When did you live in the Village? And was it really such a hotbed of science fiction?

I was in the East Village from about 61, i suppose, until 1973. Thomas Disch I believe was in the area. Other people passed through. James Sallis, when he was in New York he tended to stay in the Village or the East Village. I believe Robert Sheckley from time to time lived in the village. My sense is that the Village of the 50s, before i got there, was even more a sort of science fiction center, even for New York. Judith Merrill and a lot of the people who lived in Milford, Pennsylvania, would stay in the Village when they came to New York.

Milford, PA? What was going on there?

Milford was the center of science fiction from the 30s to the 50s, and much of the 60s. The Millford science fiction writers conference was held there every September, usually the week after Worldcon, or the week before Worldcon. It was a pretty lively place. At various times Theodore Sturgeon lied there, Harry Harrison, Lester Del Rey, they lived there upwards of a year or two. it was rather like Eugene or Portland, OR, where so many science fiction people lived a few years ago.

You wrote a lot of your early SF when you lived in the Village, right? Did you ever set any stories there?

Most of my sscience fiction was written while I lived there, starting from Jewels of Aptor up through Dhalgren. My first two novels were probably written in the East Village area. We couldn't afford living in the Village Village, it had sort of priced itself out of what I was capable of paying.

Did the Village provide any good material for SF stories? Was it an inspiring place for SF writers because it was so weird?

It inspired anybody who was interested in writing or the arts or music. I think anybody who liked those things or was involved in those things got a certain charge out of the neighborhood.

Did you ever write any science fiction that took place there?

I don't remember ever setting any stories in the Village. At one point, I wrote a couple of issues of Wonder Woman, one of which had [then-depowered] Diana Prince living in the East Village.

Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s was a place where anything seemed possible. Not only did writers like Samuel Delany and Kurt Vonnegut live in the Village back in the day, but some of the weirdest science fiction stories take place there. Just consider:

The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson. This is the first novel in the "Greenwich Village Trilogy." But the other two novels, written by other authors, aren't nearly as well known. Anderson's semi-autobiographical novel has a main character named after himself, and a supporting character named after his roommate at the time. Aliens are supplying a new kind of drug, known as "Reality Pills," which cause your LSD hallucinations to become physically real. One character takes the Reality Pills and is able to make butterflies appear spontaneously, all colors and sizes. Chester faces the vicious Blue Lobster aliens, who hook him up to a machine that forces him to experience horrifying visions that he would have paid to see otherwise. He writes: "I was the rabbit in the moon. I was as corny as Kansas in orbit. I wasn't thinking very well at all!" The book's Amazon reviews are full of raves about how true to the 1960s Village scene it is.

Hark! Was That The Scream Of An Angry Thoat? by Avram Davidson. A surreal description of the Village of the 1950s, populated by weird caricatures of science fiction writers including Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett. John Carter, Warlord of Mars stalks through the city looking for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Later, "a Thark astride a thoat rides through the streets." There are loving descriptions of the Open Air Market off Bleecker St., interspersed with a four-armed green monster rampaging down the street.

Green Lantern. Fighter-pilot Hal Jordan went nuts and lost the right to be Green Lantern, and his replacement was artist Kyle Raynor. We could tell he was a more bohemian artist type, because he lived in an artisty studio above a coffee shop in the Village. And because he wore a sandwich press on his face.

The Youth Information Party Line. Not fiction, but a very scifi piece of retro-futurism. An early cyberpunk experiment, the YIPL set up shop in the Yippie headquarters on Bleecker St. in 1971. A phone phreak who called himself Al Bell worked with Abbie Hoffman to "liberate" the communications infrastructure. But the venture broke up in 1973 because Bell wanted it to stick to technical assistance and Hoffman wanted it to be political.

"Walking The Floor Over You" by Walter Simons, from the Wild Cards: Deuces Down anthology. Bob runs a comedy club in the Village called the Village Idiot, and his star comedian, Carlotta has the telepathic power to induce laughter in her audiences. When mysterious bad guys start coming after Carlotta, Bob has to use his power to turn into a puddle to save her.

Conan The Barbarian. When Conan travels in space and time, guess where he ends up? At least the hairstyle fits right in.

Sleeper. Okay, it doesn't actually take place in the Village, but Woody Allen's macrobiotic health-food store owner lives there, before he's frozen for 200 years. And his flakey Village person sensibility makes him the perfect wide-eyed stranger in a future that's both more laid-back and more repressive than the 1970s.