Q & A with James Robert Herndon (fiction, ’11)
An excerpt from Q & A with James Robert Herndon (fiction, ’11), published at The Astounding Analog Companion:
Q & A with James Robert Herndon
Our readers were introduced to new Analog contributor James Robert Herndon with his short story “Eulogy for an Immortal” in our current issue [on sale now]. Read on to discover how the story came to be and where James finds his inspiration.
Analog Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
JRH: “Eulogy for an Immortal” came from a union of two things.
The first thing was that I had just discovered woodworking and loved it. For people who spend a lot of time in their heads, finding a tactile hobby you enjoy can be so pleasurable that it becomes all-consuming. There was a brief period in which I looked at almost everything through a woodworker’s lens. Could I build a chair even more comfortable than the one I was sitting in? Could I build new kitchen cabinets out of scrap materials? Could I build an addition to the house all by myself? A few months later, at the Clarion West Writers Workshop, I decided to write a story about a more extreme version of that mania and how it could affect other people. I had a long conversation with my classmate M. Huw Evans about whether or not it might be possible to make plastic using the approach described in the story, and if so, what the process would be. (Any chemistry errors are entirely my own.)
[…continue reading here]
