An Interview With... Myself?

Available at all good bookshops, and Amazon!

With the release of my new book, The Pincers of Death, I am delighted to have as my guest... me.

Q: Hello. How are you?

A: Er, fine, I suppose. Probably about as well as you are.

Q: So, a sixth book about Isambard Smith. Looking back, how's it all gone?

A: Pretty well, thanks! I've achieved the dream of being published, which is really something. I've hugely enjoyed writing the books, and I've met loads of great people through them - not least, discovering the UK's steampunk scene. I'd like to be richer, of course, and I'd like to be doing other, more serious, writing as well as the Smith books. But it's been brilliant, really.

Q: How carefully do you plan what you're going to write? And is the plot secondary to the jokes, or vice versa?

A: As the stories have gone on, both the setting and the structure of the books has tightened up. Space Captain Smith is a much more freewheeling sort of book than A Game Of Battleships. At that early point, I was happy to do all kinds of things to get a joke in. Now I'm more careful about the world-building. I'm very careful about the jokes, too. Often they hinge on one word, so they have to be written just right to work properly. You have to get the tone right, and you can't have people acting out of character.

Q: So there's a kind of consistency, then?

A: Yes. I didn't want to write the sort of totally wacky, surreal comedy where anything can happen so long as it's funny, like the Airplane films. There's a kind of insane internal logic to the Space Captain Smith world. You could write a guidebook to Smith's universe. While it would be mad, it wouldn't contradict itself.

Q: Are you writing satire, then?

A: Not really. It's more parody than anything else - nothing as grand as satire. That said, sometimes a sort of crude satire is inevitable. You can't really write about an idiotic tinpot dictator without including shades of Mussolini and Donald Trump, for instance, because they have those stereotypical attributes. I tend to find that most of my targets are extremists of one sort or another, and they have a lot of overlapping characteristics, both with each other and with real life maniacs. I think there are a fair few people out there (usually powerful ones) who would gladly side with the Ghasts, purely because the Ghasts are so vicious.

Q: Several times in the books, the characters refer to an "over-empire" or tyrannical world government in the past. Is there a detailed future history for the Smith novels?

A: Only a very vague one. I imagine that everything got much worse, and that some kind of bland tyranny controlled the world (and perhaps the Solar System) for a while, before it splintered into the various nations we see in the book. Smith's Britain and many other countries are having something of a Renaissance (in a backward, insular way!). Of course, if I ever sell the film rights and make a fortune, I'll claim that I had every detail of the books worked out from the very beginning. That seems to be the done thing.

Q: Will there be more adventures for Isambard Smith?

A: I hope so. I'm very wary of doing the same thing to death, however. Everyone remembers a comedy series that started off really well and just went on too long. I'd hate for the Smith books to end up like that. I think it would be interesting to write about some of the secondary characters. It would enable me to introduce a slightly different tone, and to spoof particular things. I reckon a book about Wainscott would be fun, and would be a great chance to parody that "Best super-soldiers evah!" thing you see in some military SF. But Smith isn't done yet...

Q: Well, thanks for letting me interview you, me.

A: My invoice is in the post.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pincers-Death-Space-Captain-Smith/dp/1910183245

https://www.waterstones.com/book/pincers-of-death/toby-frost/9781910183243