Invaders From Planet 3 - Ep 24 - James Alan Gardner

Author, editor and kung-fu mathematician James Alan Gardner joins us in the latest episode of the podcast! Jim starts off by talking about how comics were his first speculative fictional love, especially Marvel's The Avengers and DC's Crisis on Earth One! and Crisis on Earth Two!, leading eventually to science fiction like Heinlein's juveniles, and later, in university, to fantasy by Tolkien and Stephen R Donaldson, and horror by Stephen King.

We talk about his decision to study Math at university, and how a student work internship in Toronto with nothing to do at night gave him the opportunity to start developing his abilities as a writer. Jim tells us about how a writing workshop in Banff allowed him to further hone his skills and find his own voice, and we later discuss how this differed from his experience at Clarion. We also talk about Jim's early work writing science fictional stage plays and radio plays, like Curio (a paranormal investigative series predating The X-Files) and Percy Pulsar, Space Accountant. And he discusses his first prose science fiction stories that were published.

Coming back to superheroes, we talk about Jim's novel All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault — a story pitting metahumans against vampires, werewolves and other paranormal monsters. And he teases its upcoming sequel, They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded, and the two other novels he's working on in the series. Jim also gives some hints about a haunted house novel he's developing.

Our interview took place in October 2018 at the annual Vancouver Science Fiction, Fantasy & Games Convention (VCon).

Find out more about James Alan Gardner and his stories on his website:
https://jamesalangardner.wordpress.com

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Let the Invasion begin!