Quick, name a best-selling science fiction author who writes from a Caribbean perspective. You’ve got ten seconds. Go.

That was tough, wasn’t it?

Next time, you might name Grenada-born Tobias S Buckell author of novels such as Hurricane Fever, Arctic Rising, and The Apocalypse Ocean among many others.

Mr Buckell was this year’s Community and Cultural Affairs Writer in Residence. He has just finished teaching a science fiction writing workshop in Bermuda and will give a public talk tonight at the Bermuda Society of Arts at City Hall called Writing With Wonder.

The Royal Gazette sat down with Mr Buckell to get his thoughts on how the Caribbean has influenced his writing.

Q: What did you want writers to take away from the workshop?

A: Persistence is one of my number one mantras, persistence in getting that time every day to write, persistence in submitting, persistence in trying to get better as a writer. When I started out, I knew people who had far more talent than I did, but they didn’t stick with it, like I did.

Q: Did you ever consider a different genre besides science fiction?

A: Science fiction was my first love. I love the big ideas, and the question of ‘what if’. The cool thing about science fiction is, I can draw inspiration from any other kind of literature that interests me, and incorporate that under the giant umbrella that is science fiction and fantasy.

Q: How do you keep focus and attention on your writing projects?

A: I keep a daily schedule, and stay in contact with my current writing project from day to day.

Q: How do you incorporate islands into your work?

A: I grew up in Grenada and the Virgin Islands. When I was 15 we moved to the United States. I wasn’t seeing my friends and family and the type of people I grew up with represented in the science fiction I read. I wanted to bring some island culture, sound and feel into my science fiction. I tell people ‘think Star Wars, but with a dude with dreadlocks running the Millennium Falcon and a crew of Caribbean people scattered throughout the ship doing different things’. With my short fiction I sometimes look at different aspects of island life from a science fiction lens.

Q: What was it like moving to the United States as a teenager?

A: Sometimes you never realise what you have lost until you leave it. When I got to the United States, I realised how much my perceptions and attitudes were not like everyone else’s. You can take the boy out of the island but you can’t take the island out of a boy.

Q: Can you give me an example of how island life was different from living in the United States?

A: In Grenada we had island time. People in the Midwest, man they are punctual. When I first went to college, I would meet people and say lets meet around 2pm and I would come in around 2.15pm, and everyone would be upset. I would be the only person who viewed 2pm as an approximate target. I had never been with people who stopped a party because it was time to stop. Who does that? These little things add up.

Q: Was there any particular moment when you decided to write from a Caribbean perspective?

A: I had this really profound moment when I was reading Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. His novel is set, partly in Grenada. I thought, why couldn’t a science fiction novel be based in the Caribbean? You have the James Bond phenomenon where the writer has visited an Island as a tourist. He or she may be familiar with the landscape, but ultimately, the Caribbean is just an exotic backdrop. In some of my last books I tried to create a type of Caribbean James Bond who looks at things from an Islander’s perspective.

Q: Do you recommend any books about writing?

A: Yes, Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction is fantastic.

Mr Buckell will speak tonight at the BSOA. There will be a reception at 5.30pm and the talk at 6pm. Tickets are $5 and available from the The Department of Community and Cultural Affairs in the Dame Lois Browne-Evans Building on the fourth floor at 58 Court Street in Hamilton. For more information about Mr Buckell see www.tobiasbuckell.com