Traveler of Worlds by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

A science fiction novel could reveal to me the richly conceived details and textured specifics of other beings in other spaces and times. Science fiction, in turn, fed back into the ongoing sense of discovery and possibility, in the anticipation of yet more changes. I believe this enjoyment derived in part from having lived in different countries as a child and having had, therefore, to perform similar mental manipulations in the real world. When I was thirteen and fourteen, and I started getting into science fiction in a serious way, I loved figuring out the “rules” of the extrapolated worlds any given story would take me to, the particularities of their invented cultures and philosophies.

One common element to many of these experiences was a deep desire to experience the new.

It has included love and domestic partnership, and travels to interesting places, and the transition from aspirational writer to budding professional. It has included graduating from high school and going on to earn a university science degree and making lifelong friends in the process. The journey has included moving from Germany to Spain, and then from Spain to California, and then several more moves within California (with another one in the works as we speak). Those two decades represent quite an odyssey, let me tell you. How did I get from that teen reader instantly fascinated by the literary world he’d discovered to the shaper of Traveler of Worlds? Image: Fairwood Press I discovered the work of Robert Silverberg with his book Nightwings, a beautiful collection of three interconnected novellas, in 1996, when I was seventeen.Ģ016 saw the publication of my book Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg, a collection of extended interviews in which I ask him about all manner of topics, including his love of art and food and travel, and, of course, his long and prolific writing career.

Instead, he’s talking about how a fellow science fiction author, Robert Silverberg, inspired him and what made him geek out enough to collect their conversations and interviews over the years into a book called Traveler of Worlds, which is now eligible to be nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work. Our author, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, isn’t talking about what inspired him to write a fictional work. This week’s Geek Speaks…Fiction! is a little different.

Traveler of Worlds by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro