One of the primary influences for this story was a recent trip to Indonesia. While I experienced nothing like Trenchtown in my travels, the smells, sounds and sights of Indonesia permeate “Thief of Futures.”

The long debate over the long-range fate of the universe is still unsettled. For a while the notion of a Cyclical Cosmos reigned … that eventually the Big Bang’s expansion would peter out and gravity would pull everything back into a Big Crunch.

I’m fascinated by unorthodox sexuality and the changes we put ourselves through for our loved ones. So I wanted to write about a guy dating aliens, which leads to the question, “Why would aliens want to date a human?”

My guess is that most people who have held down a day job in a corporate atmosphere will recognize something of Mori with very little trouble.

I didn’t want to do any medical research, either, in case my idea of losing all your memories when you went to sleep turned out not to be possible. Turns out it is possible, which is a relief.

I envisioned this newly formed species standing around, not knowing what to value, how to go about creating their own culture and norms after their mission was complete.

I usually start a story believing I’m writing about one thing. But as the story unwinds, I usually find, a couple pages in, that I’m actually writing about something else entirely.

One of my colleagues wrote about was the idea of “requickening,” which, to vastly oversimplify, was the thought that by taking on a saint’s name, a convert also took on a part of that saint’s identity.

We all face loss, and we all face how cold and harsh reality can be at times. To see or feel that this is shared by all of us is powerful, even through as simple a vehicle as a science fiction story.