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Interview with Robert Zimmerman |
 This is the third of a number of Book of THoTH interviews with the speakers at the Symposium Conference 2006 . This being with Robert Zimmerman. Questions by THoTH and Oddthings.
BoT : Can you tell us what was it that began your interest in space? i.e. your first influences and why that got you interested?
RZ : I can remember the moment as if it were yesterday. It was the summer of 1960, I was seven years old, and my uncle Abe had come to visit us in our vacation bungelow in upstate New York. Abe worked for a mysterious government project whose sole purpose, to my childlike mind, was to build rockets and travel into space. "You want to see a space satellite?" he asked us. "Wow, sure," we said......
With the entire family in tow, Abe took us outside to a hillside clearing. As we watched the sunset with the lights of the nearby towns twinkling on the horizon, Abe looked off to the north and pointed up. "It’ll appear near the north star and move across the sky, disappearing in the east. Look for a bright star that moves slowly."
Soon others from nearby homes gathered as well, excited by the idea that they would actually be able see with their own eyes an orbiting artificial satellite. The sky darkened, and then, there it was. For almost twenty minutes, we watched as Echo, one of the first American satellites, crept across the night sky. Even after everyone had left, I stared at it as it dimmed to an almost invisible speck.
From that moment on I was hooked, and the ensuing space race to the moon did nothing to quench that passion. I watched enthralled as the first humans entered space and traveled to the moon.
BoT : When did you start your writing and research?
RZ : I began my full time writing career in the mid-1990s, after twenty unsatisfying years in the movie business. I had wanted to make films that inspired people, and had instead found myself making an endless series of bad horror films. In 1996 I decided to change careers, and focus on telling the exciting stories of scientists, engineers, and astronauts in their never-ending efforts to push the limits of human experience, either as researchers trying to solve the mysteries of nature or as explorers trying to push the unknown.
BoT : What makes you want to write or speak about these subjects?
RZ : I am interested in the idea of exploration, of going where no one has gone before, of tracing a warm line of life in barren dead places. Scientists do this when they discover something new about the universe. Astronauts do it when they go to new places. Engineers do it when they figure out a better way to built something. In every case, their effort enriches human existence. The challenge of pushing the unknown forces us to be better then we are. And as a writer it has been my goal to encourage this effort in the future by telling the stories of how others have done it in the past and present.
BoT : Do you find your writing/research easy or not?
RZ : I am a prolific writer, and have always found writing easy to do: On a slow writing day I produce about a thousand words. Research meanwhile is fun, since to me it is like solving a mystery. Something happened, I want to find out how, and I have to track down the participants and get them to tell their story.
BoT : What’s the easiest thing about your writing or research?
RZ : The research is always the easiest thing to do, since it usually just requires me to poke around in libraries, on the web, or in books. Also, I like to read, and research work often involves a great deal of reading.
BoT : What’s the hardest?
RZ : Usually the hardest part of any project is getting started. If you have to write a 100,000 word book, it seems daunting on that first day. I solve this problem by pacing myself, doing a minimum of 1000 words a day. Thus, by the end of three months I will usually have a first draft finished, ready for rewrites.
BoT : You write about space. Could you tell us briefly the main concepts behind your books and speaking appearances?
RZ : I am both optimistic and skeptical. I want people to look hopefully to the future. At the same time, I believe strongly in truth, and getting facts right. And since space exploration is very dangerous and difficult, it is absolutely necessary that as hopeful as we might be, we are also fiercely honest about anything we do. It is impossible to build spaceships while simultaneously ignoring serious engineering problems.
I also have a passion for freedom, and for encouraging today’s explorers to understand that they will be building new societies in space, and that this task requires great wisdom and a deep knowledge of what worked in the past. There are good reasons why the British colonies in North America quickly produced free and prosperous nations, while the Spanish and Portugeuse colonies remained poor and backward for too long.
BoT : Who are your favourite researchers/writers?
RZ : William Shakespeare, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Arthur Clarke, Winston Churchill, Larry Niven, Eric Frank Russell, Thomas Jefferson, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Johnson, to name a few.
BoT : The Book of THoTH is about bringing a greater resource of wisdom for those who want to explore further, what would be your message to those who are just beginning in their quest?
RZ : Be honest. And demand accuracy from others. Don’t believe what anyone tells you unless you can check it from at least one other independent source. At the same time, keep an open mind and be willing to change it when the facts dictate you do so.
BoT : Are there any skeptics in your area of writing or research, and what would you say to them?
RZ : I have no problem with any skeptics, as long as they keep an open mind and are willing to be convinced when the facts are self-evident.
BoT : Where do you see yourself in say 5 years time, and what will you have achieved?
RZ : Five years from now I expect to have finished three more books and be happily living with my wife Diane somewhere in the glorious southwest United States.
BoT : Have you any advice for people wanting to follow in your footsteps?
RZ : Commit. If you want to do something, do it. I have found that the biggest obstacle people have to overcome is their own timidity and fear. I say: better to try and fail then never try.
BoT : What are the best resources that people can use to learn more about your area of
interest/research?
RZ : First of all, they should read my books! Seriously, anyone who wants to find out more about the history of space exploration can easily do so. There are hundreds of good sources available in every library in the world, as well as on the web. And as much as I am a critic of NASA, the space agency’s webpages are a fine source of reasonably reliable information about its own past successes and failures.
As for astronomy, the best source of information about research that is on-going today is the Astrophysics preprint server, run out of Los Alamos. (http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/astro-ph/) At this website you can read all the most up-to-date actual research papers by the world’s most important astronomers.
For past research, the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System webpage (http://adswww.harvard.edu/index.html) provides access to practically every astronomical paper written during the past hundred years.
BoT : What’s your talk at the symposium going to be about?
RZ : I am going to tell some lesser known but very interesting stories from the history of space exploration, and use them to illustrate what works and what doesn’t. In writing my last book, LEAVING EARTH, I was amazed at some of the achievements of the Russians in space since the 1970s, and found it important to know what they did in order to understand the context of events today.
BoT : How did you come to be involved with the New Frontiers Symposium?
RZ : Paul Kimball heard me do a radio interview with George Noory on Coast-to-Coast, and invited me to give a talk at the Symposium.
BoT : What projects are you currently working on?
RZ : I am about to finish a history of the Hubble Space Telescope, telling the story of the men and women who conceived, designed, built, ruined, and saved this greatest of space telescopes.. The book should be in bookstores in the fall of 2007.
BoT : Any final message for the members of The Book of THoTH and the rest of the world?
RZ : Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. And don’t let bullies and thugs make you back down when they tell you to shut up.
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