With the release of the BBC Tripods series on DVD and the promise of an Alex Proyas film adaptation, I thought this interview with the trilogy’s prolific author, conducted in 1999, might be of interest. I’d never interviewed anyone before, and found Sam incredibly generous and a true gent.
Were you a fan of science fiction from an early age?
I started to find SF fascinating in the occasional story in more general boys’ magazines, then discovered the (I think) September ‘32 issue of Astounding and was totally hooked. Before that though I had been very fond of Coral Island and Swiss Family Robinson, both of which have characters with whom a boy can identify in - this is the important bit - exotic but at the same time possible settings. As I’ve often said, 30s SF offered extrapolation from current scientific thinking - not entirely and certainly not reliably, but one could fool oneself one might eventually find life on the planets in the way the Swiss Robinsons found that amazing (and quite impossible) variety of plants and wild life on that tiny Pacific island. I tell myself I turned away from SF when later scientific knowledge showed the solar system to be a barren emptiness and extra-planetary travel just wasn’t feasible. But I feel it was also like being through an intense love affair: the passion can’t be resurrected.
When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
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