Fantastic Metropolis

Rick Klaw: Your novels have a manic pace, do you write quickly? How long does it typically take you to write a novel?

Steve Aylett: I don’t write quickly, and for bits of time I don’t write at all. I don’t have a daily schedule or any of that. A book takes about a year. The book turns up as an entire pre-formed thing in my head, a sort of visual object with a feeling to it, then it’s a case of writing the book which will make that shape. It’s usually like a glob of multicolored chiming vibrational bubble gum with structures pushed through it, and it feels like heart sherbet. There’s about ten of those book shapes floating in a holding formation at the moment. It’s up to me whether to take the dictation or not, after all, and at the moment I’m just letting a lot of them hang. Especially as people would rather pay for Tom fucking Wolfe and walk around as empty as porcelain.

Rick Klaw: Are any of your works optioned for film? Would you like to see a book of yours filmed? If so by who?

Steve Aylett: I’m chatting to someone about The Crime Studio and that whole Beerlight thing. And it would be nice to see something like Shamanspace filmed. It’s got a pretty straight story to it, really. But, dammit, it’s still got those pesky ideas…

Steve Aylett’s LINT is scheduled for a May 2005 release by Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Rick Klaw is the author of Geek Confidential: Echoes from the 21^st Century, currently available from MonkeyBrain Books. As a freelance editor, former book buyer, managing editor, and bookstore manager, Rick has experience with most aspects of the book business. Currently, he is an internet collectible sales specialist for Half Price Books, where he gets to actually fondle the books that are kept behind the glass.