by Patrick Mahon. Eric Brown is a prolific, award-winning British author of character-driven Science Fiction. He has been a published author for nearly twenty-five years, having had his first short story published by ‘Interzone’ in 1987. He has written fifteen novels and has won the BSFA Award twice for his short fiction.

His latest novel, ‘The Kings Of Eternity’, was published by Solaris in April and reviewed by SFCrowsnest in August. He also writes crime fiction and children’s books, as well as a monthly column of SF book reviews for ‘The Guardian’.

Eric lives in West Yorkshire with his wife and daughter. His website is at www.ericbrown.co.uk.

SFCrowsnest: What made you become a writer?

Eric Brown: I didn't read novels until I was fifteen. Then I read Agatha Christie's ‘Cards On The Table’ and I can safely say it changed my life. Okay, it isn't that great a novel and certainly lacks the psychological insight of ‘better’ books, but it was a revelation to someone who'd read nothing to that point. It opened up to me the idea of the power of fiction, to allow the reader into the heads of others – to show, and this is important, that there are other points of view than one's own; it's by far the best of artistic media for showing this. A few days after reading the novel, I was plotting my own village murder mysteries but finishing none of them. Then I discovered Wells and Silverberg and I was converted to SF.



SFC: Who or what would you cite as major influences on your writing?

EB: Silverberg was an early influence. I enjoyed his storytelling, and admired his productivity. In terms of style, I like to think I learned from Graham Greene: he's a stylistically wonderful writer: terse, economic, straightforward. He rarely chances an adverb, and keeps said-bookisms to a minimum.

Around the mid-eighties I discovered Michael Coney, whose best books were probably the greatest influence. He obviously felt a lot for his characters – that comes over in his loving depictions of his major players – and he plotted beautifully, wrote with grace and economy, and used the tropes of SF as a backdrop for telling stories about recognisable human beings caught up in big events. My favourite novels of his are ‘The Girl With A Symphony In Her Fingers’, ‘Brontomek!’, and ‘Hello Summer, Goodbye’. One of his best short stories is ‘Those Good Old Days of Liquid Fuel’ – a minor masterpiece of the art.

My early, unsuccessful and unpublished novels were greatly influenced by Coney, as was my first published novel, ‘Meridian Days’.

Proudly, I collaborated with Michael on what turned out to be his last published story, ‘The Trees Of Terpsichore Three’, published in the excellent magazine ‘Spectrum’, edited by Paul Fraser.

SFC: You are mostly known as a writer of Science Fiction. However, you have also written plays, crime fiction and books for children. Is writing outside the Science Fiction genre important to you? If so, why?

EB: It's very important. I love SF more than any other form of writing, but from time to time I need to get away from it. Other forms offer certain freedoms, of both form and content. Writing a crime novel earlier this year, ‘The Grub Street Murders’, set in 1955, I was quickly aware how much more stylistically freer I was writing mainstream. I could employ metaphor and simile which, if used in SF, wouldn't work. Especially simile. I love using similes, but if you liken something to something when writing SF, then the thing it's likened to will by definition be familiar to the reader and will instantly set up an archaism. Therefore, similes are rare in SF. Also, when writing the crime novel, I enjoyed the freedom of not having to go into elaborate detail about the setting - the contemporary reader knew all about London without my describing it at length (which I have to do when writing about ‘Groombridge V’, for example). Also, I could be a little old-fashioned in my use of the language. (Some of my favourite writers were working from the thirties to the sixties – and G.K. Chesterton before that – and these have proved a stylistic influence which I've rarely used in my SF, with the exceptions of my pastiches of Chesterton, Verne and one or two others.)

SFC: Which do you see as being more important to a Science Fiction story, the characters or the technologies? Why is that?

EB: Oh, without doubt, as far as I'm concerned, the characters. It's more important in every field of fiction, so why not in SF? Even cutting edge SF without characters is dead on the page. SF without technology – or without technology being in the forefront – is still readable and entertaining so long as the characters work. That's why I find some hard SF of the fifties, principally, almost unreadable. Great ideas, great technology, but psychologically dire.

SFC: You have said about your latest novel, ‘The Kings Of Eternity’, that it took a decade to write and is the best thing you’ve produced to date. Can you explain why?

EB: It took me a decade on and off. I'd work on it for a month or two, lay it aside, come back to it... It's simply my best novel because the characters, their situations, came to life and took me over in a way that had never happened before. Langham and his unique circumstances possessed me for a decade. I'm an unabashed romantic and ‘The Kings Of Eternity’ was the perfect vehicle in which to express this.

SFC: Your books often include visual artists as important characters. Does art inspire your writing and, if so, how?

EB: The creative process inspires me. I've often used artists, painters and sculptors, because I feel I understand what drives them. I've also written a lot about writers for the same reason, but I'm aware that readers don't always want to read about writers – I have no problem doing so – so I write about artists instead.

SFC: You’ve had six novels published in the last three years. How do you keep up such an impressive work rate?

EB: Well, I'm a full-time freelance, and I would write more (a) if I didn't have to write damned reviews [for ‘The Guardian’] (I'm a slow reader and reading four books a month takes up a lot of writing time) and (b) if publishers would buy more than one or two books a year from me. When I'm writing, I write two thousand words a shift and do two shifts a day. I don't believe in writer's block. (The reason I turned to crime earlier this year is that I'd like to write a crime novel once a year as well as the SF and children's books.)

SFC: Abaddon Books have just announced that you will be writing the first novel in a new shared worlds space opera series for them. Is this the first time you have been involved with a shared worlds project? What, if anything, can you tell us about it at this stage?

EB: It is the first time and it's exciting. I developed the background universe with Jon Oliver, my editor at Abaddon, and wrote the first novel, ‘The Devil's Nebula’. It's unabashed space opera, a little pulpy (but nevertheless with characters!) set a few hundred years hence in the Expansion, a human settled diaspora run by a fascistic central authority. The central characters – minor-criminals or free-thinkers, depending on one's point of view – are the crew of a starship forced by the authorities to venture into alien territory, the Devil's Nebula. What they find there will threaten the entirety of the human Expansion...

I've done a second draft of the novel, and will give it another polish. It's due out next July. Other writers will then take up the reins and write novels set in the same universe, spinning off from situations, characters, backgrounds, etc, in the novel.

SFC: Is there anything about your career that you would do differently if you had the chance?

EB: Years ago, when I was first being published, I should have started writing crime and children's books earlier, in an attempt to cushion myself against the hard times that were (unforeseeably) up ahead – but it's easy to be wise in hindsight.

SFC: What advice would you give to unpublished, aspiring Science Fiction writers?

EB: Write what you want to write, as often as you can, and don't let the bastards get you down. Read a lot. Be influenced. Start a new story, novel, as soon as you've submitted the last one. (The piece you're working on at the moment is always your finest work, remember, so when disappointment comes in the form of a rejection, it doesn't hurt quite so much if you're embroiled in the latest story.) Don't let anyone make you believe that there's such a thing as writer's block. If you want to write, sit down and bloody well write, even if the first pages are gibberish – write the gibberish out, and the subconscious will take over and good stuff will flow. Find a few fellow writers whose opinions you value and have them critique your manuscripts. Check the markets and see what they want. AND DON'T STOP WRITING.


© Eric Brown, Patrick Mahon and SFCrowsnest 2011

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