Author2Author: Mike Brotherton & Jonathan Lyons, pt. 2

(All this week, Beatrice is featuring an exchange between science fiction authors Jonathan Lyons and Mike Brotherton. Yesterday, we found out about Mike's scientific background. Now, the subject turns to Jonathan's literary roots...)

Mike Brotherton:I realized that you have an Austin, TX connection. So do I. I got my Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas (1990-1996), and was part of a writing group there called the SlugTribe that included a number of accomplished, published authors (Wendy Wheeler, Jay Lake, William Browning Spencer). Bruce Sterling, Bradley Denton, and other well-known SF authors also live in the city. What is it about Austin and writing? Or is it just a coincidence?

Jonathan Lyons: We lived in Austin from the summer of 1997 to the summer of 2003. We moved there from Iowa City for my wife's grad degrees, then to Bombay for a year for her research, then out here, to the San Francisco Bay Area, for my MFA at the California College of the Arts Grad Writing Program. I know of SlugTribe and Wendy Wheeler from my participation as a guest author at several ArmadilloCons, ConSortiums, and a few others--you guys have a big reputation. In fact, it seems likely that I would have been seated within eyesight of you at some point at one of those. How'd we miss each other?

Bruce Sterling is a friend; he invited me into the membership of Turkey City. Austin does have a great writing community and a very active and supportive speculative fiction community, rife with the weird characters you'd expect in such a scene and rife with talent. I'm not sure what the overall recipe is for all that; a greater Austin area with a population of 1 million+ can't hurt. The James Michener Center at UT-Austin adds to it all. And it's a very literate city. The guys from local space rock band ST-37, for example, have an extended book-sharing group. Listen to their music and you can catch literary and cultural references all over. I don't think I can count the Texas Book Festival, though; they seem more focused on coffee table books and gift books than literature.

I worked as a copy editor and, later, a Web specialist for the Austin American-Statesman. I remember getting off duty at one, two, three in the morning, back before the current airport was open. There was something about the skyline at night as I drove north over the Congress Street bridge, the buildings outlined in technicolor neon, small planes flying in low toward the old airport--it looked like a cross between cityscape scenes from Metropolis, Blade Runner, a dash of Tron. It was amazing--a scene that seemed to tell me that Austin's skyline was, itself, science fiction! I wrote much of my first novel, Burn, after driving home through that vaguely Gernsback vision. Perhaps other writers and would-be writers experience their own speculative vision of the city, as well ... there's a magical, otherworldly aspect to Austin.