Glenn: I'd just like to ask a few questions about your new novel Terminal World. There is a few unanswered questions at the end of the book. Are you planning a sequel? I'd like to know more about the Mire and The Eye of God, and a few other things, like whats beyond Spearpoint, will Curtana pilot a starship etc.

Alastair: No plans for a sequel, certainly not right now. I suspect I write the kinds of ending that often look like a sequel is intended, even when that's emphatically not the case. I like open-ended books, the sense of the narrative carrying on into the future.

Glenn: I understand that you plan to write the first book in another series next, the 11K . So if theres a sequel in the woks, we have to wait?

Certainly nothing will happen until I've completed the 11K trilogy, which I don't want to break away from until it's done. And even then I may look at something new or return to one of my other universes. I will probably feel like doing another Revelation Space book at some point. I'm not ruling out a sequel to TW, certainly, but it's not in my planning at the moment.

Glenn: A new RS novel is certainly good news for a lot of your fans. Were you inspired by New Weird or/and Steam Punk, when you wrote Terminal World? If so, any specific books you think of?

I was influenced by lots of things: Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun and so on), China Mieville, Liz Williams, many films - Delicattessan, Dark City, Max Max, westerns and so on. Far future SF of the likes of Clarke's The City and the Stars, a perennial influence. I think there's quite a bit in the mix. I also read a great book on airships several years ago: Doctor Eckener's Dream Machine (Douglas Botting) which I think helped me with this book.

Glenn: Reading your blog and homepages, it sounds like you have a lot of ideas and works in progress. Do you feel tied up by having plans for several years, or do you feel free to change around if new and better ideas pop up?

I don't feel constrained in any way, I'm happy to say. Each book has been somewhat different to the last and I've always found the time to write short fiction, which keeps things fresh. I can be doing nuts and bolts hard SF about space travel in the book, playing with alternate history in a story, sometimes on the same day. The only thing that has changed of late is that the multi-book contract has given me the space to think about doing a trilogy, which also coincided with my ambition to do something big and optimistic about spaceflight and exploration.

Well, that's all for now. Thank you for a wonderful new novel. Now that I've finished it, my wife can talk to me again...

Glenn Petersen

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