Come and join The Looking Glass Club

I should start off by saying that I loved the book – you’ve converted me to Science Fiction!

Fantastic! You weren’t a sci-fi fan before then?

No, and I was nervous about reading it in case I thought it was awful!

Lots of people have felt the same way –I’ve had some fantastic feedback from people though – it’s really lovely to hear people say that they’re not normally science fiction fans and yet the absolutely loved the book. That’s something I really wanted to achieve.

How did you come up with the idea of ‘The Looking Glass Club’?

I’m not still a physicist but I do like to read about it, about new ideas and became so engaged in it that I actually thought about writing a book about physics itself; then I realised that that probably wasn’t going to happen and it would take about ten years of dedication and incredible mathematical rigour so I thought I would do the next best thing and make a novel instead. I had a dream actually – It was one of those moments where you just run out of bed and get right to the keyboard and start writing.

What made you decide to set part of the novel at Imperial?

That was a very conscious decision because I get a bit sick of reading novels set in Cambridge colleges and I just thought ‘But Imperial’s great!’ and it deserves to be on the fictional map. I’m very proud of Imperial – I’ve spent six years of my life there and I just fell in love with London and Imperial the moment I arrived.

Was it difficult to find a publisher for a Science Fiction book?

Yup, it’s an incredibly tough market because it’s so niche – in fact there are only six publishers for it in the UK. I think part of the reason for that is because most of it is rubbish! I find that as a scientist it’s very frustrating to read a badly written SF book with fundamental principles so badly written and sometimes even wrong and you just think ‘God, why are they even bothering?’

There’s so many ideas and theories about physics, philosophy and technology in the book – were you ever told to ‘dumb it down’?

Yes! Absolutely! I had a meeting with an agent and her assistant editor and because she’d been so enthusiastic about it I sort of expected that I’d been going in the right direction. Her assistant editor didn’t have the same views though – he didn’t really like the science and didn’t like the fact that it was so technical and he basically said ‘you can’t do this, it’s not your job to write a book about physics or philosophy – it’s your job to write about guns and car chases.’ At that point I just thought ‘well, you’re an idiot – don’t tell me what to write!’

Any tips for budding authors?

Yes! Don’t go it alone – get involved with an authors group. I found a great group online which was a great form of support as it is quite a lonely endeavour, and writing a novel is hard!