Physics World has an interview with Alastair Reynolds, who was trained as an astrophysicist but is now a full-time SF author:
How does your physics training help with your writing?
Less than people imagine. I think the most important attribute for a science-fiction writer is to be fascinated by science -- in all its manifestations. It's not necessary to be able to understand all the details, but just to be inspired and stimulated. Most of the ideas that have fed into my writing have come from reading popular articles on subjects far away from my own very limited specialization, such as neuroscience or biology.
I was on a panel with Reynolds a few Boskones ago, and he was a nice guy who made the best of a mildly bad situation-- the panel was on disaster novels, and none of the panelists really had much of anything to say about the topic, so we just sort of threw it open to the audience, and let them talk. He was a really good sport about the whole thing.
I read and enjoyed his first novel, Revelation Space, and I've got another book or two by him kicking around somewhere. He's worth a look, and the interview is short but interesting.
- Log in to post comments
Reynolds is one of the few of the most recent crop of hard sf writers Jordin, who also has a PhD in astrophysics, really enjoys. He can be entertainingly grumpy on why that is.
MKK
Reynolds is very good and his more recent well worth reading.
He is now on my "buy on sight" list with Banks, Bujold and Vinge.
I remember asking Reynolds for career advice, long ago. I don't think I learned something new from that conversation, but I still sort of think that his arrangement at the time was a good one: research four days a week, writing on one day (plus some evenings and weekends probably, I didn't ask about that).
By the way: many sf authors say that they are more creative when they write about things outside their own field of expertise. I remember Reynolds talking about that at a convention, he said that he found it very difficult to write anything good about neutron stars since he knew too much about them. I think it was Peter Watts (might have been in the Nature sf issue last summer) who said that he got much better response on his ideas about AI or whatever it was than his ideas from biology.