Q: What is "future history?"

A lot of people have been surprised to learn that my next book is set in the future. But while it's true that I've spent many years -- most of my life, really -- writing "past history," "future history" (as I choose to dub my new work) is really not so different a genre as one might initially think. Both areas deal in the social, political and technological details of another era, the first inferring as much as we reasonably can about the past from the historical record, the second making similar inferences about what's to come by examining the current pattern of change and extending it into the future. This makes future history distinctly different from science fiction, since the science in future history is kept to a minimum and the point of the work is not gimmickry but reasonable anticipation in all realms of human behavior.

Above all, the main similarity between past and future historical fiction is that both are imaginary devices used to hold up a mirror to the present, which is the main concern of any really honest novelist. I do not presume to say that what I predict will definitely happen; I do say that the elements my predictions are based on exist already, and it is these elements with which, by extrapolating into the future, I concern myself. What are those elements? Read KILLING TIME and you will, I think, find a very clear set of answers.

Q: What books influenced you while writing KILLING TIME?

While researching and writing KILLING TIME nearly all my reading has been related to research, as is the case whenever I'm writing a book. Some of this research, however, is more relaxed than the rest: While studying, say, Michio Kaku's VISIONS, Clifford Stoll's SILICON SNAKE OIL, or David Fromkin's THE WAY OF THE WORLD, I manage to make time for slightly lighter (though no less informative) research, like Lawrence M. Krauss's THE PHYSICS OF STAR TREK. Classics both familiar and (nowadays) obscure make up my "leisure reading": Jules Verne's TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and MASTER OF THE WORLD, H. G. Wells's WAR OF THE WORLDS and WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES, and the works of William Gibson. At the moment I'm reading Michael Crichton's most recent book, TIMELINE. I have great admiration for Crichton's research and his storytelling ability, and I was anxious to see how he dealt with the issue of time travel.

Q: What do you listen to and watch to enter an alternate reality?

The process of writing is indeed, for me, like entering an alternate reality, and audiovisual immersion forms an extremely important part of the inspirational phase. While preparing to embark on the KILLING TIME adventure I discovered some musical pieces that ended up being very important: Georges Pelecis' little-known "Nevertheless" stands out among them. As a general rule, the works of Vaughan Williams and Wagner remain the most effective triggers to my imagination.