Beyond The Cave: Meeting Readers at BSFA and SF Book Club

I’ve had a lovely start to 2015! I actually left my writing cave to meet readers.

Author and literary critic Adam Roberts interviewed me at the January meeting of the British Science Fiction Association. He pitched some challenging questions, which led to a lively and wide-ranging conversation. If you couldn’t make it to the meeting, this blogpost by Andrew Wallace gives a good impression of the subjects that Adam and I discussed. Thank you, Andrew, for this detailed commentary. Here’s a brief extract from his blogpost:

Adam Roberts observed a kind of conservatism in SF in which writers create extraordinary worlds and then explore them with very conventional narratives, as if readers are only willing to make a single imaginative leap. ‘A Calculated Life’, like Adam’s own ‘Jack Glass’, is not one these works…

The BSFA meeting was also attended by Jonathan Thornton and his review of A Calculated Life incorporates elements of the BSFA discussion. (I do like reviews that don’t give a star rating!) Jonathan picks out the following extract to start his review:

Our emotions kid us that life is better than the sum of its unremarkable parts… Our delusions are our best defense.

And…earlier in January I had a great deal of fun with the Science Fiction Book Club in London, organized by Gerard Earley. The book club had two evening discussions on A Calculated Life and I was invited each evening to do a Q&A via Skype. Excellent questions!

All of which is greatly encouraging and puts me in a positive frame of mind to complete my second novel. On the home stretch now!!