Greg Egan Interview

I've been meaning to post this for a while. Here is a link to an interview I conducted with Greg Egan several years ago, now on the Albedo One website, "Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures". It came out just before the release of his novel Zendegi.

Interview with Greg Egan Posted Online

My interview with Greg Egan is now available online on Greg's webpage. This interview originally appeared in Albedo One Issue 37. Here is an extract:

Virtual Worlds and Imagined Futures (2009)

First published in Albedo One, Number 37, 2009. Copyright © Greg Egan and David Conyers, 2009. All rights reserved.

Greg Egan is one of Australia’s leading science fiction authors with over sixty short stories, seven novels and three collections to his name. His novel Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and his novella “Oceanic” won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award and the Asimov's Readers Award. He regularly appears in leading science fiction magazines such as Asimov’s and Interzone, and in Gardner Dozois’ The Years Best Science Fiction series. His most recent books are the novel Incandescence (Gollancz, 2008), and the short story collection Oceanic (Gollancz, July 2009).

What was it that compelled you to pursue a career writing science fiction?

I was interested in both science and science fiction from a very young age, and by the time I was seven or eight it was obvious to me that the best thing in the world would be to spend my life doing three things: writing books, making movies, and working as some kind of scientist. And I did make some attempts at all three, but I didn't really have the temperament to persist with the last two.

How did you get started?

I wrote a lot of crap for twenty years, starting from the age of six. I had a novel published by a small press when I was twenty-one, but it wasn't very good and it was more or less irrelevant in terms of my development as a writer. Then in the late 1980s I started writing short stories about biotech and artificial intelligence that just clicked. David Pringle, the editor of Interzone, bought several of them and encouraged me to work to my strengths.

Read the rest of the interview here.

2009 Aurealis Awards Finalists Announced

The finalists for the 2009 Aurealis Awards have just been announced here. Congratulations to everyone who has been nominated. It is especially nice to see that Peter M. Ball has as many nominations as he does. His novella Horn was the most original speculative fiction story I read by an Australian this year. Greg Egan also has a nomination for Best Collection with Oceanic, so it is good to see him back in the awards again.

My Greg Egan Interview in Albedo One #37

I've been waiting to announce this one for a while; I've recently interviewed Australian science fiction author Greg Egan which has now appeared the latest issue of Albedo One. My first in-depth interview with a high profile speculative fiction author.

Greg talks about his influences, his writing proces, his favourites of his own work, upcoming books, his experiences with the Australian speculative fiction scene, sources for his idea, and his involvement with securing the release of illegally detained refugees in Australia.

The same issue features several of my reviews, and because I don't have my contributor copy with me yet, I'll have to announce what those reviews are in a latter post.

To read more about this issue visit the Albedo One website. Fiction by Robert Reed, the second place winner of the Aeon Award 2008, "Aegis", by D. T. Neal, Sara Joan Berniker, Gustavo Bondoni, Richard Alan Scott, Gareth Stack and T D Edge.