INTERVIEW: Author Alastair Reynolds

Century Rain author Alastair Reynolds tells Matt Chapman about his brave old world...

What made you venture into the genre of alternate history?
I'd never really taken much notice of the form, but within a couple of years I read two novels that had a big effect on me: Keith Roberts' Pavane and Christopher Priest's The Separation. I started thinking more and more about the nature of alternate history and how I might write one that was still embedded in a hard SF universe, without bringing in time travel or alternate realities.

Why set it in the past?
I like classic, hardboiled crime fiction and movies, and I always fancied writing a kind of science fiction take on that. It's been done before, of course, but usually by positing a kind of retro-1940s future (like in the films Brazil or Dark City).

How does this work fit in with your other material?
I suppose my love of hardboiled crime and noir has been seeping through the pores of most of my books: particularly Chasm City, but there are also elements of it in the others. It wasn't a big jump.

You've written short stories and novels, which do you prefer?
Writing a novel feels like painting the Forth Bridge; writing a short story feels like putting a ship in a bottle.

You’ve worked for the European Space Agency, did that inform your writing?
Less than you'd think. There's a lot of astronomy and space hardware in my books, but my job tended to be focused on very tight little problems. Oddly, the book I'm writing now has a lot more 'real world' stuff in it than the other ones, so I'm talking to people at ESA about things like Internet protocols in deep space, and reading up about robotics and space medicine.

What sort of sci-fi are you a fan of?
Not many SF films! There weren’t many good ones in the last 20 years. I really like Silent Running, the final image of that little robot watering the plants always brings a tear to my eye. I loved RoboCop, I came out of the cinema thinking: if that's what the 1990s will be like I might as well top myself now!

What's next for you?
Chasing Janus, a standalone novel. Loosely speaking, it’s about the crew of a nuclear-powered ship marooned in the distant future. After that, I might do another book set in Revelation Space.

Buy Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com