Aerospace engineer/startup founder Wil McCarthy, formerly of WIRED and the SyFy channel, has won the Prometheus award once and the AnLab award twice. He’s been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and Discover Magazine rated his world of “P2/Sorrow” one of the 10 best fictional planets of all time. He has appeared in Analog and Asimov’s, and his bestselling novels include New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com “Best of Y2K” THE COLLAPSIUM, and most recently, BEGGAR’S SKY.
He has also written for TV and video games, and published copious nonfiction.
McCarthy holds 31 issued U.S. patents.
If you had to survive in a fantasy world with only the contents of your fridge, what would be your game plan?
Ooh, tough one. I’ve recently become a bachelor again, so my fridge is full of non-nutritious stuff like pickles, mustard, and expired mayonnaise. I think my best bet would be to burn the food for warmth and use the fridge itself as a boat. Travel downriver to somewhere that needs an aerospace engineer, then sell the fridge to a blacksmith as scrap metal. Also, can I learn magic? I would definitely do that. I would not go out and fight monsters. I don’t do that here on Earth, and it seems like a good policy generally.
If you had to describe your writing style using a fantasy-themed board game, which game would you choose and why?
Not Settlers of Catan, hopefully! When I get stumped, I do sometimes randomize my thought process with dice or randomly selected dictionary words, so… maybe Boggle? I also work from an outline, though, so perhaps a better analogy would be a D&D module where you kind of know what’s going to happen, but the players also have minds of their own.
If you had to choose one of your books to be turned into a cheesy made-for-TV movie, which one would it be and who would you want to play the lead roles?
Definitely MURDER IN THE SOLID STATE. It’s the only one that could really work with a low budget and questionable production values. As for lead roles, I’d love to say a young Wil Wheaton, a young Christina Ricci, and a young Christian Slater, with maybe LeBron James as the FBI agent. Also, pointless voiceovers by Morgan Freeman to class it up a bit.
If you could have any sci-fi gadget in real life, what would it be and what practical uses would you have for it?
I would love to have a chunk of wellstone — the programmable matter from my Queendom of Sol series — because it can become almost anything. I’d use it as my cell phone, Kindle, solar power bank, microscope, and hypercomputer / AI companion. In a pinch, also a hand grenade, though only once!
If you could alter any one single natural law, what would it be and how would you change it?
Not a law per se, but I would dearly love to swap the positions of Mars and Venus in the Solar System. This would not immediately make either planet habitable, but it would make the terraforming job about a hundred times easier. If I actually did have the power to change natural laws, I would probably shoot myself and save the universe, because even very tiny changes would obliterate everything we know and hold dear.
Which trope of science fiction (phasers, transporters, time machines, much more) would you like to see put into our own reality? And how would you use it in a mundane way?
Time machines would eff everything up, and phasers are not much different than the ways we kill each other already. Teleportation, though! That could radically change society, and mostly for the better, especially if there were safety protocols preventing hazardous objects or materials from being teleported. Most mundane use? Teleporting restaurant food directly to the table beside my couch, so I never have to get up at all.
Of his forthcoming release, Wil McCarthy writes –
BEGGAR’S SKY, scheduled to be released on February 6th, is an alien first-contact novel unlike any other. Against a backdrop of corporate intrigue, rumors abound that Renz Venture, Inc. has made contact with… something. But when a mysterious ship is dispatched to the edge of the Solar System, carrying a cargo of 100 frozen scientists and diplomats, the intrigues of cislunar space may devolve into outright warfare. This was a fun book to write, and hopefully a fun one to read as well!
He can be found on Facebook and his website is located at www.wilmccarthy.com.
