I had a such a good time talking to K.M. Jenkins for her author interview, that I’ve decided to do a whole lot more of them! I find it really fascinating to learn what other authors find interesting and what inspires them to write!
Tell us about yourself! What would you like readers to know about you?
I’m an English professor and a family man. My perfect day includes writing 500 words, reading for a couple hours, adventuring at the park with my daughter, and having good discussions with my students about stories. I’m not your Harlan Ellison type, driving around in a muscle car and skidding to a stop to jump out for a fight. I’m a passivist, permanently in lecture mode, endlessly analyzing. Everything is a theory.
What book or books have most influenced you as a writer?
Let me start by apologizing here as I tend to try to think in syllabus format as a result of my profession. The books I’ve listed could best be organized into three different classes: Classic Science Fiction; Cyberpunk Literature; Postmodernism.
Classic Science Fiction:
Contact by Carl Sagan; 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke; The Space Merchants by Kornbluth and Pohl; The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Cyberpunk Literature:
Islands in the Net, Distraction and Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling; Neuromancer by William Gibson; Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson; Software by Rudy Rucker;
Postmodernism:
Simulacra and Simulation and America by Jean Baudrillard; The Original Accident and Pure War by Paul Virilio; The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland by Thomas Pynchon; White Noise by Don DeLillo; Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson
What are you doing to de-stress during the pandemic? Is there any coping mechanism you’d recommend?
I get outside.
“Have you reckoned the earth much?” —Walt Whitman
It’s a rhetorical question. A rich life is a life outdoors, even if it’s just in your backyard. One of the secrets to living well is to connect with nature. I tend to live in my own head a lot, so getting out helps me get to a place of mindfulness. You go out and look at a massive tree, watch the breeze gently play with the branches. The ruffling leaves look like ocean waves or maybe they just look like leaves, either way it’s beautiful. You spend some time thinking about the longevity of a tree. Trees common to Kentucky can hit two or three hundred years. It’s rare to find anything that old now, but they have the potential for it. There’s awe there. Feeling awe is good for the human spirit. So, by day I feel awe for the trees, the shape of hills, and then by night, you can stargaze and get tangled in the mystery of time and space.
Do you like playing video games? What’s your favorite game right now? Has a video game ever influenced you as a writer?
Absolutely! I’m typically drawn to strategy games. I’m not sure if chess counts, but I’ve played it online off and on for decades now, ever since Yahoo.com created an online gaming platform. My favorite games in recent years are Faster Than Light, Cardhunter, and Sins of a Solar Empire. Though I’m more likely to run an emulator to play something weirdly old like Castles II, Out of This World, or Top Gear 3000. Abandonware is forever.
Two of my books, Tower Defender and tae-kwon-GO, my work in progress, feature video games played in virtual reality and augmented reality. I’ve never played those types of games myself, but the competitive nature of online gaming as well as the community building that takes place in an online game have given me a lot to draw on in my books.
Tower Defender by Joseph Hurtgen, interviewed by Alexis Lantgen at LunarianPress.com
What advice do you have for other writers or people just getting started in writing?
Read as much as you can. Not just fiction either. Read books about the craft of writing. Read grammar books. Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences helped me a lot. So did Constance Hale’s Sin and Syntax. I like some advice that I recently read from William Gibson. Take care of your gums, he said. Finally, enjoy your life. Even if no one else in the world knows what you’re up to, don’t let that stop you from enjoying your own creative process and the art you make.
How do you choose what books you want to read?
I’m a little insane with books. I’m a book hunter. I horde the things and simultaneously try to read everything, particularly science fiction, philosophy, political science, and works that academia loosely calls theory. As often as possible, I’ll read Nebula and Hugo award winners and nominated works. Those books aren’t necessarily my favorite, but they provide a good window for the development and alterity of the genre. As far as more scholarly works I read, I follow the yellow brick road of citations. Scholarly writers are forever citing other thinkers, other writers. So, you read Jean Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Happen and he mentions Paul Virilio. That becomes the next read.
What technology or innovations or scientific discoveries have inspired your work?
Brain to computer interfaces have my interest piqued. Funny enough, this technology is part of our archive of past futures. If you go back 35 years to Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix, he talks about two distinct types of human life extension therapies or modes, perhaps. The mechanist and shaping modes. Mechanists turn the body into a human/cyborg hybrid. Whereas, shapers use genetic interventions to alter bodies from the inside out. If humanity doesn’t impale itself on various manmade extinction events in the next century, then the human experience will most likely be very different. Namely, we’ll hit the medical singularity, the point when medical interventions successively extend human life by one year, meaning that barring serious traffic accidents or Highlander-esque swordfighting competitions, you can live forever. We’ll be fitted together with a lot of vacuum tubes and chrome, but we’ll benefit from living in unison with ten generations of family rather than three or four. The downside is that family get-togethers will get pretty expensive.
Joseph Hurtgen, author of Tower Defender and Sherman, interviewed by Alexis Lantgen at LunarianPress.com
Find out more about Joseph Hurtgen:
Blog: Rapid Transmission
Books: Sherman and Tower Defender
Twitter: @JosephHurtgen