Alastair Reynolds

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one. ”

I just start writing, and in the process, one hopefully comes up with ideas and solutions and explores all the little nooks and crannies. ”

Science fiction writers aren't short of ideas. You can read a book, and it sets off a chain of thought processes, so it becomes a response to other people's books. ”

In the 'Revelation Space' books, the spaceships are a bit old and rusty, and things go wrong, and they don't work quite how they're meant to. And people asked why I did it this way, and groping around for an explanation, I said that I grew up in Barry, this post-industrial sea town full of rusting infrastructure. ”

There is so little SF drawn from modern scientific thinking, in any discipline, that I'm much more cheered by the successes than the failures, most of which are forgivable. ”

I'm a wishy-washy 'Guardian' reader, but the last thing I want to do is force a political agenda down people's throats. It's not central to my work, unlike, say, China Mieville, who's very politicised. ”

If you do a certain amount of work every day, it will eventually become a novel. ”

I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment. ”

I come at it from a different angle of attack with each novel, searching for the technological texture the story demands. There isn't a recipe; it's more of an instinct. ”