There are SF writers whose works is at the cutting edge, the vanguard, of the genre, pushing the artform into new and bold areas. Their work can be illuminating and challenging often difficult for readers new to the genre to grasp and fully enjoy. These works, and they can be thoroughly enjoyable, are more suited to readers already well-versed in the form and tropes of Science-Fiction from which foundation the more experimental pieces can be explored.

I think of my own SF writing as nearly the opposite of that.

I would hope, and what I strive for, is welcoming, accessible science-fiction. That is not to say the vanguard, boundary-breaking, parts of the genre are bad, not at all. We need those bold experimental pieces to take us to new lands, new ideas, to keep the whole body healthy. But we also need works that welcome new readers, that allows people to wade into the safer and calmer waters before setting sail across the genre’s ocean. That is, in part, what I want to achieve.

Local Author, Critic, and Podcaster David Agranoff said of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge:

“Speaking as someone who likes Golden Age and new wave science fiction I liked that this felt like a lost 60s or 70s novel. There is very little that feels modern about this novel, that is a compliment by the way.”

That is very much the sort of feel I wanted for my novel. The 60s and the 70s were a time of great expansion in the genre both in what was produced and in the readers coming to discover it.

Someone else who read the novel and who was not a big reader of SF books told me that they were particularly happy with how they did not feel lost as the new world with its own backstory unfolded for them. That is one of the most pleasing pieces of feedback I have ever received, and it is what I mean by ‘accessible science-fiction.’ It is the sort of thing I aim for and hopefully with hit more and more in the future.

A gentle reminder that I have my own SF novel available from any bookseller. Vulcan’s Forge is about the final human colony, one that attempt to live by the social standard of 1950s America and the sole surviving outpost following Earth’s destruction. Jason Kessler doesn’t fit into the repressive 50s social constraints, and he desire for a more libertine lifestyle leads him into conspiracies and crime.