An interview with novelist Michael D. O’Brien

The prolific novelist, Michael O'Brien, discusses his new novel, Voyage to Alpha Centauri, with the folks at IPNovels.com:

Michael D. O’Brien is the author of several novels, with his latest work, Voyage to Alpha Centauri, taking his tally to ten. We were able to nab the busy author and artist for an interview to give us a peek into his first-ever sci-fi novel, his writing process, and more. Fans and new readers, grab a warm beverage and get to know the best-selling author of Father Elijah, Eclipse of the Sun, and Island of the World!

You’re well known around the world for your novels, many of which grapple with the weighty issues facing our society today. But now you’re writing science fiction. Is that much of a departure from your other work?

O’Brien: Yes, it’s a radical departure from my other nine novels. For many years I’ve been fascinated by the immensity and beauty of the universe, dabbled in astronomy, and often yearned to go “out there,” as impossible as that is. Over the years I’ve pondered these desires and have come to some conclusions about them. Science fiction offers a kind of psychological stepping outside our normal perceptions and categories of thought. We can look at human nature, I think, I hope, with a shade more objectivity. All true cultural works do this in a sense, but sci-fi offers a means to step very far indeed.

From Fahrenheit 451 to Brave New World to 1984, not to mention C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, science fiction has often been a vehicle to express concerns about the direction our world could be headed, often in quite a prophetic way. What themes do you think crop up in Voyage to Alpha Centauri that pertain to some of the directions our society is heading?

O’Brien: There are several. I have worked into the narrative, as the background of the lives of the voyageurs, the condition of Earth about a hundred years from now. Mankind is ruled by “totalitarianism with a friendly face,” a world government that controls more or less everything; technology is rewarding and omnipresent, surveillance is sophisticated and subtle; all sexual morality has been relativized, depopulation laws are draconian, sterility is highly rewarded, fertility is punished, etc. , etc. Green is good, organized religion is bad. The social matrix appears to be peaceful and “democratic” and yet there is very limited personal freedom.

So, Voyage to Alpha Centauri is a kind of anti-utopia or a dystopia?

O’Brien: It’s not merely a dystopian novel in the social and political sense. It also asks metaphysical questions: For example, what is it in human nature that compels us to look beyond the purely material? The scientists and other staff on the ship are the best and brightest of mankind, and along with their strengths they bring their weaknesses and blindness with them on the voyage. What are they seeking when they yearn to escape gravity, escape our planet and our solar neighborhood? What, really, does man hope to find out there in the stars? Is it no more than our abiding desire for increased knowledge? Or is there in us an inherent suppressed desire for transcendence?

Who are your favorite science fiction authors?

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