it so the kid doesn't sell it to foreign terrorists. (The Mafia was always patriotic -- and they'd have no use for an A-bomb. Would they?)
The second would be The Dating Detective, in which Alec's look-alike frenemy David Call (who shared an adventure with Smart in Hollywood, Ending) hires him to pretend to be him and go on dates he's lined up at a video dating service, to screen potential girlfriend candidates since he's too busy to do it himself. This assignment is complicated by the fact that Call's wife is pregnant, which results in him saying things like, "I can't go to Lamaze class with you tonight... I have a date." There's also a plot about video piracy. But unless I'm inspired, I'll probably never get around to writing those two. (I can only hope that last sentence comes back to bite me when I do, in fact, write both comic mysteries.)
At the moment, I'm researching a non-comic mystery -- a Sherlock Holmes story set in 1894, during the period SH was missing from London, after his alleged death at Reichenbach Falls. In my story, he's in Chicago to visit the Columbian Exposition and gets involved with tracking down missing women, all victims of the notorious mass murderer: H.H. Holmes, who lured single young women to his "Murder Palace" and disposed of them. (Hence the working title, Holmes vs. Holmes.) (Erik Larsen covers this story in depth in his wonderful bestseller, Devil in the White City.) Holmes combines forces with journalist and proto-feminist Nellie Bly to track down the killer. It's discouraging that dozens, maybe even hundreds of writers have penned Sherlock Holmes stories (some even seem to make a career out of this), but I'm slowly warming up to that idea that apres-Doyle Holmes stories are in fact a genre all their own, and I'd be in good company contributing a unique and original adventure for the iconic (shit, almost archetypal) character, Sherlock Holmes.
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