An hour-long conversation with James Alan Gardner, author of ten science-fiction and fantasy novels and numerous short stories, including finalists for the Nebula and Hugo Awards and winners of the Aurora, the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, with a particular focus on his Dark vs. Spark series (Tor Books), which began with All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault.

Websitejamesalangardner.com

Twitter@jamesagard

James Alan Gardner’s Amazon page

The Introduction

Xiaopu Fung of Xiaopu Photography

James Alan Gardner got his bachelor’s and master’s in math with a thesis on black holes, then immediately began writing science fiction instead. He has published ten novels and numerous short stories, including finalists for the Nebula and Hugo and winners for the Aurora, the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His most recent novels are All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, first book in the Dark vs. Spark series, and They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded, the second book, both from Tor. In his spare time, he plays a lot of tabletop roleplaying games and has recently begun writing material for Onyx Path’s Scion line. In his other spare time, he teaches kung fu to six-year-olds.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Welcome to The Worldshapers, James.

Thanks, Edward. Glad to be here.

I guess we’ve kind of known each other for a long time, but we don’t encounter each other very often. But we did see each other at When Worlds Collide, which is something…When Words Collide. It always comes out as When Worlds Collide.

Yeah, yeah. It’s a great idea and a great title. And it was a great con this year.

Was that the first time you’d been?

Yes.

It’s close to me, so I’m there most years. It gets plugged a lot on The Worldshapers, ’cause I’ve asked a number of writers to be on after I saw them at When Words Collide.

Well, if I can make it next year, I certainly will. I had a great time there.

And I guess this is a good place to mention to those interested that the website for that is WhenWordsCollide.org. It does fill up every year, so if you’re interested in going, it wouldn’t hurt to to sign up for next year, right now. But enough about that, let’s talk about you! I always start by taking guests back into the mists of time, and for you and me, it’s roughly the same amount of mists, to find out, first of all, when you became interested in writing,