Author2Author: Mike Brotherton & Jonathan Lyons, pt. 4

(After asking each other questions about professional astronomy and Austin sci-fi circles, yesterday Jonathan brought up the Hemingway AI that commands a starship in Mike's novel. So now Mike's curious about aspects of Jonathan's story...)

Mike Brotherton: There have been other science fiction writers to tackle ideas about universal observers, the key concept in Machina. Rick Wadholm's "The Ice Forest" and Greg Egan's novel Quarantine come to mind. Have you read these, or other science fiction with similar ideas, that helped shape Machina? Greg Egan, in particular, strikes me as an author who works in your philosophical science areas with my scientific rigor, a hybrid between us.

Jonathan Lyons: I haven't read those, but I take reading suggestions from readers as informed as you seriously, and I've added those to my list of must-reads. But no, my vision is the result of a great deal of trouble accepting the standard Judeo-Christian mythology and its two different accounts of creation; for example, I had trouble accepting what we're told to believe about God, whatever God is. I have had a long-standing interest in philosophers' attempts to explain the nature of reality, as well as the quantum mechanics/ field theory/ string theory ideas. Add to that mix the paranormal--ghosts, reincarnation claims, etc.--and I found myself, over the years, obsessing over dreaming up some way to explain the whole thing, a way that wasn't necessarily wed to the old explanations. Hence, Machina, the novel that serves as my vehicle for that philosophical/metaphysical construct.

I didn't even know, really, whether I could pull it all together. Then, when I'd finished, I had a final product that was so utterly strange that I didn't know whether I could ever get it published. I subbed it around to publishers for a year, getting nothing, then tried again. Double Dragon picked up electronic rights and, frankly, I didn't know whether it would go any further. A few months later, all at once, in the same week, three publishers were abruptly interested, but also required electronic rights. Double Dragon could not relinquish those rights, but seeing the difficulty the situation placed upon me, publisher Deron Douglas stepped up with a print contract.

(Stay tuned this weekend for the final installment of this week's Author 2 Author, with a final question for and by each writer! And then prepare yourself for a change of pace next week, when Elizabeth McKenzie, author of Stop That Girl, will not ask Curtis Sittenfeld if Prep is about her own teen years...)