I grew up devouring every science fiction, fantasy, and even-remotely-weird book I could get my hands on, so it’s not a complete surprise that I would end up writing science fiction, myself. What may be surprising is that I don’t read that much of it anymore. Not even the wonderful, mind-bending stuff that can be had at a touch of a button these days (not all of it, anyway— I loved 14, by Peter Clines; 11/22/63 by Stephen King; and Spoonbenders, by Daryl Gregory; The Border, by Robert McCammon).
I used to feel like a real jerk for not reading extensively in my own field. What the heck happened? But it didn’t take too much soul-searching to figure out the problem. I work in the SF field. When I read fiction, I want to goof off. And the best way to do that is to read a different genre. Mystery fits the bill perfectly—it’s still nicely weird, and it uses its own form of the scientific method to solve problems. The characters are heroes or anti-heroes (or some interesting point on that spectrum) engaged in an age-old battle to maintain the balance. Shazam! Sign me up for Audible (my favorite format)!
I couldn’t give you the numbers, but my impression is that at least as many mystery novels are written every year as science fiction/fantasy novels, so I usually have a wide range of talented writers to choose from when I’m using my monthly credit for a new audio book. But I do have my favorite characters, and I’ll buy a book about them without a second thought.
