On the science behind the books, the craft of writing literary fiction, and the specific experience of writing in the margins of a full life.
The genre means something specific to me. Not science fiction decorated with literary prose, and not literary fiction that happens to involve physics. Something at the intersection — a place where the rigour of hard science and the rigour of literary character work are both fully present, neither subordinated to the other.
Read moreThe Substrate Series is built on real physics. Not physics as metaphor, not physics as decoration, but the actual published science of quantum field theory, the observer problem, and the hard problem of consciousness. This is an attempt to explain that science to intelligent non-physicists.
Read moreThe science behind The Soil. What soil microbiology actually reveals about the complexity of the ground beneath our feet — and why the discovery at the heart of the novel is not as far from current science as you might think.
Read moreThe practical reality of writing literary fiction while working full-time in tech and raising three children. The schedule, the discipline, and the specific quality of writing produced in the margins.
Read moreHow the scientific observer problem — the act of observation changes the observed — maps onto the literary problem of character. The meta-question beneath both the books and the writing of the books.
Read moreThe thematic connections across the catalogue. How The Dimming and The Soil are asking the same question from different directions, and how both connect to the Substrate Series.
Read moreThe genre positioning. Why these books belong on the literary fiction shelf and the science fiction shelf simultaneously. The comp titles. The readers these books are for.
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