This is B.C. Johnson, your locally sourced indie author, and today I’m sitting down to chat with another fellow scribbler.
Let’s begin with this week’s guest, Henry Neilsen, author of SUNWARD SKY.
About the Author
I’m Henry Neilsen, I’m an author based in Melbourne, Australia. I write mainly in the dark science fiction/cyberpunk horror space, as well as non-fiction essays on Substack and YouTube. For my day job I work in environmental design as a specialist in building facades.
The stuff I write usually has a thematic political bent and plays with the implications of technology in worlds where people are willing to exploit others. Thanks so much for having me on, Bobby!
The Questions
1. Do you have a writer you idolize?
I admire Michael Crichton – he’s the author that inspired me to write and JURASSIC PARK is an extremely important bit of fiction to me that has resonated over the course of my life. That said, Crichton had some reactionary leanings later in his career that I don’t align with, so let’s call it a healthy admiration and inspiration rather than idolization.
Other than that, Ursula K. Le Guin writes intelligent science fiction like nobody else, and Alison Rumsfitt writes absolutely terrifying and unique horror.
2. What are you reading right now, and how is it?
I’m reading a couple at the moment – the first is MOBY DICK, by Herman Melville. I decided at the start of the year to read a few more of the classics and it’s really funny reading it nearly 200 years after publication. It’s brilliant but I think an editorial team would run out of red ink if he’d tried to publish that story today. It’s structured very strangely and it’s weird.
I’ve been irritating my partner with my recounting of Melville’s (extremely outdated) whale facts. The other one I’m reading is a beta read for Ryan M. Patrick, THE EUROPAN DECEPTION, which is a great sci-fi thriller I’m very much enjoying. Look out for that when it’s available.
3. What are your big three: favorite sci-fi novel, movie, and TV show?
Oh boy, that’s a cracker of a question! I’ll discount Crichton because I’ve already mentioned him. For a novel, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is amazing, they achieved something with that novel I didn’t even realise you could do with sci-fi. I bought it at the bookshop in the city centre and I had finished it by the time I got home, I couldn’t put it down.
For movies, EX MACHINA is a brilliant small-scale character study of a film that I notice new things in every time I watch it.
And I don’t really watch that much TV sci-fi, but I really enjoyed WESTWORLD, at least for the first season. If you haven’t seen it, watch the first season and stop there. It’s a great exploration of the nature of consciousness… which is unfortunately undone as soon as they hit the second season.
EDITOR’S NOTE: B.C. Johnson here, cannot agree more with stopping WESTWORLD after the first season. That is a complete story that doesn’t need expansion.
4. What inspired your SUNWARD SKY podcast, and what do you find unique (and challenging) about the audio storytelling format?
Oh, it’s very kind of you to assume there was any kind of sensical inspiration to do SUNWARD SKY!
Melbourne had gone into the first of what turned into many, many lockdowns, and I’d just finished SPICE TRADER, my previous novella. I wanted to keep writing but wanted to keep it light, so I just began to write a story about a spaceship. All the characters are named after cricket players, and it was supposed to be a fun jaunt.
In the end, it turned more serious and the themes reflect some of the things happening during the lockdown, but it’s still ultimately a love letter to the ideals of space travel and the hope that science fiction holds for the stars.
As for the audio storytelling format: Never again. I have so much respect and admiration for voice artists who lend their voices to audiobooks. It’s seriously hard work, and I found it very challenging. I’ll leave it to the professionals from now on, I think.
5. Do you have a writing routine? Has it changed over time?
I do a bit, but it changes with every project. While I’m drafting I try to average five hundred words per day. I’m not one of those people who can sit down and just write every day, my brain needs space to think. I usually go into a novel knowing how it will end, and the kinds of themes I want to explore, but not necessarily the steps to get there.
I’ll write about two-thirds to three-quarters of the book, just letting the ideas flow as they will, and then outline the last few chapters before I commit to the ending. I find that gives a nice level of spontaneity to the story without it becoming a nightmare in the editing phase.
6. Have you ever had a character or plot twist surprise you as you were writing?
I’m not really one of those that feels like their characters aren’t in their control, so I’m not sure I’ve been surprised by characters before.
I have definitely invented a character early on in a piece, and then it’s turned out that they were able to fill some niche or need later in the story, so I think there’s something ineffable about letting parts of the story go where they will. It’s nice to have those moments.
7. What advice would you give a sci-fi writer just starting out?
I think there’s a lot of guff out there at the moment about all the generative tools that you can use to “enhance” your writing, and I think now more than ever it’s important to say that you should work to find your own voice. Don’t let your style be dictated by a machine, because it will never be able to say what you can say in the way you want to say it. Work at it, and be proud that the words you’re putting in the world are your own.
8. What’s your favorite kind of FTL drive?
The hyperdrives in Star Wars, absolutely no question. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (the miniseries) showed a really cool universe where FTL travel was super dangerous (which they rolled back a bit on the TV show), and THE EXPANSE has the Epstein drive, which is technically not FTL but super cool conceptually. But nothing compares to watching the Millennium Falcon go to hyperspace that first time. What a moment!
Where Can We Check Out Your Books?
The updated and revised novelisation of SUNWARD SKY is now available for preorder! It’s going live on February 15th next year, but you can add it to your Goodreads TBR or preorder on Amazon!
The rest of my work is all catalogued on my website www.henryneilsen.com.
Where to Find the Author
I announce new stuff I’ve released on my Substack, you can sign up to follow it at https://henryneilsen.substack.com/.
As for socials, it’s all in a bit of a state of flux at the moment but I’m active on Instagram and Threads as @hunting_sunrise, and Bluesky at @henryneilsen.bsky.social.
Next Time: Author Kala Godin, author of GRAVEYARD HEART and THE VEIL
This is BC again, thanks for stopping by! Later this week I’ll be speaking with author and poet Kala Godin.
You can subscribe to my blog to get updates on the author chats as they arrive, or follow me on Threads where I’ll be posting them as well.
Check out Last Week’s Author Chat: D. Ertug
B.C. Johnson 
Hi Henry! I followed you on BS (I see you’re not active on Twitter anymore) and shared this interview (yep, ALSO on Twitter). As usual with Bobby’s interviews, I’m also going to add the link to my next monthly blog recap. I hope it helps, though I have tiny accounts and a tiny blog…