Alastair Reynolds
I always say that keeping abreast of science should never be seen as a chore. It should be something you do naturally. I don't sit there reading 'New Scientist,' putting post-it notes next to ideas.
If there's a story I absolutely cannot tell without faster-than-light travel, then I am quite prepared to accept it - even though I don't personally believe it is possible.
I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.
I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment.
I'm fascinated by steam engines and with Victorian engineering generally, and as a corollary to that, I'm fascinated by the idea of long-lived technologies.
I've never had much interest in spinoffery - the idea of writing in someone else's universe generally leaves me cold - but 'Doctor Who' is different. I've grown up with it. It's been part of my life since I was tiny, watching Jon Pertwee on a grainy black and white television in Cornwall and being terrified out of my mind.
I don't know why, but American sci-fi writers seem to focus on the near-future, which has given us Brits a clear run at the most fascinating.
For me, the distant future and far-off galaxies is where it's at. That's where my imagination can really come out to play.
It's true that my stories seem to deal with the end of the world. I've often been called the high priest of gothic miserablism, which is slightly unfair.
I always like Iain Banks science fiction stuff and William Gibson's cyberpunk stuff from the 1980s.
The first time I read a crime novel - I think it may have been an Elmore Leonard book - it took some time for me to realise how the genre worked. There were about 20 characters on the first page, and I wasn't used to this. I started to enjoy it when I saw that was how crime books worked.
There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.
In crime, I like Ian Rankin and James Lee Burke. As for historical books, I enjoy Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brien, and C. S. Forester - anything with battleships!
Like everyone else, I read newspapers and 'New Scientist' and try to put my finger on the trends which we can just see emerging now that are accelerating and might take off.
I come at it from a different angle of attack with each novel, searching for the technological texture the story demands. There isn't a recipe; it's more of an instinct.
You have to be able to invest in your own creations, to suspend your own disbelief in order to be able to write them. We all have to draw the line somewhere.
What works for me is simply to read a lot of stuff throughout the year - not with a particular story or theme in mind, but just because you never know what might be useful or interesting in the long run. I much prefer to just absorb a lot of stuff and let the old unconscious chew down on it over time.
Most of the time, when I get an idea that hinges on some science 'thing,' it will have been because of something I read or encountered months or years earlier rather than in the last few days.
There is so little SF drawn from modern scientific thinking, in any discipline, that I'm much more cheered by the successes than the failures, most of which are forgivable.
There is enough material in the Kuiper Belt to build anything out there. We could gobble up all the little asteroids, filtering out all the volatile materials, leaving us with bits of rock and using that to make some incredible structures.
Dreams of warp drives and hyperspace are just that - dreams.
From apparently superluminal radio sources in deep space, to the neutrinos that were supposed to be arriving ahead of schedule at the Grand Sasso experiment in Italy, every apparent exception to Einstein's ultimate speed law has turned out to be a phantom.
It's a novel experience to have one of my books read by a reading group.
My mother was a part of a reading group, but they would never come near science fiction because they think it's not for them.
Science fiction can be very relevant, could be good literature.
'Doctor Who' is part of my science fictional DNA. You could take it out of me, and I'd probably still have ended up being a writer, but almost certainly not the same one.
My early memories of 'Who' are clouded by time and confused by repeats and reissues. I have no direct recollection of the first two Doctors and none at all of the first season of the Pertwee era. By the last two seasons of the Third Doctor, I was properly hooked.
I'm not actually that bothered about the 'science fiction-ness' of 'Doctor Who.'
I watched 'Who' with a mixture of affection and exasperation through the eighties, always ready to cheer on the Doctor but seldom feeling that the series was playing to its strengths. Some of the adventures, revisited on DVD, turn out to be better than I remembered - others just as infuriating.
I've always been attracted to Pertwee's portrayal of the Doctor as dashing man-of-science, charming, sceptical, and rational.
Above all else, 'Doctor Who' still seems to me to offer near-infinite scope for the writer. It must be the least constraining of televisual properties.
Daleks scared the hell out of me, to the point where I wouldn't go round to another boy's house because he had Dalek wallpaper in his bedroom.
As a science fiction writer, it's hard to think of a more stirring theme than the origin and ultimate destiny of life in the universe.
I couldn't think of anything more pointless than reading a piece of fiction written by a robot.
I don't think the computer will win the Booker, but no-one ever expected a computer to beat a chess grandmaster.
The idea of a computer winning the Nobel Prize for physics is not too unlikely, citing a computer as joint recipient. It's obviously not a huge leap to think of something similar happening in fiction.
I've always had ideas for more books than I can write.
When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.
Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.Collection: Cities
I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.Collection: Thinking
Victory loses its meaning without the memory of what you've vanquished.Collection: Memories
A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.Collection: Cities
Without risk in our lives, we're scarcely better than machines ourselves.Collection: Risk
To see something marvelous with your own eyes-that's wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you'll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won't ever really exist as a whole until you're together, talking or thinking about that moment ...that's worth more than one plus one. It's worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can't even imagine it.Collection: Memories
Looking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity.Collection: Wise
It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.Collection: People
Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.Collection: Government
You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.Collection: Worry
As the old saying went, the Manhattan Project wasn't built in a day. Or was that Rome? Something to do with Earth, anyway.Collection: Rome