In this Q&A with author David Goodman, learn how the atmosphere of Venus helped inspire his latest novelette “Hull Run,” from our [January/February issue, on sale now!]
Analog Editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
David Goodman: The original kernel of this story was from a piece of science writing about Venus, which noted that at a certain altitude, the pressure and temperature of the Venusian atmosphere is actually quite human-friendly (if you ignore the acid in the clouds and the lack of breathable oxygen). Then there was a throwaway line near the end about giant airships and the potential for extracting and refining gases from the Venusian atmosphere. That stuck in my head for a couple of years.
Then, like many SF writers, the next piece of the puzzle came from someone else’s work. I was watching “Love, Death & Robots” on Netflix. Season 2 has an episode called “Ice,” based on the short story of the same name by Rich Larson. Larson is a writer I first encountered when we were published in the same issue of Clarkesworld in 2021—I’ve since read a ton of his stuff and it’s consistently amazing. That story is about two brothers on a colony world who, on a dare, try to outrun a vast creature called a frostwhale that lives under the ice outside their company town.
So then I had two elements in my head—gas mining high in the Venusian atmosphere and teenagers doing what they do, which is stupid, dangerous dares. But I also wanted to say something about grief, about the complexities of honesty with our parents (and their honesty with us) and the relentless pressures of work and profit, even in the far future.
AE: Is this piece part of a greater universe of stories?
DG: Yes, I have a number of stories (very) loosely set in what could be the same universe, at different times and on different planets. My debut “Vegvísir” is a story about an Icelandic-descended geothermal surveyor, lost in a sandstorm on Mars. That’s essentially in the same universe as ‘Hull Run’. I also have another space story coming in a future issue of Analog that features shared-consciousness asteroid miners from the same roots as those in “Vegvísir,” but another century or so further on. Even my terrestrial short fiction, like “Such Is My Idea Of Happiness” in Clarkesworld last October, has a few shared references such as the names of companies and organisations. I haven’t done anything like a recurring character yet, though I may have plans in that direction. At the moment, these links are both a little treat for attentive readers who like my work, and a thin thread that ties the stories together in interesting ways. One day I’d like to collect a few of my near and mid-future SF pieces together in a way that might make those connections clearer.
AE: What is your process?
DG: This is probably my favourite question, because getting to a consistent process was really tough, but having a consistent writing process has been a game-changer. I‘ve been writing since my early teens but my process only became consistent in about 2019. I started out by writing every day for a month, mostly so I could prove to myself that I could do it. Then I had to admit to myself that the early morning is the only time I can consistently write. Our cats help by screaming to be fed, of course. I tried for years to write regularly at other times, but I just can’t do it. Which is vexing, because I’d quite like to get up a little later than I do now (half past five in the morning).
I write for 90 minutes every weekday. I used to also write on Saturdays, but that felt like homework and I would spend as much time procrastinating as writing, so now I’m a five-days-a-week guy. When I’m working on something new, I edit on Mondays and draft from Tuesday to Friday. On editing days, I’m usually tackling work that I wrote 2-3 weeks before that has come back from my critique partners, so I’ve got enough distance on it to do a decent line edit. Rinse and repeat for something like fifty weeks of the year and you can get a lot of things written. I average roughly about one and a half novels a year, plus three to five shorter pieces between novel drafts.
AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
DG: One of the advantages of writing very regularly and being incredibly boring about my routine is that I very rarely get the kind of crippling self-doubt that I used to deal with a few years ago. But I’ll still sometimes hit a scene or a chapter that doesn’t feel like it’s going in the right direction. When that happens, I follow a piece of advice that I can’t remember the origin of (I suspect it was Mary Robinette Kowal or Neil Gaiman) and go back about twelve pages, then re-read. What we feel as a “block” in the moment is actually our subconscious noticing an error or other issue that needs to be resolved to ensure the story makes sense. It’s weird how often I spot a glaring continuity error or logical inconsistency that breaks the story, almost exactly twelve pages back. I recommend trying it if something doesn’t feel right.
AE: What inspired you to start writing?
DG: My very first stories were probably school exercises, but I realised quite quickly that it was something I enjoyed doing and that adults seemed amazed by it. I tried writing my first ‘novel’ on the big family PC in the mid-nineties, banging away on a beige keyboard to produce 16,000 words of absolutely dreadful space battles loosely inspired by Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and, of course, Star Trek. I broadened my reading and writing after that, thankfully. I wrote a lot of short stories (mostly horror, strangely enough) at university, then tried my hand at submitting SF stories (by post!) in the early 2000s with no success. I then wrote novels for fifteen years (which taught me a lot) and started submitting SF stories again in 2020, with three stories published in Clarkesworld and now in Analog too. What might look a bit like a sudden flurry of published stories from me is really just fifteen years of learning followed by a lot of good fortune.
One of the advantages of writing very regularly and being incredibly boring about my routine is that I very rarely get the kind of crippling self-doubt that I used to deal with a few years ago. But I’ll still sometimes hit a scene or a chapter that doesn’t feel like it’s going in the right direction.
AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
DG: I write a lot, so there’s a fair amount on the cards. I have a dual career writing contemporary spy fiction and my debut novel will be coming out later this year with a Big 5 publisher. We haven’t announced it yet, so I can’t share much, but completing my edits on that draft is a big focus.
I’m also putting the finishing touches to a generation ship novel with the working title of Chronocosm. It’s the story of a young woman called Sylla who grew up on an ark ship, which reached its destination to discover humanity had invented FTL travel in the meantime and their planned home planet is already occupied. Sylla joins an organisation called Integration that is trying to find other ark ships and give them the good/bad news that their sacrifices out there in the Deep Black were unnecessary. Then they find an extraordinarily large ark ship of unknown design and shenanigans ensue. That will be out with my beta readers soon and shortly thereafter landing on my agent’s desk.
AE: If you could choose one SFnal universe to live in, what universe would it be, and why?
DG: Iain M. Banks’s Culture, no question. Although his stories take place at the ragged edges of his AI-managed utopia, the Culture sounds like an immensely fun place to live and a society where oppression and injustice are at a practical minimum. Plus it’s the only fictional place and time I can imagine ever having the lifespan and spare time to read all the books I want to read and write all the books I want to write.
AE: What are you reading right now?
DG: I’m currently reading the fantasy novel Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (after a sustained campaign by my friend Nick to get me to try it) and finding it absolutely fantastic. Next up is Terrible Worlds: Revolutions, a collection of dystopian novellas by Adrian Tchaikovsky that includes includes Ironclads, Firewalkers and Ogres. Can’t wait to get to that.
AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
DG: Go easy on yourself, but try to come up with a consistent routine that works for you. It’s very easy to beat yourself up for failing to meet word counts, or writing every day, or whatever particular yardstick you choose for yourself. But it doesn’t really help, it just makes you sad and demoralised.
What has made the difference for me over the last few years is focusing on how much time I commit to my writing rather than pure word counts. Plus ensuring I get back on the horse when I miss a day or two for whatever reason. It doesn’t really matter how many words you write on any given day. What matters is how many days of writing you stack up. You can write a surprisingly large number of words with a pretty small regular daily or weekly word count. Figure out what works with the time you have available, the metrics you find motivating and the goals you have for producing creative work, then just keep your fingers moving on the keyboard.
AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL…)
DG: I’m on Bluesky and Mastodon as @davegoodman, and you can still (just about) find me on Twitter as @WordsByGoodman. I also write a regular blog and newsletter, which you can read and subscribe to at my website – http://www.davidgoodman.net
The Astounding Analog Companion 