Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

Stephen Baxter's Home Page

[Cybling] folks...join me in welcoming Stephen Baxter
[Cybling] Stephen Baxter has a degree in mathematics, has research in engineering, worked in teaching and computing.
[Cybling] He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Seiun Award and the Sidewise Award and is a full time author.
[Cybling] If you have questions for our guest, please just ask. But please, let the guest answer one question before you ask another.
[Cybling] Stephen...you just mentioned offline that you try...
[Cybling] to do all of the worldcons.
[Cybling] how's this worldcon treating you?
[Baxter] It's been very good. Great dealers' room, very friendly and knowledgeable fans.
[Baxter] My only regret is that I am only here for a few days so won't see much of Chicago.
[Baxter] But I want to go see Sue the tyrranosaur.
[Cybling] Oh...btw Stephen...we're all aware that you're sitting on two chairs at a dinner size table typing on an unfamiliar laptop. Don't worry about possible typos. We expect them as proof this is a *live* chat.
[Kimmo] Also gives us an excuse to fooouull uppp as much as we wanntt!
* Kimmo grins
[Cybling] The Sue exhibit has been quite popular.
[Cybling] lol Kimmo.
[Cybling] Thank you.
[Baxter] When writing I type very badly and rely on the spellcheck a lot.
[Kimmo] What's this exhibit? Take pity on a poor finn who can't be there?
[Baxter] But I always take off the grammar check options.
[Baxter] I believe Sue is the most complete T Rex ever found.
[Baxter] Does that say Finn? I was just in Helsinki.
[Cybling] Stephen...your bio has a lot of mentions of awards...but nothing about the books you may have out right now or in the publishing pipeline.
[Kimmo] Ahh. Yes, indeed. I'm in Finland. The Aaland islands.
[Baxter] Currently out I have three books. Hard sf called SPACE from Del Rey, softer sf calleed SILVERHAIR from Harper.
[Baxter] And The LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS, collab with Arthur C Clarke, from Tor.
[Baxter] I've been busy.
[Cybling] If you have questions for our guest, please just ask. But please, let the guest answer one question before you ask another.
[Cybling] you most certainly have been busy.
[Kimmo] Do you support yourself with writing, then?
[Baxter] We were guests at Finnconn. We had a week in a cabin by the lakes near Puumala.
[Baxter] Then a week in Helsinki. Great.
[Kimmo] Ahh. I missed that con entirely. I'm not really a con-animal I think. I was to one last summer in Stockholm, my first and thus far only.
[Baxter] Yes I support myself, but only the last 5 years. We saved, paid off the house loan, etc.
[Baxter] My ambition was always to write, but not be poor!
[Kimmo] Yeah, being poor has little to recommend it, I find!
* Kimmo grins
[Baxter] I went to Stockholm in June for a con called Confuse. Great fun.
[Cybling] I see that all three books are out from "american" publishers. Is there a reason for that?
[Kimmo] Uh
[Baxter] I'm usually publiushed first in Britain, then in the US, and around the world.
[Baxter] I have two books in Finnish! Silverhair and Longtusk.
[Cybling] Ah...so these three books were published in the UK first?
[Kimmo] I have friends who were at confuse, but I wasn't there myself.
[Baxter] Al excpt the Clarke book. There was a big fight among the publishers about who would do 1st edition.
[Baxter] The AMericans won that time!
[Cybling] LOL.
[Cybling] Yes we do that occasionally.
[Cybling] LOL...we've decided not to get into that one online.
[Cybling] Okay...I didn't see a mention of a trip to Sri Lanka...
[Cybling] so I'm assuming that you collaborated with Clarke via the internet?
[Baxter] Yep. I met him once years ago. But for the book it was mostly email and a few phone calls.
[Baxter] He is over 80 and a bit frail. But he does travel. There are many places that want to see him next year, 2001!
* Kimmo grins
[Cybling] Yes, I hope he can make it to the states for the WorldCon next year.
[Baxter] What are the islands like? We didn't get that far.
[Kimmo] Once the inevitable happens (a long time from now hopefully) all three of my childhood favourite writers will be gone.
[Kimmo] Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.
[Kimmo] The islands are pretty darn cool, if I say so myself.
[Baxter] He's really pretty robust but he has nervous system problems. And he is very active.
[Kimmo] At least in the summertime. The winters are not as much fun.
[Baxter] I think he;ll be around fior a good few years yet.
[Kimmo] Stop by sometime, I'll find you a cabin out by the sea. ;)
[Baxter] We saw an exhibit of Finnish art. Looked pretty gloomy!
[Cybling] Well Kimmo, I think the answer to your problem is right here. it's time to get to know some new authors like Stephen.
* Kimmo laughs and agrees with Cybling
[Kimmo] Yeah... we finns can be a bit introverted I guess :)
[Baxter] Our cabin was very cool, calm, peaceful. We felt human after 2 days.
[Baxter] But nobody was iontroverted in Helsinki!
[Kimmo] Well, helsinki is a metropolis, you have to get into the deep dark woods
[Cybling] Stephen..."Hard sf called SPACE from Del Rey, softer sf calleed SILVERHAIR from Harper."
* Kimmo laugsh
[Cybling] Can I ask you how you define that?
[Cybling] Soft or hard sf that is.
[Baxter] SILVERHAIR is aboutmammoths, trold from their point of view. Anthropomorphic.
[Cybling] Cool.
[Baxter] But I tried to make them real animals (except they talk!).
[Baxter] Ironivcally there were no mammoths in Finland. They lived near theice, like in England, but not on it.
[Baxter] And Finland was pretty much frozen over back then.
[Kimmo] It's pretty much frozen over now in the wintertime....
[Kimmo] How about the other novel you mentioned, Space?
[Kimmo] Sounds more like my kind of book
[Baxter] Everybody in Finland had mobile phones and the internet. Must be cool for a scattered population.
[Kimmo] Heh... yes, I have a mobile phone and just sold my pocket computer... that was internet capable. I'm trading up. ;)
[Baxter] SPACE is about a universe full of aliens. But it turns out there is a regular extinctyion mechaniusm.
[Baxter] The Galaxy gets wiped clean every so often. Which is why we don't see aliens now.
[Baxter] But the humans figure out how to fix it. That's Americans for you!!
[Cybling] So anthropomorphizing "real" animals and giving them voice introduces a fantasy element that "softens" the SF?
[Cybling] lol
[Baxter] Yes. Stricly fantasy I guess. If a mammoth coulod talk it wouldn't be a mammoth.
[Kimmo] One of these days I want to see a book where the FINNS save the day... I have it, aliens realize the Sauna is the ultimate expression of human culture and decide not to wipe us out after all
[JELEINEN] Is SPACE available in paperback? Sounds interesting.
[Cybling] but space deals with alien non-human sentients...and since they're off planet that's makes it hard? Or is there a further difference in the style in which you write the two?
[Baxter] In my next novel I am considering primitive humans. How they lived. Different points of view.
[Baxter] Space is just out in hardback in Britain. Its prequel TIME is ion paperback. PB next year.
[Baxter] The sauna, yeah. We had our own private one. We got addicted. We came home pink.
[Cybling] Ah! There's a prequel. Is Time and Space part of a trilogy or series?
[Cybling] HoLD QUESTIONS
[Baxter] Yes, a big difference in style, tho I don't look out ffom the aliens' eyes.
[Baxter] The big difference is they are smarter than us. Hard to write about!
[Cybling] Ah.
[Baxter] The series is called MANIFOILD: SPACE, TIME and ORIGIN.
[Baxter] ORIGIN is the one about the prinmitive humans.
[Baxter] In TIME we are alone in the universe. We rebuild it to make it more hospitable to life.
[Baxter] That's Americans for you.
[Cybling] Yes...it's possible to "think down" a little more difficult the other way around.
[Cybling] LOL.
[Kimmo] Amazon link to Stephens books
[Cybling] Thank you Kimmo.
[Baxter] Thank you.
[Baxter] Thiunking upm is a lot hardr. How do you write about somebody smarter than you?
[Cybling] Stephen, I see that you've won the Sidewise Award, which was set up by this year's...
[Cybling] program director, Steven Silver, for alternate history books.
[Cybling] For which book?
[Baxter] Yep. I won it twice, for a shoet and a novbel. It's a nice award. Steven is an expert.
[Baxter] The novel was VOYAGE. The Americans go on to Mars after Apollo, instead of trashing the space program.
[Baxter] They reach Mars in 1986, instead of having Challenger. Very poignant I think.
[Baxter] I did a lot of research atr NASA for that book. They liked it!
[Kimmo] Sounds like a preferrable history to ours allright
[Cybling] He certainly is, and is managing to keep us all from going crazy this year at the convention.
[Cybling] Folks...we've kept Stephen out here for a hole half hour....
[Baxter] Well, there are always costs. We don't send the probes to Jupiter and beyiond for example.
[Baxter] But yes I'd have likeds to have seen it. Maybe the first human on Mars will be Finnish.
[Cybling] tell you what...why don't we get him back out for a chat in the future so he can poke fun at us americans a little more and tell us more about his work?
[Kimmo] You never know, but I somehow doubt it. :)
[Baxter] I love Ameriocans. They buy my books!
[Cybling] LOL.
[Cybling] Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon Stephen.
[Cybling] Hope you enjoy the rest of the Con.
* Cybling applauds
[Kimmo] Yeah, have a great con
[Baxter] Thank you. Hei hei (goodbye in Finnish!).
[Kimmo] Hei vaan!