Guest Author: Tobias S. Buckell on Inspirations & Influences

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free rein so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today, we are happy to have Tobias S. Buckell, author of speculative fiction, from short stories, to Halo universe novels, to the truly awesome Xenowealth books. His newest novel, Arctic Rising (which Thea highly enjoyed) comes out on Tuesday.

Please give it up for Tobias, folks!

When writing science fiction, I always find myself exploring a great big ‘what if?’ That’s the seed from which I begin to explore outwards. Characters are invented, and thrown into the great ‘what if?’ Story emerges. But it’s that seed that kicks it all off for me.

When writing Arctic Rising, I wanted to explore the great ‘what if?’ of assuming that all the Arctic Ice had melted within thirty or so years. At the time I started conceiving the book, it sounded like a wild reach. A very science fictional idea. I began to sketch out the rise of Polar Tiger nations, new shipping routes, a resource rush for the oil and precious metals that would be uncovered by the ice.

And then as I began to finish the book, scientists and models began to start saying that it looked like my crazy ‘what if?’ was a plausible scenario they felt we had to consider. And suddenly, it wasn’t quite so science fictional.

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born New York Times Bestselling author. His work has been translated into 15 different languages. He has published some 50 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and Campbell awards.

Thanks, Tobias.

Make sure to check out our review of Arctic Rising for a chance to win a copy of the book!