A Conversation With Contributors to Thieves' World: Turning Points
An interview with Steven H Silver
On what he [Robin Wayne Bailey] missed most:
"Oh, there are several good answers to this. Primarily, I missed the interaction with the other writers. It was great fun to scheme out the stories. I loved calling Carolyn Cherryh up and asking, 'Where's Ischade at this point in time?' Or calling Janet Morris to tell her, 'Guess what I'm planning for Zip?' Or 'Sure, I don't mind if Tempus rapes Chenaya, but don't expect her to take it lying down.' So to speak. I've lost track of Janet, but Lynn and Carolyn and Diana Paxson, I still count as dear friends, and I loved the opportunity to work with them."

A Conversation With Forrest Aguirre
An interview with Trent Walters
On starting to write a story:
"I almost always start with an idea and an image. 'Reverie Styx' started with the image of a man in a diving suit (the really old kind, with the on-deck bellows pump and all) descending into murky water. I had read Dante's Inferno to my children a few months before, so the association was rather quick. I then tried to get into the diver's head, but soon found myself abandoning him for the people supplying him with air. I didn't care for him anymore. In fact, I hated him and wanted him to die. I needed ruthless characters to kill him off."

Aldiss And More: an interview with Brian Aldiss
conducted by Sandy Auden
"We have a more sophisticated audience now and it has certainly made writing easier. By and large I regard all my novels, as I grow older, as one long conversation, mainly with myself. Okay, I understand that my writings appear diverse but that is only to accommodate my thinking."

A Conversation With Alma Alexander
An interview with Chris Przybyszewski
On language:
"Words have been the mainstay of my existence for as long as I can remember. I taught myself to read (a language not English) when I was barely four years old; I was five when my sonnet-writing poet grandfather read me a new poem and I informed him in my lisping five-year-old voice that it didn't scan [the sonnet carried too many syllables on one line]. It didn't [scan], when he checked, which made him feel both proud and supremely put out all at once."

A Conversation With Kevin J. Anderson
An interview with Kilian Melloy
On winnowing and sorting ideas:
"An idea is just the starting point. "Let's go to Chicago." Then you have to get the map and plan your route, do research on where you want to stay and what you want to do, then you make the actual drive. Okay, maybe I stretched that metaphor a little too much. I find I have lots of smaller ideas, and some big ones, that float around in my head, and they collide, join with each other, and grow into bigger and bigger components of a story. Some of them are interesting characters, some of them are fascinating settings, others are visual scenes that I see like snippets from a movie trailer in my mind."

A Conversation With Kevin J. Anderson
An interview with Sandy Auden
On the reason for this series:
"My work on the Seven Suns series is like my own love letter to science fiction. I've always loved SF and I threw in everything, from the giant nasty robots that are Gort in The Day The Earth Stood Still, to alien ruins on empty planets, to the dying and decadent aliens from a different race to the space gypsies and weird planets to the strange religions and star-crossed lovers and good guys and bad guys and really nasty aliens who live in gas giant planets. Everything that I love about SF is in some form in these books."

Sand In My Shoes: an interview with Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
conducted by Sandy Auden
"I did a huge concordance of the six Dune books, so I know all the references and what page number they're on, so we included all that information too. I'd also spent five years writing Dad's biography, Dreamer of Dune -- rereading everything he wrote and putting it together with the things he said to me."

A Conversation With Tom Arden
An interview with Neil Walsh
On the accessibility of his fiction:
"Accessibility is not an absolute thing that a book either has or doesn't have. Sure, you might say that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is more accessible than Ulysses, in that a lot more people can read and understand it. But for the most part a book is accessible to you or not depending on the kind of book it is, and the kind of reader you are. If you hate fantasy, you won't find fantasy accessible, even if it's easy to read."

A Conversation With Kelley Armstrong
An interview with Alisa McCune
On sex and violence:
"When it comes to sex and violence, I write it as the story and the characters dictate.  With the werewolves, we have a very physical, instinct-driven race who, as Elena says, spend a large amount of their time engaged in the three Fs of survival: feeding, fighting and... reproduction.  This was how I saw them, so the sex and violence came naturally and sometimes melded together.  With the witches, it changes."

A Pointer To Perfection: an interview with the 2002 Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominees
conducted by Sandy Auden
Being on the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award is one of the most prestigious places an author could find themselves. Each year, the Award shortlist exists as a pointer to quality science fiction and fantasy novels and some satisfying stories. So what are the must-reads of 2002?

A Conversation With Diamond Star author Catherine Asaro, and Hayim Ani of Point Valid
An interview with Charles E. Gannon
Diamond Star the CD might well have been given the subtitle: "Musical Energy Erupting from a Fusion of Two Creative Minds." Energy, creativity, imagination, and drive are the obvious keynotes when interviewing award-winning author Catherine Asaro (who also happens to be a physicist and dancer) and Hayim Ani (whose promise at age 17 had already resulted in the production of a prior CD with the band Point Valid). Their differences in background and experiences emerge not as a collision of styles, but as a harmony of complimentary visions that allowed them to bring a unique blend of diversity and common-mindedness to their project.

Sarah Ash
An interview with David Mathew
David talked to Sarah Ash about her life and work, at the World Fantasy Convention in Docklands, UK in the east end of London over the Halloween weekend, 1997. She believes that a fantasy writer's advantage over a mainstream writer is precisely that a fantasy writer has a way of tackling unpleasant subject matter in a more palatable manner. Fantasy provides the necessary distancing effect.

It's All In The Details: an interview with Neal Asher
conducted by Sandy Auden
"In other fiction, a table is a table is a table. In SF, a table can be made of materials we can only imagine, it might follow you around the house like a dog. 'Hey, do you like my Parker Knoll dog-table? It doesn't have to recharge itself as it eats coffee stains and breadcrumbs. It also acts as a security system. I heard the other day about a guy who had his house broken into -- he found the burglar's fingers in his table's mouth!'"

A Conversation With Neal Asher
An interview with Lisa DuMond
On the definition of 'human':
"If a machine can perfectly emulate a human being then, barring the fleshy body, is it one? If you made a recording of a human mind, would that mind be human? If you built a human body and mind atom by atom, would it be human? I don't believe in souls so for me a lot of lines are blurred, definitions turn to smoke, and just about every point a moot one."