An Interview with Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter was born in Liverpool, England, in 1957. He is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aero-engineering research). He worked as a teacher of mathematics, physics and, for several years, in information technology. He has been a fulltime author since 1995.

Baxter is the author of over 30 books, all published in the U. S. and U. K., and several in Germany, Japan, France, and other countries. His nonfiction includes the books Deep Future and Omegatropic.

Baxter is the winner of both the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a multiple nominee for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. He has been nominated for the Hugo award numerous times and his novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships and a second time for Vacuum Diagrams.

Aberrant Dreams: Having collaborated with the likes of British greats A.C. Clarke and H. G. Wells (posthumously), have you considered perhaps a rekindling with George Griffith, Frank Aubrey, or Olaf Stapledon?

Stephen Baxter: George Griffith would be a retro thing, exploring a kind of vanished imagined solar system with life everywhere. That might be fun!

It would be hard to sequelize Stapleton because the universe gets destroyed in most of his books. How can you follow that? Although, I did pay a kind of homage to Stapleton in my book, Evolution, which is about the rise of mankind as from 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs all the way to the far future, hundreds of millions of years from now. It is a bit Stapledon-like in terms of time scale and the techniques I used (disembodied viewpoints looking at the Earth itself evolving and zooming down on an individual at different stages in the evolution process). So, that book was kind of inspired by Stapledon’s techniques, at least.

Aberrant Dreams: I have always been quite fond of Stapledon’s Last and First Men, and many are certainly aware that evolution is something you have written about quite extensively. I find it sort of ironic that the literary exploration of evolution, seemingly so exploited three quarters of a century ago, still inspires cutting edge writers such as you today.

Stephen Baxter: The one great thing that survived from Stapledon’s Last and First Men, given some of the science in his day, is the perspective (tiny lives flashing by on a cosmic time scale). Of course, he upped the scale again in Star Maker; the whole of mankind came and went in the universe in a couple of lines, and some of the secrets of the universe are revealed through order, scale, and perspective. I think that’s at the heart of all great science fiction and Stapledon. He’s been a big influence on me, I think.

Aberrant Dreams: You did so wonderful with the Wells collaboration, and I know you’re a bit of a history buff, but do you think that his disenchantment with mankind in the face of the World Wars resulted in the souring of his tone and a more pessimistic outlook at mankind that became more prevalent in his later novels as opposed to some of his earlier ones like The Time Machine and First Men in the Moon?

Stephen Baxter: I haven’t heard that theory, to be honest. Remember, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis--a wrong diagnosis--when he was a young man, and that mistake was revealed by the 1900’s. Before the 1900’s, which was when he wrote the Time Machine and War of the Worlds and so on, he thought he was going to die young, so he wrote those books in a rush and had a huge shadow of personal mortality hanging over him. He poured his unconscious fears into those books which is why they are so great.

After that diagnosis was clear, and he saw a normal life ahead of him--he didn’t die until 1946 in the end--and he was internationally famous, I think he became didactic. He wanted to educate the world. I’m not sure if he developed a harsh view of humanity; I think he developed a lofty view, and how we might all be improved.

The Second World War did a lot more damage. He was horrified by learning the truth about the Nazis--many people were--but Wells had argued for a scientific elite to take over and run things for the rest of us (books like A Modern Utopia). That’s pretty much what happened in Germany, and look at the result.

The Soviet Union is the same to an extent and George Orwell, the author of 1984, skewered him when he said that Nazi Germany was what Wells has argued for since before the 1900’s.

Aberrant Dreams: One of your most popular series is Mammoth, and it seems today that stories and novels with a prehistory feel are quite the sensation. Do you have plans for another juvenile series (other than The Web)?

Stephen Baxter: I like to try different modes of storytelling and different types of books to write. I want to keep myself interested. Mammoth was inspired not so much by the Lost World stories, but by the science when they discovered that mammoths that survived and lived on an island in the Arctic off the coast of Siberia. They were safe from the human hunters and so forth, and they survived until the time of the pharaohs.

So I took that and developed a story about the mammoths being discovered, thinking it would make a good juvenile book of some sorts. Then it occurred to me to tell the story from the point of view of the mammoths. Elephants and mammoths are pretty intelligent, but they have a very different kind of intelligence from ours, a sort of group intelligence. It turned out to be a talking animal story, a way to get into the consciousness of the mammoths, and then evolution, extinction, and all those great things were there as well.

Right now, I’m working on a stand alone novel, called The H-bomb Girl which is set in 1962 in Liverpool, which was when the Beatles were really getting going. It was a very exciting time, but at the same time it was the height of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and such. So to be a teenager in the middle of that would be very compelling, with the dread of this war on the one hand and yet this great excitement with the music and the culture on the other. I’m doing a story about a fourteen year old girl caught in the middle of it all…with a bit of time travel tucked in, so it is a science fiction story.

Aberrant Dreams: In 1991 you applied to become a cosmonaut. How did that come about and how far did you get?

Stephen Baxter: The Russians advertised for a guest cosmonaut on the Mir Space Station in about 1990. In Britain they had taken up guests from Eastern Europe (Polish Cosmonauts and so on), but now it was advertised, and it was an open application. There was a great ad in the newspapers which said “Astronaut wanted, no experience necessary,” and I got through a few stages. I had to be a British citizen; be a certain age; physically fit enough, the smaller the better; and I had a science background, which was important. I failed at being able to speak a foreign language. French would have done it; you don’t need to speak Russian as all the Russians speak French. So that was the end of it for me. I’ve always regretted that as I could have lied and crammed French.

I will say that I have tried others thing since then, like scuba diving, which I found pretty scary as you have to depend so much on machinery, and now I am not sure if I would have had the courage to go in the end. I have a great respect for those that have gone. It takes a lot of courage to get through the training, especially with the Russian Space program. The American Astronauts that have trained over there to fly on Soviet Spacecraft complain about the toughness of the Russian program, and they have already been through the American program. The Russians are absolutely dedicated and very tough, and that is why their safety record is so good. I am not sure if I would have had the courage to finish, though.

Aberrant Dreams: Earlier you briefly alluded to the fact that you are an “idea driven” writer.

Stephen Baxter: Yes, next year it will be 20 years since my first short story was published. Are you familiar with it?

Aberrant Dreams: Oh yes, it was The Xelee Flower, if I recall. Is that right?

Stephen Baxter: Yes, that’s right. I was certainly influenced by America [authors]. My school had a great science fiction book club collection with Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Van Vogt, and other such people. I especially enjoyed the Bradbury collections, which stretched back to the 40’s. I was more drawn towards the late 40’s and 50’s than to earlier eras--Doc Smith for instance; he was a bit gaudy for me. I think I liked the deeper ideas of the Campbell age.

There were two things for me: I was very drawn to the science elements in Asimov and Clarke but the Bradbury stories were very high concept stuff like Frost and Fire , where they lived for eight days because of radiation on this planet and you had to decide how you spent your eight days. If you became a scientist, you spent two or three crucial days of your eight days trying to advance the science a bit further so someone could eventually get off the planet.

A very striking story is The Pedestrian , which is a story about a guy in a future where everyone else is watching TV, and he’s the last guy who walks around at night, enjoying the quiet. He is ultimately arrested by the police in the end. It was not totally scientific but extrapolative in small human details. I think Bradbury is a pretty big influence on me, although I don’t believe I write much like him now. His sense of wonder has stuck with me.

I’m also a great fan of Phillip K. Dick. I am proud that I was collecting his novels long before Blade Runner became hip and fashionable. I don’t think I write much like Dick--my universe is a little more rational and less scary. I feel some of his characters worked so well because they were trying to cope with the insane and fractured situations and helped each other try to figure it out in their own fluid way.

I think some of my characters are like Dick characters in that way. Reid Malenfant, the hero of the Mammoth series, finds himself struggling across this strange and complicated universe. He thinks he’s a fine and competent man; he thinks he’s dealing with the situation and driving it forward, but, in fact, he’s more like a Dick character in that he just tries to be loyal, he tries to save people, he tries to fix things, but he just keeps getting into impossible situations.

Aberrant Dreams: You have a reputation for being rather fond of Gerry Anderson’s work. I remember watching the Thunderbirds and as a boy I was pretty infatuated with Lady Penelope, but I guess you would tend to gravitate towards Venus, FAB?

Stephen Baxter: Yes. My favorite was Anderson’s Fireball XL5 series (which was pretty big in the States, I think) partly because of my age--five-years-old when it was televised--but also because of the 50’s feel, black and white, silver spaceships, gaudy planets, and so forth. I always liked Venus; she was a scientist for one thing, a doctor. She was liberated in a way in how she handled the blokes who were dismissing her.

I also think Lady Penelope was an interesting character. She was kind of aloof, pretty much. She was a female James Bond. I couldn’t quite imagine any relation to her, but Venus, now that’s the kind of girl I’d like to meet in the future.

Aberrant Dreams: General Omar Bradley (whom many believe is the greatest General America produced) wrote in his autobiography that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Marshall were the three giants of WWII. He was challenged from time to time that Eisenhower and Bradley himself should be included, but Bradley was insistent on only those he named. Sadly, not enough of us recall the number and strength of the adversities Churchill faced in Britain, America, and Russia, all the while accomplishing a most arduous job. As a writer, do you believe anyone could devise and develop such an interesting and perfect character as Winston Churchill for the role, responsibility, and leadership he was tasked with?

Stephen Baxter: Nobody would believe me if I did. I think I agree with Bradley’s selections: first Roosevelt for the vision and having the political ability to bring America into a war that he could see needed fighting in the face of the rest of the political establishment; then Marshall for the reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall plan, which in itself was perhaps the greatest single act of statesmanship outside actually prosecuting the war that we all have seen; but Churchill, and it may be a bit of personal bias on my part, was a writer himself, having written histories and so on and he was very hard on his speeches. If you see the scripts for his speeches they are set up like poems with the lines indented so he could work up the rhythm of the speech very carefully, which was why they were so powerful.

He also liked to use Anglo-Saxon words as much as possible because he believed they were stronger. He would leave words with French origins and such out of his speeches. In his famous speech “We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the hills...” there are no words of French origin except for surrender, every other word is an Anglo-Saxon word. That was so impressive and deliberate; he knew exactly what he was doing.

He was a historian as well who clearly understood the great sweeps of history, and he understood the historical moment in which he was operating as well. That well equipped him. Also, he had been through the first war himself up front and close. He had a great look of determination and the ability to inspire others, but the fact that he was a historian, he was able to see how important it was for Britain not to lose that war, and to go on and never except anything but total surrender from the Germans. He made that clear even from the beginning. His role drove him as he drove the world, but his understanding of the world came from his understanding of history, and he was pretty crucial in shaping the post war settlements as well.

The thing about Churchill is that he was the right man at the right place at the right time. The world produced a very competent generation. They were quickly selected, battlefield promoted, and all that. The war really separated the wheat from the chaff very early. This occurred on both sides, people like Rommel emerging on the German side. It would be nice to imagine what might happen should we be faced with similar challenges and who might emerge after a few horrors at the beginning.

Aberrant Dreams: A year ago in an interview with Del Rey you allude to a reluctance on the part of the U. S. to respond to anthropogenic global warming. In Transcendent, less than 50 years from now, you have the U. S. championing this issue. Is that your prediction?

Stephen Baxter: Well, I sort of hope not. The book is set in 2047 and the leadership kicks off in 2033, so I hope it’s not quite as long as that. I worked on that book two or three years ago during the height of the neocon ascendancy in the States when denial was at its peak. Even Bush in his State of the Union speech refers to an “addiction to oil” and a need to shift to other concerns. Had Gore won the Presidency (who has written books on climate change), regardless of whatever else would have occurred during his administration, I am sure America would be much more engaged right now with the global effort to deal with this stuff.

When I write a book about the near future and how we are going to cope with this century’s challenges, you can’t, as a citizen of Britannia, disregard America; it’s impossible. America is the leader. I feel a bit like Britannia sometimes, writing about Rome--you have to deal with where the power and the wealth are and where a great deal of wisdom is. What is happening now is becoming focused on this problem in a realistic way, and it will continue to do so.

Though I’m an optimistic person, I do understand that this is going to be difficult. We’re being hit by a double whammy of climate change and energy challenges at the same time. Just when you need cheap and plentiful energy, the oil runs out, but we’ve come through crisis before, and there are at least discussions and forums where these things are being discussed for a possible way forward. I’m quite hopeful that we will muddle through and, I believe, come to the end of the century intact.

Also, there clearly have been huge climate changes in the past, long before anthropogenic stuff, very dramatic changes (the ice age). When the ice ages kicked off, especially in what is called flickering, you have dramatic temperature rises and falls in a couple of years, far too fast for the plants and animals let alone human farmers.

I think the evidence is pretty conclusive. It’s the carbon dioxide curve that gets me; it slowly rises all through the industrial ages. I think it’s pretty clear there is at least an anthropogenic component there. Nobody really knows how the climate as a machine works in the present day, and if you look at the past, it changes significantly even in the previous centuries.

So how can you predict or tell how this big pumping of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to change things in the future? The science is difficult and complex. I suspect we are going to have to deal with the crises as they come along.

Aberrant Dreams: Speaking of changes and exceeding limits, I see your novel Transcendent is short-listed for this year’s Locus award. Of the awards that you’ve won, is there one that seems extra special?

Stephen Baxter: Well, every award is really nice to have. The most special awards are those voted upon by readers as opposed to jury awards, because somebody has bought the book and endorsed it, actually paying out money for your fiction, and liked it enough to take the trouble to vote in some way. Often, in jury awards, there’s an agenda of some sort, but readers are just acting as readers do, from the heart.

So, I think reader votes are the most important. For example the British Science Fiction Association Award, this is a reader award by members of the association. That’s pretty cool. I haven’t won the Hugo, but I have been on the short list a few times and again that’s a reader vote. This is not to say some of the jury awards aren’t very special either.

My favorite jury award is the Philip K. Dick Award that I have won a couple of times, and simply because it’s paperback originals in the States, it’s aimed at a wide fan base, the guys who can only afford paperbacks who don’t collect the hardbacks or whatever. That appeals to me a lot, but really it is reader reaction that’s the most important thing to me, and the awards that reflect that are the ones that count.

Aberrant Dreams: A first of The Time Ships is quite costly, as well as some of your earlier novels. Who’s to blame for that?

Stephen Baxter: I think my publishing history is the reason. My first few books were published first in Britain, so the first editions were always the British hardback and initially very small print numbers (1,000 or 1,500 copies of the first edition). There might be a reprint of the hardback but a very small number.

The initial print run of The Time Ships was 1500, and it really took off--it made my name really. For that reason, the later books had prints of something like 7,000 or 8,000 for the first edition. So, that book and my first novel Raft are most prized by the collectors, I guess.

Aberrant Dreams: Your new series is Times Tapestry, and I understand it’s a weaving of Roman history, mystery and prophecy. What can we expect from this?

Stephen Baxter: It is four books, and I think in the States they’re going to come out six months apart. It’s a history changing conspiracy story set in Roman Britain, in the period with Roman-British characters. There is a meddling of history from our present day, and the characters figure this out.

We know a bit more than the characters as there are clues in the text. Basically, characters are trying to change the course of history. In the first book, for instance, the emperor, Constantine, who established Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, was actually elevated in Britain by the British armies--one of the most important things that happened in Roman Britain. Our bad guys in the present day are trying to stop that from happening and get Constantine assassinated before he can ascend the throne and establish Christianity.

The subsequent books haven’t quite been worked out yet, but there are similar episodes going through history towards the present day. In the final book, book four, the weaver of the Times Tapestry will be revealed.

So it’s history--I really like historical novels--with a science fictional twist.

Aberrant Dreams: You are quite a prolific author, and perhaps some would suspect that somewhere in the back of your mind is a concern like, “Hey what can I do new and revolutionary?” Do you think in terms of reinventing yourself or do you simply look for new sources of inspiration?

Stephen Baxter: After twenty years and somewhere over thirty books, I do feel a bit of dread of repeating myself and getting stale. I’m not like Terry Pratchett who’s been through twenty-five Discworld books. I admire those books, but that’s not me. I’m always looking for new and different types of books to write, and I think it makes me much more difficult to market because my next book is not necessarily like my last book, which is what the publishers really like.

So what really keeps me going is finding something new to research. For one thing, it’s far more interesting. The first novel I wrote was Raft, which was hard science fiction. The second, Anti-Ice, was an alternate history of the Victorian Age. They’re quite different.

I’m always trying to find something different to keep my interest going, but your question said do I think in terms of re-inventing myself. Really, I don’t see myself as a product. It’s the books that are the product, and I’m trying to keep the product fresh.

Aberrant Dreams: Well said. Thank you very much for this interview Mr. Baxter.

Stephen Baxter: Thank you.

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