Robert Jackson Bennett‘s 2010 debut Mr. Shivers won the Shirley Jackson award as well as the Sydney J. Bounds Newcomer Award. His second novel, The Company Man, is  the winner of the Edgar Award and the recipient of a Special Citation of Excellence from the Philip K. Dick Award. His third novel, The Troupe, is available now. He lives in Austin with his wife and son. He can be found on Twitter at @robertjbennett.

Science fiction and fantasy is one of the hardest genres to write well in. Seriously.

You probably wouldn’t think it from reading what people write about the genre itself: according to some, our prose is stilted, our characters weak, our sequels interminable, and our plots flimsy. I disagree with a lot of these – like anything, anywhere, of any kind, this all depends on where you look – but none of these acknowledge the real pitfall inherent in any science fiction or fantasy novel: cool ideas.
Read the rest of this entry

Here’s Robert Jackson Bennett baring his all for his soon-to-never-be-released novel A Sexual Experience: The Robert Jackson Bennett Story.
Read the rest of this entry

In episode 114 of the SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester chats with author Robert Jackson Bennett!

Read the rest of this entry

Robert Jackson Bennett‘s 2010 debut Mr. Shivers won the Shirley Jackson award as well as the Sydney J. Bounds Newcomer Award. His second novel, The Company Man, is currently nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award as well as an Edgar Award. His third novel, The Troupe, arrives in stores on the 21st of February, 2012. He lives in Austin with his wife and son. He can be found on Twitter at @robertjbennett.

Charles Tan: Hi, thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, how did you get into speculative fiction?

Robert Jackson Bennett: Thanks for having me! I suppose I’d say it’s been something I’ve always read since I was a kid, and it’s the perspective that I’ve always returned to. Speculative fiction allows greater exploration of the abstract than nearly any other fiction perspective – by which I mean the way each breed of fiction examines its subject. In spec fic, the ideals and philosophies that invisibly weigh upon us in our daily lives can become corporeal and tangible, and as we flesh them out we begin to see contradictions and frictions take shape, which tell us more about ourselves and our world.

Speculative fiction is considered a new genre to some, a maturation of science fiction or fantasy fiction, but it’s not, really: for what is Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale besides speculative fiction, of a sort?
Read the rest of this entry