Interview with Alastair Reynolds

- Although your work has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, it appears that you never gained the same notoriety in the USA that you did in Europe. The same could be said about Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton. Why is it that the most prominent UK scifi authors have seemingly not been able to woo American readers the way they managed to win fans across the pond?

Dunno really. I'm just happy to have some American readers - enough that it's a viable proposition for my books to appear there. Actually, doesn't Peter F Hamilton do very well, anyway? The relative failure of Banks to pick up an American audience is a mystery, of course. What's not to like about his books?

I don't think you can lump European fans into one pool, quite honestly. The Finns are quite unlike the Brits, who are quite unlike the French or the Germans. They all like SF, but they come at it from different angles, with subtly different mindsets. The Brits seem to be just as interested in real ale as SF. The Finns are the most literary and enthused, I think - and they're easily the coolest. My experience with fandom, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been universally welcoming and positive, I have to say.

You can't underestimate the importance of cover art. I was enormously lucky in that my first book was marketed with a strong cover design, one that was developed very carefully before the book appeared. It made a huge difference. So many people have told me that they picked up Revelation Space because it had a cool - and let's not be coy about it - shiney cover. I'm just grateful. I love all the covers - even more so given that most of them are by Chris Moore, a childhood hero of mine. That's not to say I don't look at some SF covers and think - urgh - horrible! And I think some of the best covers ever were done in the seventies.

- More and more, authors/editors/publicists/agents are discovering the potential of all the SFF blogs/websites/message boards on the internet. Do you keep an eye on what's being discussed out there, especially if it concerns you? Or is it too much of a distraction?

To a degree. I try not to get too sucked into it, though. It's not healthy to obsess over every data point, every review or reader comment. I think the first few times you see someone writing about you, you have this massive emotional response to it. But after a while, it all just fades into the background noise. I used to get seriously ecstatic about a good review, and serious down about a bad one - but now the hit only lasts for a few minutes. As someone said, a bad review should spoil your breakfast, not your dinner. I don't have the internet in my study, incidentally, so I deal with the possibility of distraction by not being able to access it. Works well for me...

Doesn't bother me either way. I'm a genre writer - I chose to be one, I ended up one, I still am one, and I'm not writing transgressive, genre-blurring fiction. I write "core SF" - it may occasionally incorporate horror or noir tropes, but it's not pretending to be anything other than what it is. I don't expect or even feel that I merit mainstream recognition. There are excellent writers out there who do, but to a degree, they're beginning to get it anyway - people like China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, Kelly Link. It's also worth noting the traffic in the other direction - writers like Micheal Chabon, Michel Faber, David Mitchell and others, are (on occasion) perfectly willing to deploy SF tropes, and they do it successfully. I'm far more excited about what they're up to next than about whether the genre deserves more respect.

Nothing at all to report! I'm working on a novella at the moment, concerning a near-future Russian space expedition into an alien artefact that pops out of a wormhole into our solar system. Once that's off my table (which should have been three days ago, ouch) I'll begin to germinate some ideas for the next book.

Nothing other than enormous gratitude, and the hope that they'll stick with me...

best,

Al

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Interview by Patrick
fantasyhotlist.blogspot