SciFiNow: Your latest novel, Helix, features thousands of worlds in a spiral construct, arranged around a sun. What would you say was the main inspiration behind this idea?
Eric Brown: The idea came to me when I was dining with a friend years ago. In the middle of a table was an old oil lamp with an oblate glass cowl, and on the cowl was a coloured thread. I remember thinking that the flame at the centre resembled a sun, and the piping a space station. After that, the possibilities for adventure stories seemed endless. I decided to use one of my favourite sci-fi scenarios – the crash-landed starship – and it took off from there.
SciFiNow: Do you ever base any of your characters on people you know, or even yourself?
EB: Most of my central characters are based on myself, or aspects of myself. After all, I know myself better than I know anyone else. In any given situation within a novel I’m writing I always ask myself how I’d react, and often the emotional situations experienced by my characters are situations I’ve found myself in.
SciFiNow: What would you say is the most exciting book you’ve read in modern science fiction?
EB: That’s a tough question. For sheer, seat of the pants thrills, I’d say Black Man by Richard Morgan – it also works on many other levels. Earlier, I found Alfred Bester’s novels thrilling: they’re proto-cyberpunk. I find the novels of Robert Charles Wilson thrilling for the combination of characterisation and the ideas he writes about.
SciFiNow: With television as the preferred medium of entertainment for many people these days, do you think that interest in books is declining?
EB: I don’t think so. Aren’t more books being published nowadays than ever before? There’s certainly more choice than ever before. The thing that books have over television is their range; it seems that the entire gamut of what it is to be human can be found between the covers of books.
SciFiNow: You’re a regular columnist in The Guardian, and you have quite a few titles to your name already. Did you always want to be a writer?
EB: I never read a book until I was 15. Then I read a novel by Agatha Christie, and I was hooked. Not long after that I discovered Wells and Silverberg, who after Christie were mind-blowing. All I wanted to do after that was to write sci-fi.
SciFiNow: What would your advice be to anyone who might be thinking of writing a science-fiction novel?
EB: Read a lot in the genre to get a feel for what’s gone before, and then write, and stick at it. If you want it badly enough, you’ll succeed. The only people who fail are those who stop.
SciFiNow: Creating within the genre obviously requires a great passion for it, but what is it about science fiction that appeals to you most?
EB: The freedom. The idea that the entire span of space and time can be used to tell whatever tale I want to tell – the only limiting factor is the breadth of my imagination. One thing is certain about human life: it will change, and it’s exciting to write how those changes might come about.
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