Starfarer’s Cafe recently sat down to talk with science fiction author Daniel Sansom, whose short story The Last Anḗr recently appeared in Starfarer’s Cafe. Sanson is a science fiction writer from Canada living in Europe and the author of Slide-Backers: an essay on the experiences of the cohort of delusional time travelers. His short fiction has appeared in The Accidental Time Travelers Collective III, Qwerty, Rampike, Iron Magazine, Alpha Beat Soup, and was a winner of the Tickled by Thunder fiction contest. 

Q: How do you first get into writing science fiction?
I caught the scribbling bug as a teenager living in suburban Toronto to fend off the tedium. They were often fantasy/scifi stories, and/or surreal and nightmarish. Unfortunately, I then got diverted into literary fiction, which was a mistake. Now, older and wiser (ok, just older), I have returned to science fiction and fantastika.  

Q: Which science fiction authors, novels and short stories are your favorites?
Jose Saramago’s Blindness is, I think, the greatest novel ever written. For short stories, Jorge Luis Borges is the master. I also read a lot of Kafka, Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, etc. They are not always on the SciFi shelf, however. Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness is a great novel, one of the best ever written (scifi or otherwise), although I sometimes think The Dispossessed is better. Jeff Vandermeer’s Dead Astronauts is a bewildering and intriguing masterpiece. Also on my ultimate list is PDK, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cixin Liu, Kurt Vonnegut, H. G. Wells…

Q: For folks who haven’t read your work, how do you describe what you write? 
It is often challenging, weird, surreal, sometimes erotic, and always tinkering with metaphysical ideas and concepts. What rarely happens is what could be described as action scenes. In The Last Aner, the scene where Kalli hits Bora across the head with a chair is the most action-packed sequence I have ever written. No wonder my Hollywood agent keeps threatening to drop me.  

Q: What are the things you tend to write about or focus on – and has that changed throughout your time as a writer?
I stumble across things I wrote decades ago and am surprised how little it’s changed. It worries me actually. Identity seems to be a constant concern; it is this curious impression that seems so tangible until you examine it and then you discover it’s a slimy mass of eels that refuse to take any shape. Otherwise, to quote David Bowie, “I feel that I’ve consistently written about the same subjects for 35…nearly 40 years. There’s really been no change with me. It’s all despondency, despair, fear, isolation, abandonment.” Except for me, it’s been 45…nearly 50 years.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for your latest short story in Starfarer’s Cafe?
This was a dream, which for me is unique. Not the dreaming, but story ideas I get while dreaming upon waking usually dissolve into incomprehensible rubbish. Now, some might say this fits that description exactly, but it made sense at the time.  

Q: Are any of the characters in that story based on real people?
No more than usual.

Q: What, for you, are the most difficult aspects of writing short stories?
It’s so much fun I often dance about on my desk scattering pages and breaking things. If the story is really fun, I’ll keep working and dancing on it for years and years. That makes it, as a financial venture, utterly hopeless.

Q: Describe the process you use for writing.
Apart from the dancing on the desk, pretty much the usual.

Q: What do you wish more people knew about science fiction?
Its variety and depth. That message gets lost when the field is awash with vampires, zombies, and cannibals.

Q: What are you working on now?
A few short stories are being polished (see above). And a novel, entitled Dreams of the African River Martin. It is a dark not-so-distant future dystopian tale. The problem is that after writing some bleak scenario, I read the news and realise the nightmare is just around the corner, not a hundred years off, and I need to make it darker. I may need to add zombies or a few cannibals.