Timecaster
An Informal Q & A with Joe KonrathQ:You're known for thrillers and horror novels. What made you write Science Fiction?Joe:Sci-fi is the most fun to write. There are no boundaries. If I can think it up, I can write about it. I had such a great time writing the Timecaster books. Q:What's the tone of the series?Joe:We've all read about dystopian futures where the government is terrible and everything is gray and no one is happy. I went in the other direction. My future is bright and green and truly a utopia... until everything goes to hell.Q:You have a lot of humor in these.Joe:Yes. They're funny. I laughed so hard while writing these that twice I pissed my spleen out.Q:What does a spleen actually do?Joe:I have no idea. But lemme tell you, the only thing worse than peeing out your spleen is shoving it back in.Q:These books feature some graphic sex...Joe:Hell yeah! In the future, prostitution is legal. So are drugs. It's utopia, remember? Smoke up and get naked.Q:Why did the sex have to be so gratuitous?Joe: Have you ever had sex? It's always gratuitous. That's the point. Don't be so prude. Open your mind up. Sex is natural, and normal, and a part of life.Q:The sex in these books isnotnormal.Joe: Save that talk for church, Mr. Puritan. And while you're there, feel free to pray for my soul. But it won't help.Q:How do these books tie in with your other, non-science fiction titles?Joe:I have a cop character named Jack Daniels who has been in a bunch of my books. Talon, the hero of the Timecaster series, is Jack's grandson. So Jack and various other characters from my other books appear in the Timecaster books.If you like my other books, you'll like Timecaster, even though it is futuristic. If you like Timecaster, you'll like my other books, even though they aren't futuristic.It's strange that the fans of each don't do more cross-over reading. I'm the same writer, folks. I'm going to entertain you whether the year is 1995 or 2064.Q:Who is Joe Kimball?Joe:I used a pen name for my horror books, Jack Kilborn. When Timecatser first came out, I used the pen name Joe Kimball. That was a mistake. They should have been published under JA Konrath. So I killed Kimball. He died well, even though his funeral was poorly attended.Q:These books have a lot of science and gadgets in them. Is any of it based on fact?Joe:Some of it. Some I just made up. But I love thinking about how the world will improve in the future, and what cool new stuff man will be able to do. So I get to play with space elevators and Tesla fields and nanotech and transhumanism and parallel universes and talking dinosaurs and giant squids and green roofs and all sorts of fun things. Q:When is the third book, Timecaster Steampunk going to be available?Joe:Not until the first two books earn five hundred billion dollars.You hear that, Timecaster fans? If you want the new book, you need to tell everyone you know to buy the first two. If that doesn't work out, I'm thinking 2014 sometime...--This text refers to theAudio CDedition.