New Waves in Science Fiction: An Interview with Jonathan Lethem

Interview by  Dinesh Raghavendra, Steven A. Michalkow, C. Derick Varn, Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy. Jake Waalk, and Joseph Brenner

Jonathan Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a multi-genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved him mainstream literary success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. His most recent book is Dissident Gardens.  We decided to speak to him about New Wave science fiction, and its relationship to mainstream literary writing as well as other developments in a writer’s life.

Do movements like the new wave achieve any sort of…