I'm fond of the books of Robert Charles Wilson and Robert Sawyer. I recently discovered Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series which knocked my socks off. Novels I keep re-reading are A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine l'engle and Replay by Ken Grimwood, so those two are definitely on the list. I'd never done that before with any other. My brother-in-law Ian Gillis introduced me to Tim Powers and I immediately read about six of his novels in a row. My father (who is also one of my favourite authors) introduced me to Michener. I also read a lot of historical fiction by James A. Donaldson in my late teens I still have a lot of admiration for his Covenant series.

As a kid I read a lot of Asimov, whose work I still admire. My tastes have evolved over time, but there is some consistency. Who are your favourite authors of all time? Heinlein juveniles such as Rocket Ship Galileo and Isaac Asimov's robot stories and the damage was done. Which was cool because even James Blish never saw the episodes before he wrote those adaptations, so his versions often differ slightly from the finished product. I read most of science fiction writer James Blish's adaptations of the episodes before I ever saw those episodes. I loved Star Trek on both television and in print. Then it was Star Trek back before everybody else discovered it. At the age of six my favourite show was Johnny Sokko and His Giant Robot, about a kid who finds and ultimately controls his own giant robot to fight evil.

That's going back a long ways, but as near as I can recall it was a combination of elements. Joe, what first attracted you to the genre? Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. He is a time-travel/fantasy/sci-fi author who has been writing for forty-six years.

Today we will be putting the tough questions to Joe Mahoney

A Time and a Place by Joe Mahoney