VITAL STATS:

Name: Tobias S. Buckell

Website: www.tobiasbuckell.com

Publisher: Tor Books

THE TEN QUESTIONS

1. What’s your first science fiction memory?

I picked up a paperback copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End and started reading it. It’s my first for sure memory, I remember just having my mind exploded, and my imagination becoming larger than it had every been, and I thought ‘I want more of this!’ The questions raised, the sights and amazing ideas found in the genre, I didn’t find this big way of thinking in any other genre.

2. When did you realize you wanted to write science fiction?

When I wrote snippets of fiction in 8th grade, and I naturally veered towards genre stuff. At 15 years old, in 10th grade, I wrote my first complete short story and submitted it to the Writers of the Future contest, and that act fired up my desire to become a science fiction writer. Fourteen years later it’s even more of an obsession that keeps me in front of the keyboard into all hours of the night.

3. What are you currently reading?

Elizabeth Bear’s novel ‘Dust’ and a book about the CIA called ‘A Legacy of Ashes.’

4. Right this instant, what’s your favorite science factoid?

That the US Army is putting up funding to develop giant space mirrors that will focus solar energy down to a collector to create power anywhere they need it, but that the test case is looking to be a pacific island.

5. Outside of your own medium, what’s your favorite science fiction story?

I love the sets and aesthetics of the movie Blade Runner. It’s an amazing immersion experience, and it blew me away when I first saw it and I still enjoy seeing it over and over again every few years.

6. What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a short story about techno-democracies and the importance of voting. I’ve managed to sneak a few explosions into it.

7. What kind of characters interest you most?

I love characters that are complex, a mix of both protagonist and antagonist. Everyone believes they’re the hero of their own story, and is reluctant to stand trail for their effect their mistakes have had on others down the line.

8. How did you break in to the business?
Sheer, dogged, persistence. I started submitting short stories at 15 years old when in high school. In college I attended the Clarion SF/F workshop, which was a big deal, at the tender age of 19. At that point I was writing a couple short stories a month and submitting them over and over again to magazines or anthologies. I had racked up hundreds of rejections before just after Clarion making my first sale to a magazine. Right after that, after 4 years of dogged determination that began with my first submission to the Writers of the Future Contest, I finally won a quarter of the contest.

Since then I’ve continued submitting and selling short stories, and moved into novels.

9. What’s the worst story idea you ever had?

Oh gosh, do we really have to? I think there was something with an alien invasion of giant rectangles. Don’t ask.

10. If you could rapidly advance one technology overnight, what technology would it be?

Nuclear fusion. It runs the sun. We’re starting to realize more and more that we’re facing some sort of crossroads that we’re approaching, as a species, about how we power our civilization. Nuclear fusion would be an important technological step forward to liberating ourselves from finite resources.

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