Who are your favorite authors?
Philip K Dick must be at the top for 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' and 'The Man in the High Castle'. His preoccupations with philosophy and psychology put him streets ahead of anyone else in Science Fiction - he showed how good SF could really be.
George Orwell is my hero. Some think '1984' is no longer relevant, but its real warning is about authoritarian and orthodox thought, and that is still with us. Add to that his fearless, ground-breaking non-fiction like 'Down and Out in Paris and London' and 'The Road to Wigan Pier', that showed the depth of poverty in England in the 30's, and it makes him easily the most important writer of the twentieth century.
Christopher Priest is another writer who has pushed the boundaries of SF well into the territory of literary fiction. His book 'The Affirmation', with its reality bending psychology, is a work of genius.
More recently I've finally got round to reading the short stories of Jorge Luis Borgas - whose work I'd previously avoided because I thought it would be too elitist and self -consciously 'literary'. Actually, his preoccupations with the fantastic possibilities of philosophy (exploring ideas around the infinite and eternal) are very similar to those of Philip K D. - but with lots of classical references thrown in.
What's the story behind your latest book?
It's a collection of short stories, some from the last few months and some that have been collecting dust for years. The title story, Mortlake, is about some interesting historical connections in the part of London I grew up in, so perhaps it qualifies as 'psychogeography'.
Memetics - the concept of ideas as living things that evolve and spread by replication through human culture, is a subject I can't let go of, and it appears to some extent in several of the stories, most obviously 'The Shape of Things'.
'The Fold' touches on non-Euclidian geometry as a gateway to higher dimensions, while 'Burning Bright' is a much more gritty affair, dealing with a former soldier who joins an animal rights group. Parts of that were based on my own experiences many years ago.
'Changes' is about androids and artificial intelligence - certainly a nod to Philip K Dick, but showing a very different future. 'Nano' explores what I see as the very real threat and promise inherent in that technology.
'The Escape Route' is longer, with more twists and turns, as befits an escape route. It also links in with the prologue and epilogue - you can never have enough meta-fiction, in my opinion.
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