There’s always a worry when writing an alien invasion story that the aliens will be silly, no matter how hard you try to make them interesting. Alien invasion stories belong to a subgenre with a lot of history and expectation built into it. It’s very well-trod ground, so I kept asking myself what, besides aliens, this story was supposed to be about.

Like a lot of people I’m attracted by the aesthetics of steampunk. It appeals to the anglophile and costumer in me. Also, big unlikely machines, ray guns, and all kinds of weirdness.

Conrad is a big influence in my writing—not his style or technique, but his sense of the moral forces governing our lives—and I have acknowledged that many times by giving my characters and even my stories names out of his work.

I wish I could say I was smart enough to make intentional choices when I write. But the choices actually come from my subconscious as the story is developing.

Norse-Wild West it is indeed; in addition to the small-town decay going on in the Spring, I wanted to highlight how a town can often lock out the world around it, if its concerns are all of itself.

I wrote this story in 1979, when the whole Fermi question was a hot topic and we’d come to realize that the O’Neill colony ideas of that era implied that people might well live in space indefinitely. I just put the two together.

Several years ago my wife gave me good writing advice—stop trying so hard to outguess editors and write something you’d enjoy reading, whether or not you think it can sell.

The ending gave me fits for ages and I still don’t know if I’m entirely pleased with it, but I think it ends honestly and seems to work for most people. I’m at peace with it, anyway.

The internet and social media have had a huge impact in establishing a global perspective; no matter how much a country might try to control these media, it’s never going to work—the people will tweet.

I had actually read some article once in a magazine that said women responded more to men who had symmetrical faces, which just seemed bizarre and awfully hard to track.