Tommy Blanchard

Get to know Tommy...

Birthdate?

July 9, 1987

When did you start writing?

Around 2010, when I was working on my Master's degree. I had just read about how Asimov had started his career as a writer selling short stories. It sounded so easy, so I thought, "I could do that!" I wrote some truly terrible stories, got promptly rejected everywhere, and was so discouraged I stopped writing fiction for about 7 years. I switched

from science fiction to science studies for a while as I worked through my PhD, and found that publication process much easier. Eventually I returned to science fiction and have been trying to figure out how to be a competent fiction writer since then. I hope to get there some day.

When and what and where did you first get published?

2013, "Postreward delays and systematic biases in measures of animal temporal discounting", published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But that's probably not what you're asking about.

My first fiction story was published here, New Myths. It is titled "The Search for Intelligence."

What themes do you like to write about?

Minds, brains, and ethics. I think there are a lot of deeply weird things about the mind, who/what we are as conscious creatures, free-will, purpose in life, existentialism, and how all that intersects with ethics. I love science fiction as a medium for exploring that weirdness.

What books and/or stories have most resonated with you as an author? Why? How do these stories and their characters find expression in your work?

Lately I would have to say Accelerando by Charles Stross and Blindsight by Peter Watts.

I love how these stories weave really deep concepts about the mind/brain into their stories. They're deep idea books, the best kind of science fiction in my opinion. Blindsight in particular is amazing−it's like Watts took a psychopathology textbook and found a way to weave the contents of every chapter into the story, but did it in such a way that it still feels like a cohesive whole. It's incredibly speculative and wild, but grounded enough in what we know to feel plausible. It tells a compelling story, but in a world that really makes you question what the mind is. Plus it has vampires in space.

NewMyths.Com™ is one of only a few online magazines that continues to pay writers, poets and artists for their contributions.

If you have enjoyed this resource and would like to support NewMyths.Com™, please consider donating a little something.

--- ---

Published By NewMyths.Com™ - A quarterly ezine by a community of writers, poets and artist. © all rights reserved.

NewMyths.Com™ is owned and operated by New Myths Publishing™ and founder, publisher, writer, Scott T. Barnes