Quotes from Alastair Reynolds

I used to be a strong believer that we would eventually colonize the solar system the way it's been done in science fiction many, many times: bases on the moon, Mars colonized, move out to the outer planets, then we go to the next solar system and build a colony there. I don't know now - I'm not as convinced that's the way it's going to pan out.

I just start writing, and in the process, one hopefully comes up with ideas and solutions and explores all the little nooks and crannies.

Don't keep rewriting and polishing something if it isn't setting the world on fire: start something new instead and consider the earlier story a learning experience.

Most of the time, when I get an idea that hinges on some science 'thing,' it will have been because of something I read or encountered months or years earlier rather than in the last few days.

I'm not a morning person: I can't function until I've had a coffee - or several.

From apparently superluminal radio sources in deep space, to the neutrinos that were supposed to be arriving ahead of schedule at the Grand Sasso experiment in Italy, every apparent exception to Einstein's ultimate speed law has turned out to be a phantom.

No idea should be discarded completely, but - as one might imagine - it does take a degree of ingenuity to find a new spin on something as hackneyed as the 'Adam and Eve' story. But if you think you've got the chops for it, there's no reason not to try.

You can't underestimate the importance of cover art.

It's true that my stories seem to deal with the end of the world. I've often been called the high priest of gothic miserablism, which is slightly unfair.

I didn't have a huge amount of security when I was a scientist from one contract to another. You're always thinking, 'Am I going to have a job this time next year?'

If you're creating a whole universe, even if it's a universe squeezed into a solar system, you have to use a little bit of sleight of hand.

I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment.

I don't think the computer will win the Booker, but no-one ever expected a computer to beat a chess grandmaster.

If you do a certain amount of work every day, it will eventually become a novel.

I hope that 'House of Suns' functions as an independent novel.

I'm a wishy-washy 'Guardian' reader, but the last thing I want to do is force a political agenda down people's throats. It's not central to my work, unlike, say, China Mieville, who's very politicised.

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word.

We live in a science fictional world with things like cloning and face transplants, and things seem to be getting stranger and stranger.

When I'm working on one book, part of my imagination is thinking ahead to the next one.

I've always loved far future SF, so it was more or less a given that I would one day want to write in that form.

What works for me is simply to read a lot of stuff throughout the year - not with a particular story or theme in mind, but just because you never know what might be useful or interesting in the long run. I much prefer to just absorb a lot of stuff and let the old unconscious chew down on it over time.

I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.

Speaking for myself, I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.

I prioritise story over science, but not at the expense of being really stupid about it.