Featured Interview With Clayton Graham
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in the cobbled streets of Stockport, near Manchester UK, and some years later graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Salford University in 1966 having attained a Student Apprenticeship with English Electric Aviation.
Following retirement, I settled in Victoria, Australia in 1982. I have always had an interest in Science Fiction and where it places humankind within the universe we are now just starting to explore. I grew up with the ‘old school’ science fiction written by authors such as HG Wells, Jules Verne and John Wyndham. Also the works of Isaac Asimov.
‘Milijun’ is my debut novel, but there are further adventures to come.
I love animals, including well behaved pets, and all the natural world, and am a member of Australian Geographic. I’m sure I would like alien animals, too.
When I am not writing, walking, travelling, or gardening, I enjoy fine food with family, friends and five energetic grandchildren.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Science Fiction is a love of mine, has been since I was a teenager, escaping to new worlds in the back streets of Stockport, England, where I grew up. Halcyon days, when education and school milk were free, and summers were real summers. My childhood was set in a background of cobbled streets, ration books, terraced housing [think Coronation Street, if you have ever seen the English soap], milkman’s horses, coal dumped in the cellar, fish and chips on good days, bread and dripping on not good days, free school dinners (at lunchtime) and low paid footballers.
Many of my earlier attempts at writing were hand written – I guess that gives away my generation – and some of them were produced on a typewriter. You will remember typewriters; they were like computers but without the electricity. They were also a lot noisier! The advent of the computer was great – until everybody got one! Then it was information overload with vengeance.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read a lot of Dean Koontz who makes the paranormal seem normal, and Kate Atkinson [for the sheer grittiness], and any good Sci Fi with a mysterious element. Not so much the interstellar battle stuff. I believe aliens will be more subtle than that!
The works of Arthur C Clarke and Robert Heinlein are a great inspiration.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
‘Milijun’ is about more than an alien incursion into the vast Australian outback. It asks questions about our place in the universe, or multiverses as we are now led to believe may be a possibility.
The novel explores the relationship between a mother and her son. How far can it be stretched before the links break? How far would a mother go to save her son? Would she be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, or undertake actions she would never have deemed possible prior to the alien incursion?
Above all, ‘Milijun’ explores the question – what would mankind do when faced with an intelligence it cannot understand? It’s a good question, for it may happen someday. We are not currently prepared, of course, we are light years away from understanding how we should behave in such a circumstance. ‘Milijun’ challenges our mindsets through the eyes of a mother and son, and as such is perhaps more powerful and meaningful than if that challenge was through the eyes of the United Nations or the President of the United States.
In the end, Milijun probably asks more questions than it answers. But it does raise the questions. Laura and Jason Sinclair are just ordinary people, caught in a web of mystery and intrigue with an invisible spider somewhere on the threads.
I hope ‘Milijun’ gets people thinking about the future and the great treasure we have called Earth. I also hope it makes readers treasure their personal relationships; they are the most important things in our lives.
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