On a hillside in a sand-colored, Sante Fe style house, surrounded with natural, wild vegetation, writer John E. Stith is busy working on his next novel. (The landscape is tended by his wife, Karen, who is a master gardener.) Now 78, Stith is busier than ever. Last year his novel Disavowed (Amazing Selects) was published, as was his young adult trilogy, Tiny Time Machine.
He’s also working with folks in the movie business to get his novel Manhattan Transfer to the big screen…or a smaller TV screen, or any screen. Stith is quiet, unassuming, a tech whiz, (he’s made his own computers) has a wry sense of humor, can discuss and is interested in…everything. As we sit in his sunlit front room, surrounded by books, his awards, and posters of his novels, he brings me up to date on his writing.
Ed: Thanks for meeting. I’m really enjoying Disavowed. Especially Natalie, your AI…Alexa character. I’m getting a HAL vibe, only she has a sense of humor, like Joan Rivers.
John: I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I had a lot of fun with the AI character. The character is much evolved from the AI character I had in Memory Blank years ago.
Ed: It’s been a while since our workshop. How old are you now?
John: I’m 78.
Ed: Still young. You and Connie are about the same age. (Writer Connie Willis, a mutual friend.) And you’re married. Do you have any children?
John: I have step kids. Two stepsons and three stepdaughters; three stepdaughters with Karen and two stepsons with Annette. Annette passed in 2010. Cancer.
Ed: Back when we were in the workshop, (80s-early 90s) I think you were working on Redshift
Rendezvous. It was nominated for some awards, right?
John: Right. Redshift Rendezvous was a Nebula finalist.
Ed: I looked you up and other awards include Manhattan Transfer (Tor Books, 1993) which was a Hugo Award honorable mention and a Seiun Award (Japan) nominee. Multiple winners of the Colorado Author’s League awards. Multiple lists of the year’s best science fiction novels. And your mystery novel Pushback was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.
John: Right. I have to qualify the Hugo honorable mention. Normally, there is no such thing. For books published in 1993, though, the con committee found that a couple of books, one of which was MT) just missed qualifying as finalists, and they decided to call them honorable mentions. And back in the day, CompuServe was giving Awards called HOMers. I won a few of those.
Ed: How many books have you published?
John: Twelve. And four novellas. There were five novels with Ace, and three novels with Tor. And then a collection called All for Naught that was published first by Peanut Press, and Pushback was a mystery that came out a few years ago. Most recently, Disavowed and the Complete Tiny Time Machine Trilogy came out from Amazing Stories in 2024.
Ed: I remember the Pushback book; that’s the one where the guy’s car gets filled with cement. Right?
John: Right, yes.
Ed: That was a fun read. Last year in addition to Disavowed, you had another publication?
John: Yes. The trilogy, Tiny Time Machine. It’s a Young Adult (YA) series.
Ed: And is Disavowed science fiction?
John: Yes. You could say it’s “military” science fiction.
Ed: How did the books do?
John: They did ok. But, you know, Amazing Selects books from Amazing Stories, are print on demand and eBook, so their books don’t get into bookstores the way my earlier titles did. And that’s one of the obstacles. We’re still in a kind of in-between stage for book selling where older readers lean toward paper and younger readers skew toward eBooks.
Ed: It seems eBooks are cheaper all the way around.
John: Right.
Ed: What was your first publication?
John: It was a short story for Fantastic Science Fiction, in 1979. “Early Winter.” Soon after that. “Planet Seven” sold to Amazing Stories in 1980. And I had some early publications that were in fanzines, usually paid in copies.
Ed: Tell me about your education.
John: I’ve got a bachelor’s in physics from the University of Minnesota.
Ed: Ah, my son’s living up in Minnesota.
John: Ah. I spent my four years in Minneapolis.
Ed: That’s a nice town.
John: Yes, it is. I’ve got a stepdaughter there now, and her family up in Minneapolis.
Ed: So, a physics degree. As a writer, did you still have to work a “regular” job? Like the rest of us?
John: Yes, right. I was doing mostly government software work.
Ed: Here in Colorado Springs?
John: Yes. The longest of my jobs was with Kaman Sciences. Along the way, they got bought by ITT.
Ed: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
John: It was part way through college. But I didn’t do anything about it other than daydream about it for another decade. I kept looking for, you know, three- or four-hour blocks of time so I could just try to get something done. And I never found three or four hours. And after ten years of thinking about it, I finally realized I had to decide if I was actually going to do it. The key for me was that I started writing every day, a habit of 15 minutes. And that grew. It is so much easier to continue doing something than it is to start doing something, at least for me.
Ed: kind of like working out, starting an exercise routine.
John. Yeah, right.
Ed: This was when?
John: It would have been 1979. I started with non-fiction. Actually, my first publications were in the early computer magazines. I published three or four articles before I published any short stories.
Ed: Who are the authors that you read?
John: Early on, certainly the greats, like Heinlein and Clark and Asimov. But I loved many others. Robert Sheckley, Brian Aldiss, Fredrik Brown, Jack Finney, Clifford Simak, John Wyndham.
Ed: I don’t know Simak.
John: Oh, you have a number of real treats available waiting for you. Way Station. That would be one place to start. Another author, Keith Laumer.
Ed: Connie talks about many of those authors. I think Heinlein was her favorite.
John: Yeah, he’s top rate.
Ed: She said Heinlein was who she started reading, with science fiction.
John: I was home sick one day, in third or fourth grade, and my mom brought me some books back from the library. One of them was Citizen of the Galaxy by Heinlein. Great.
Ed: Early on, did you take any writing classes?
John: I did try what Writer’s Digest offered, the kind of writing school where you got lessons by mail. I did that, but I wasn’t in love with that process. I didn’t enjoy writing about what someone else wanted me to write about. So once I was able to write about what I wanted to write about, then that was much more enjoyable for me.
Ed: How did you end up in the writers’ group? Ed Bryant’s? Connie was telling me a bit of the history.
John: There was a workshop here. (Colorado Springs) Ed had two going, the other, The Northern Colorado Writers Workshop. Denver, Greeley. When I was working at Kaman Sciences, I was in a small writing workshop. General fiction writing here in the Springs. I enjoyed that, got value out of it, but I thought I’d get even more value if I could find a group that was writing primarily science fiction and fantasy rather than just, you know, all over the map.
There was a World Science Fiction Convention coming up in Denver. So I went to that. One of my main goals was to meet Ed Bryant, find out about this writing workshop I’d heard mentioned. I went up to him after a panel and introduced myself, and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he gave me that glib, Ed Bryant kind of funny answer. And I said, “Okay, well, thanks very much,” and I turned to walk away. At that point he said, “Wait a minute. There is a workshop down there, and I should contact Cynthi Felice.
Ed: She also worked for Kaman?
John: She did. It was funny to realize she was working at the same company. And so I tracked her down. Sometime in that timeframe, early 80s, I think she left Kaman and went to work for another outfit. But she gave me the workshop info.
Ed: Was Connie in that group at that time?
John: Right. Connie was in there, Cynthia, too. After a few years, Barbara Nickless joined that group. You may not know her name because she writes mysteries and thrillers. She’s one of those late bloomers. She was writing publishable stuff all along, but for whatever reason, it just didn’t click with editors at the time. But sometime around 2015 she started selling and she’s now really going great guns.
Ed: Were Steve and Melanie Tem in the group yet?
John: They were in Denver group, NCWW. Eventually I joined the Denver workshop too. That’s when I met you, and Steve and Melanie. So, that would have been ’84, ‘85, maybe?
Ed: That sounds right. I was just out of college and I met Ed. He was running the Glenwood Workshop at Colorado Mountain College. Well, Meg Files was running it; Ed was one of the main authors. Ed was up there every year in the summer. That’s where Harlan Ellison came for a couple of years. That’s where I met Joanne Greenberg; she’d present every year. “Big” John Williams was there one year (Augustus, Butcher’s Crossing, Stoner) James Dickey—who was hammered most of the time—George R.R. Martin.
I remember when George Martin showed up, that funky hat, ’82? And Ed says when we’re eating the barbecue, “Oh, this guy, he’s got this other story. I think it’s going to be really big.” Martin looked about the same as he does now. I mean, he was a little younger, but the same.
John: I love Armageddon Rag and much of his stuff.
Ed: That’s probably the book Ed was talking about. Game of Thrones was still more than a decade out. When you look back at it, there was a slew of talented writers in that Denver Workshop. When you compare to other workshops—and I’ve been in a bunch—you just realize, wow, Bryant’s were pretty special.
John: Right. You can just go down the list.
Ed: I will. I’m gonna’ name drop. Connie Willis, Dan Simmons, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, David Zindell, Wil McCarthy. Early on, Cynthia Felice, David Dvorkin, Vance Aandahl, Mark Barsotti. I think Mark did more non-fiction, music journalism. And there were so many others, before and after me.
John: Workshopping was the best education I had, particularly with people like Connie. She is just brilliant! And we had Ronnie Seagren, John Kennedy, Marie Desjardin, P.D. Cacek, Ken Roberts, Andrew Burt, Greg Hyde, Thea Hutchinson, Simon Hawke, Catherine Cooke Montrose, John Peyton Cooke, and even more that will no doubt come to me later.
Ed: Connie Willis was one of the best I worked with. I was going through my files, getting ready for this interview and I found an old manuscript of yours, might have been Manhattan Transfer that we workshopped. It’s got all the notes on it, right? And then I found one that she did for me, a poetry hybrid piece. It must have had 40 marks on every page. Insightful, searing comments. You get some readers and editors who make you want to quit writing. Her critique was just so good. I thought, “How much time did she take to do this?”
John: Right, I know. We, Connie and Cynthia, and I, just weren’t getting enough workshopping. So we started these mini-Milford workshops. We would do a long weekend. We organized probably a dozen of those. We pulled in even more people to those. We’d rotate our homes to host.
Ed: Are you in contact with any of those workshop folks anymore?
John: I see some at cons periodically. Connie and Cynthia and I do a zoom about every five weeks or so. Connie, in addition to her writing, is a political wonk. She does a daily newsletter. I don’t know how she finds the time to do it.
Ed: Well, because she’s not writing her novel. (Both laugh)
John: She’s writing in parallel.
Ed: When I interviewed her, she talked about her early career writing while living her other life; teaching, family, I think she can write anywhere, anytime. I’ve been following her newsletter. It’s stacked with info, very informative. But it has to be time consuming.
John: I’m going to fill in next week for her, to handle the newsletter.
Ed: Where do you get all the info? It’s very granular regarding all the ins and outs and different angles.
John: I just try to scour the web every day when it’s my turn. I’m just a pale understudy. When she started the newsletter, I think it was folks she knew in her church, and then it just grew and grew and grew. She mentioned she has readers all over the country. It’s caught on with all these different groups.
Ed: I think she has thousands of followers now. Not to get too political, but I think it’s so necessary on a grassroots level. It’s a little frightening to see where things are going right now.
John: It’s easy to get depressed and want to check out and hibernate.
Ed: What would be your big take if you were explaining this to somebody who didn’t understand the fear of fascism in America.
John: Well, more than anything, I think it’s a movement built around personality. Trump was the right guy at the right time for a lot of people with grievances. And even though he’s doing stuff that actually, actively hurts a lot of folks, for some of them he’s hurting people they don’t like even more. So they’ll take a little pain. I’ve got some friends who are Trump supporters. I went back and forth with a number of emails, you know, with one friend, as we tried to understand each other. We really couldn’t see eye to eye. It’s amazing that people, intelligent people, can look at the same situations and draw such different conclusions. I think that’s been just one of the biggest takeaways for me. And the difference in perception, right. Just the irrelevance of facts at a certain level.
Ed: In my family, I have plenty of Trump supporters. Some, I just don’t even communicate with anymore. It’s not worth it. We’re not talking policy or issues like raising taxes, or tariff deals or any of that. I just start with “sexual predator”. End of discussion. Mocking the disabled. End of discussion. Stealing money from a cancer fund. How do you excuse that and go to the next conversation?
John: It’s puzzling.
Ed: And it’s his apologists, too. Like, Dr Phil, who I think is a coward and a charlatan. I’ve been sending letters to Dr Phil to try and get on his show and debate him. Of course. I don’t hear anything back, but those are my little acts of resistance. I’m trying my little spots here and there.
John: Well, I understand that Fox doesn’t tell viewers about every story, and they slant what they tell, sure. And I get that, to what I see as a lesser degree some places like CNN do that on their side. And so I think both markets are basically getting paid to divide America, because when they get people angry, they pay more attention to commercials. But what really surprised me recently was that Jodi Picoult, the writer, talked about this subject on her blog and summarized how the social media algorithms are also designed to polarize us. Her line was something like the algorithms are designed to get us looking right and left instead of up.
In exchanges with Charlie Kirk fans, she learned that the people who were fans of his were just seeing quotes about how he was a faithful Christian. But people on the other side were seeing the quotes about how Biden should be put to death and black women are inferior DEI beneficiaries. So the systems run by billionaires are deliberately and calculatingly set up to make the right and left hate each other instead of talking about what unites us, which is actually a lot.
Ed: I saw you posted about that on Facebook. It just strikes me that people could do a little work and get the story if they wanted it, do a little critical thinking. In the end, it doesn’t matter if Charlie Kirk is a Christian, if he’s on the right or the left. The other things he said, denigrating people, hate speech, there has to be accountability. You can’t just hide behind the Bible. If I was on the left denigrating, say, farmers for being ignorant and rednecks and voting Republican and so on, that’s not right, even if I quote my Bible.
John: I agree. Yeah, and I know farmers are hard-working folks. Do they want this divide? I don’t think so. I think we all want the country to succeed. There’s just so much disinformation out there.
Ed: Yeah, there aren’t Communists under the bed, and Portland’s not burning. I don’t know how we get recentered.
John: When we can’t agree on facts, when we can’t agree whether January 6th was a tourist group or an insurrection of violence…
Ed: It just seems like there’s some fundamental truths that you have to hold in place. How do you move forward when you’re changing history and it’s a new truth? So that’s one of Trump’s goals. Rewrite history. Trump’s new committee is going to go back and change January 6th. You can’t gaslight what we all saw, the violence, the people that died as a result.
John: I listened to, I think, virtually every minute of all of the hearings. Most of the witnesses were Republicans. Science fiction set me on a path of questioning religion and questioning government, and I’m particularly bothered when I’m steadily lied to by people at the top.
Ed: Switching topics, who are you reading today?
John: Lately. I’m reading more mysteries. Lee Child is a favorite. (Jack Reacher)
Ed: I’ve been going through those. Those are fun. He’s a good writer. Very concise. I think he was in television, right?
John: Yeah, I enjoy a lot of aspects of his work, including his observations of the country, wherever he’s drawn to or visiting. I like Thomas Perry. I liked early David Baldacci.
Ed: Have you done James Lee Burke?
John: I haven’t gotten into him.
Ed: He must be in his ’80s now. Robicheaux, a cop down in Louisiana is his character. Years ago I did a bunch of work in the parishes down there. He has that mystical piece to his stories, you know? Confederate soldiers come back and such. Historical ghosts. So those are good reads.
John: Barbara Nickless, who I mentioned earlier, is really doing wonderful stuff with her mysteries.
Ed: What does your writing schedule look like?
John: Well, I’m probably going to write for a couple of hours this afternoon.
Ed: Is morning or afternoon better for you?
John: I don’t have a set pattern. One of my curses that I think I inherited from my father is too many interests.
Ed: I have that problem too.
John: Any number of things interest me. Right now I’m working on a rewrite. Jeffrey Berman, a guy who turned into a good friend, optioned my Naught for Hire back in the 90s. He’s been trying to sell it forever. And after about ten years of trying to sell it, we decided to collaborate and update it. We’ve gone through a number of versions and we had Ben Browder (Stargate) set to star in it if we could get it sold. We updated it again, maybe three years ago, because AI keeps evolving. Earlier this year, we decided we still want to try to sell it as a TV series or as a feature. But one way or another, we want to get the new version into readers’ hands.
Ed: What’s the genre?
John: It’s a near future science fiction. Nick Naught is a detective in a near future with many of the AI problems we can see on the horizon. We’re turning the latest pilot script and episode guide into a novel. I’d say we’re halfway through the first draft right now.
Ed: So, a collaboration. How does that work?
John: Well, in this particular case, it’s different for me. He’s writing the first draft from what we did in the pilot episode, and a detailed episode guide. And I’m taking that first draft, going through it pretty heavily to get to a second draft. And once we’re done with that, do a few more drafts and see about the market. He is in LA, and I’m here.
Ed: Have you collaborated with other writers?
John: Some. I collaborated with John Kennedy a couple of times. You usually have a collaboration contract. How do we share the proceeds? And so on. He and I wrote two main projects. One was a mainstream thriller, and one was a project he had fallen in love with, which was a period version of War of the Worlds. Since John Kennedy died, and Ed Bryant, who was co-executor of John’s estate, died, I decided it was just too complex to try to proceed with either project, especially given that in the film market, the effort probably breaks down to 10 or 20 percent writing and the rest is marketing.
Ed: Wasn’t Nick Yermakov, who used to be in our group, doing a bunch of adaptations? Like Ivanhoe and such? I think he was a Harlan acolyte.
John: He was. Changed his name to Simon Hawke. Last I heard Nick/Simon was teaching college in Arizona and writing. I think he’s continued writing, but I think he’s maybe slowed down. I’m out of touch, so I’m not sure what he’s doing right now.
Ed: Do you use AI?
John: I do. I use it multiple times every day. Today it’s just so handy. I don’t use it all that much for writing, although it will have its uses for writing. You know, I’m an electronics buff, and I look at new gadgets from time to time. Some sites have a feature comparison of two products, but I can just ask ChatGPT to contrast this printer and this printer, and it’ll give me everything. It’s just so easy.
Ed: Many of the writers, I know, especially the purists, just absolutely hate AI. What’s your take on AI in the writing field?
John: I think it’s a tool, like a smart thesaurus. If I stand on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, what do I see? Tools like Google Streets and books about LA provide all kinds of ways to learn, in addition to trips. What do you need to know about writing in a location that you haven’t actually been in? AI can give a starting point to make you think, “Oh, Macy’s” or whatever is near that intersection, and then I can go find out more about Macy’s online.
Ed: As a reference tool, it certainly could save time. I’m just thinking that when you were working on Tiny Time Machine, you were wondering about San Francisco, places, geography. Would that have been a use for AI?
John: When I was working on that book, I was primarily taking advantage of Google Street View and Google. It made it much easier when I wanted scenes in places that are known to people outside of San Francisco, so the appeal would be more universal. And it would be easy to say, “ChatGPT, give me a list of the ten biggest tourist traps” or “Give me the ten most beautiful views or the 10 biggest dumps in town,” or whatever as a starting point. Maybe we’ll get to the point that there are no AI hallucinations, but I think you have to really double check everything.
Ed: I read about and have talked to writers about AI, and a big concern is that because so much is unknown they see it ending badly. Do you fall into that camp?
John: I’m basically an optimist at heart. So I’m hopeful we’ll get through this, but we’re sure blowing past a lot of red flags. I think our competitiveness with China is making us want to go faster than maybe is prudent. I mean, there are so many good things that can come out of this. Like, for medical research, but still there are people spending an enormous amount of time on just creating videos of clowns and cats other AI slop.
Ed: I think there’s always going to be that… ridiculous part of whatever the innovation is. Right now, I just don’t know who’s driving. I was trying to think of parallels to atomic energy and the bomb? One of those philosopher guys said our morality has not caught up with our
technology.
John: And I don’t know that it ever will.
Ed: I guess that’s the big question; what’s the morality of AI?
John: That’s true. It’s really up to us. We determine how we use our tools, whether to put limits on them.
Ed: In the U.S, we’ve got a bad driver as our leader.
John: He doesn’t know the rules of the road. Another thing with AI is energy. The rate and how it’s used, and the development of green energy. I mean, it’s happening much faster around the world than here now. Because coal is already more expensive than several forms of green energy, it’s inevitable that we’ll move in that direction. We’re going to be at that fork in the road where we have almost free energy, which it turn means almost free materials. Which means much less need to work. One fork in the road could be a guaranteed minimum income. And if people contribute to society in a way that earns them more, then they’ll get more.
Or it could go the other way. You know, and the oligarchs could control most of this technology, and so we’ll be like a third-world country with little enclaves of very, very rich and the rest of the country is just scratching out a living. It’s like a science fiction novel.
Ed: You just laid out a good story. So with AI, does the art get better? Does the music get better?
John: I hope so, if AI frees time for more human art. We have all this time now.
Ed: What would be your advice for new writers today? Young or old.
John: Make it a habit. If you want to write, do it as much as you can. Don’t look to your AI to do your writing for you. Do it because and only if you enjoy writing. Value quality over quantity. That’s a huge one.
Ed: How do we get quality today? Who determines quality?
John: I see some advice that self-published writers give to others, and I see advertisements for new writers with a lot of advice that focuses on the idea of getting as much out there as you possibly can. There’s much less focus given to making it the best you can. Less focus on patience and growth. Ray Bradbury and others talk about throwing away your first million words or at least working hard to develop your skill. If I pick up a book by a new writer and discover that I just paid to be a beta reader for a new writer who hasn’t done the work to make something publishable. I likely won’t give a second chance. There are too many choices, not to mention too many books I’d like to read again.
Ed: Now, tell me about this Manhattan Transfer project. They’re making a movie? TV series about your book?
John: Well, they’ve raised part of the funding to develop a TYV pilot. In the initial run, at BackerKit, they raised about $100K. The people who put in money get swag, and so on. Now the producers are looking for investors who will get their money back as an investment; in theory, it’s like shares.
Ed: As an investor, you’re buying part of the movie.
John: Right. They’re still in the private fundraising stage. And they’re trying to decide now on a fork in the road that’s opening up, considering that AI video is now moving ahead so fast.
Ed: I saw a trailer on Facebook.
John: Right. Some of the hurdles right now are having AI characters do exactly what you want them to do. And having the characters look consistent. If you do five segments, you need to have the characters look the same in each segment. Right now, the producer tells me that they could do the whole project with AI except for reaction shots. When one of their actors is emoting and showing surprise or sadness or whatever, AI cannot do that.
Ed: Is that right? Maybe they should sign up for acting lessons. (Both laugh)
John: Right now, they have about a dozen actors on board, and they can film all those actors when they storyboard, and they know that they want; say someone looking out over the desolation, they could film that actor, showing that reaction. But for the rest of the movie, they could conceivably put those actors’ faces on AI bodies, with permission.
Ed: Sounds like a niche market. Instead of an actor, you’re a “reactor.”
John: Right. I think we’re going to go through a period of potential backlash because it’s new and the rate of change is going to impact careers. Established actors are going to still have a market for their skills and their brand. But I think the changes we’re going through could really be very hard on new actors.
Ed: I think it would be. Interesting. Maybe it will benefit live theater because in the theater you get to go see real people. More to come, I guess. Did they buy your book outright or the rights?
John: No, they have not bought the rights. The book is under option.
Ed: Okay, when they say “under option” what does that mean?
John: It means that once they get all the funding for a pilot, they will try to attract a bigger fish like a Netflix or an Apple TV to sell to. Or they’ll try to continue producing on their own, but either way, if it gets produced, I will negotiate some cut of the proceeds from that. In the meantime, I’m getting an occasional lump sum for options.
Ed: Overall, would you take a lump sum or a percentage?
John: I assume it would be an ongoing percentage. That’s the only protection against if it does really well. You hear stories like, say, with Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess got paid $5,000 for an outright sale. That was it. Once the film did so well, Burgess sued and got a small percentage of the proceeds, but the main good news was that the film boosted the visibility of that novel and his other works..
Ed: When did Manhattan Transfer come out?
John: It was published in 1993. It was optioned even before publication, by the company led by Dodi Fayed. After his death and the options expired, I continued trying to sell it to Hollywood. At various times, we ran into hurdles. One was the release of the film Independence Day, which had some imagery that was a lot like what one might see in a film of MT.
Ed: When that happens, do you think that it’s just in the airwaves when you get an idea like that? We used to talk about, in the workshop, as soon as you had one of those “great” ideas, you knew a thousand other writers did too.
John: Right. Like a decade after Manhattan Transfer came out, Stephen King had his Under the Dome.
Ed: Hmm. You think he…
John: I heard that he started that before Manhattan Transfer. I don’t think there was any—
Ed: You mean, he didn’t call you? He should have called, “Hey, John, I’m going to use this.”
John: (Laughs) That’s just the luck of the draw.
Ed: You mentioned other hobbies and interests. You mentioned electronics. What else?
John: Photography. I’ll show you some of my cat pictures after we’re done.
Ed: Photography, what else?
John: I enjoy computers, you know, just trying out new programs. (Editor’s note: John has made his own computers.)
Ed: When I read reviews of your work, it talks about hard science. So, that’s something that is in your wheelhouse.
John: Right. And basically what that means to me is I try to make things believable. I try to do pretty thorough research.
Ed: Coupled with your physics background.
John: Right.
Ed: When I’m reading hard sci-fi, I always ask, would this pass muster with…David Dvorkin, (worked for NASA) or Wil McCarthy? Those science guys.
John: I’ve learned from both of those guys. Science-fiction readers are, as a group, very bright and very willing to call you out if they find mistakes.
Ed: Maybe we end with talking more about your latest publications.
John: Disavowed came out last year, and the Tiny Time Machine trilogy did also.
Ed: What’s your thumbnail on Disavowed?
John: It’s military science fiction. A starship medic is the sole survivor of a botched mission. He winds up a fugitive on a hostile planet, hoping to make his way home.
Ed: It was published by Amazing Selects. Did they do any marketing?
John: They did some. And they did a trailer recently.
Ed: Are you going to follow-up on the TTM trilogy?
John: I think I’m done with that series. Here, let me grab you a copy of Disavowed. And I think Karen has lunch for us.
About the interviewer: Ed McManis’ work has appeared in more than 70 publications including Coolest American Stories 2025. His most recent chapbooks are “The Zombie Family Takes a Selfie”, Bottlecap Press, and “Trash Truck 7:38 A.M. (And Other Love Poems”, Finishing Line Press. He, along with his wife, Linda, have published esteemed author Joanne Greenberg’s (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) memoir, On the Run. Little known trivia fact: he holds the outdoor free-throw record at Camp Santa Maria: 67 in a row.