Ian L Hall

Repeat Offender started life as a (still unpublished) short story called The Time Harness. I find short story writing difficult, since I tend to be diverted by the themes and possibilities used in the construction of each one, and before long I find it has ballooned into a novella. The same thing happened with The Time Harness, and yet I felt I still needed to further expand the core conceit since I thought it was such a good one. This idea, that of time travel without paradox by means of parallel universes, is not original of course, but I believe my treatment of it (where each world is displaced not only in time, but also in space relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background) actually might be. So the original story was that of a man lost in this universe, trying to get home, and deciding that the future was a good place to look to find the means to do so. And then, surprise: the future is an unavoidable tragedy.

There was something about the inherent nihilism in this story that attracted me. But it needed a hero to battle against it, a love story and a crime to drive him forward and deeper into trouble, but give him the optimism that one day he would win against impossible odds. The Time Harness story itself is referenced in the novel as “Fletcher’s Diary”. I am currently writing the concluding book in the series provisionally entitled Repeat Apocalypse.

I think of myself as a Science Fiction writer, but the book that first gave me the desire to copy the effect that its very first page had on me was (don’t laugh) Onward Virgin Soldiers, by Leslie Thomas. It had me at the description of two freighters in Hong Kong harbour, starting up and coughing “like competing consumptives”. This and other books by Thomas were my first major influence. If I could only write as well as Thomas I’d be in heaven.

Again, showing my age, I love and admire Robert Heinlein’s stories, both early and late, though Time Enough for Love (for example) could have done with a good shake at some points. Also of that vintage, I like Michael Coney and John Wyndham.

More recently, William Barton treats sexual themes in a way I find interesting. And I love the hard SF of early Greg Egan, and the science and storytelling of Charles Stross.