Influences On My Writing:

Although I worked as a scientist for many years, I have always been an avid reader and writer. I love science fiction and political/spy thrillers. In the former genre, my favourite books are Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time; in the latter, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent and Eric Ambler’s Journey into Fear. These books influenced my novels, both in terms of content and atmosphere, but not in style.

The Epsilon Twistor and Datonga are dialogue-based, let’s say 90% dialogue and 10% narrative. (The narrative element is still important. They are novels not screenplays.) I use long passages of left-aligned dialogue to reflect the sense of relentless, uncontrollable input from the world that people with Asperger’s syndrome experience, and help the reader get into the minds of the major characters in the novels. I hope The Epsilon Twistor will give you insight into the world of scientists, and how scientific discoveries are made.

It struck me when I went through the Amazon sci-fi categories that there is a subsection Dystopia, but no Utopia. A lot of students, and young people generally, are suffering from anxiety and depression, and Datonga offers them an uplifting story. The Utopian aspect sets my book apart from others in the genre. I hope Datonga will put utopian SF back on the literary map.