Advertisement

What's Janis Ian reading?

 
In 2013, Janis Ian won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Society’s Child.
In 2013, Janis Ian won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Society’s Child.
Published March 11, 2015

Nightstand

Janis Ian

As a youngster in New Jersey, Janis Eddy Fink was a wunderkind. She began playing the piano at the age of 2. In elementary school, she learned the organ, the harpsichord, the flute and the guitar. At 13, right after she changed her name to Janis Ian, she had her first hit single as a singer-songwriter with Society's Child. Controversial at the time, the song became an anthem for interracial romance. In 1975, Ian's career would be catapulted into the stratosphere with the release of At Seventeen, another anthem, this one for insecure teenage girls across the country.

Decades later, Ian, 63, is still going strong. On April 13, she will perform, along with folk singer Tom Paxton, at the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater. Ian is a self-proclaimed bookworm whose genre of choice is science fiction. After attending the 2001 World Science Fiction Convention, she co-edited Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian. The audio version of her memoir, Society's Child, received a 2013 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

What's on your nightstand?

I'm about to read a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman (his new one is Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances), and since I was recently in Santa Fe, doing two shows at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, an old theater restored by George R.R. Martin as his way of giving back to Santa Fe, he's been on my mind. I spent some time with George, and I just love all his books, but currently I'm looking forward to starting Neil's.

Can you talk about how you see his importance right now in science fiction?

You know, I think Neil is more important in terms of watching someone going from not famous to famous and still keeping his wits about him. Neil is a good example of graciousness. In his storytelling, there's a sense of humanity. You also see it in writers like Flannery O'Connor, and in both Neil and George. They write from such a human point of view, and they manage to feel for their characters.

How did science fiction hook you?

It's like jazz. It's an outsider form. It seems like it's a small group of people who don't belong anywhere else, and there's some very good writers out there. They work in a form that many people look down on, yet it's a form that has pointed to certain things, our computers and handheld (devices). We read about it all 20, 30, 40 years ago. There are sci-fi authors who are physicists, librarians. They are an interesting group. Of course, there are great writers and bad writers, but when they are good, they are amazing.

When you were young, who first pulled you in? For me, it was Ray Bradbury.

Actually I read Bradbury, John Wyndham, Robert Heinlein and his Stranger in a Strange Land. My dad had pulp magazines and many first editions of so many things. I grew up with it on his bookshelves.

Contact Piper Castillo at pcastillo@tampabay.com or (727) 445-4163. Follow @Florida_PBJC.