Revisiting my influences: WEIRD SCIENCE

 

The first science fiction I ever encountered was Fireball XL5, one of the early Gerry Anderson productions. I was only about four years old, but I was hooked immediately on spaceships and adventure in the stars.

I grew up during the exciting part of the space race, staying up nights to watch space-walks then moon missions, eyes wide in wonder as Armstrong made his small step.

At the same time Gerry Anderson had continued to thrill me, with Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. The Americans joined in, with Lost in Space then, as color TV reached Scotland, Star Trek hit me full between the eyes.

And then there's Quatermass. Always Quatermass. QUATERMASS AND THE PIT in particular did much to mould my experience in the genre with its glorious melding of science, horror and horrific science. 

Also at the same time, my reading was gathering pace. I'd started on comics early with Batman and Superman. As the '60s drew to a close, Marvel started to take over my reading habits more, and I made forays into reading novels; Clarke and Asimov at first, and most of the Golden-Age works.

By the early Seventies I had graduated to the so-called New Wave, Moorcock, Ellison, Delaney and Zelazny dominating my reading, and they led me on to reading, then writing horror.

Those who know me know that I was once, almost, a scientist. 

Even from an early age it was what I wanted to do. Actually, I wanted to be a spaceman ( the fastest man alive ), but when I started into the studying in the ’70s, I found myself drawn towards biology and chemistry more than to maths and physics. I’ve retained a life-long love of all things pertaining to outer space, but when it came to time to choose a path beyond school, I went with the Biological Sciences and graduated in Botany from Glasgow University, and even made a stab at some real science for a couple of years before I was caught in the IT trap in the early ’80s. and ended up a corporate wage-slave in the City of London.

And there the science ended, for a while.

But in 2007 I escaped the world of corporate IT, came to Newfoundland, and science crept in again, this time in my writing. Scientists began to show up in the likes of THE CREEPING KELP, NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO, THE DUNFIELD TERROR, THE PLASM, FUNGOID and my Professor Challenger pastiches. There have also been a burgeoning number of short stories.

The scientists been getting even louder still recently. Weird Science concepts have been creeping on to my S-Squad series at regular intervals, and I've just delivered a scifi / horror crossover novella, A MURMURATION OF OPAS, to Weird House Press. There will be more.

In my work you’ll find mad scientists, bad scientists, and mad, bad scientists.

This is who I am.

This is what I do.