David Kowalski is the 2007 Golden Aurealis winner for his science fiction novel The Company of the Dead (Macmillan Australia 2007).

This is his first novel, although he had made notes for a fantasy novel earlier in his life. "They were woeful, derivative. I still have them as reminders of what not to do. But, really, my first attempt at writing sci fi was my first novel."

So, he has a historical relationship with the genre. How did that get off the ground?

"My mother had a vast collection of paperbacks," he says. "I was read to, and I read, from an early age." He reels off a list of writers from his early reading days: Asimov, Heinlein, Verne, Wells, 'Doc' Smith. For his eleventh birthday his folks took him to see a film called Star Wars. "It didn't have any numbers after the title then," he adds.

He has been interested in the genre for as long as he remembers. "In fifth grade I got in trouble for leaving school camp early to watch the last episode of 'Genesis of the Daleks'. I watched Dr Who and Trek and Battlestar (I love the current series. I'm thrilled that stuff I enjoyed as a kid has been repackaged in a way that I can enjoy now, for reasons stronger than nostalgia)." As his tastes developed he took to Iain Banks, M. John Harrison, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.

The Company of the Dead is a fairly hefty tome. According to the inside cover it took David seven years to write. How come it took so long?

"Actually it took ten years," he says. "It was 10 years from start to publication. The writing wasn't constant. My medical training was fairly heavy and slabs of time would go by without my typing a word. I was always thinking about the story, though, and I'd like to think that when I couldn't physically write anything, the construction was going on in my head. I was determined to finish it, as it was the longest I'd ever spent on anything in my life. My concern was whether or not it would work in its final form. I didn't really have the time to attend any courses so the process of writing was essentially one of trial and error."

What about the topic, where did the inspiration come from?

"I knew I wanted to write about wish fulfilment, and explore the differences between what we want and what we get. I'm also an amateur historian (the emphasis being on amateur) so counterfactual exploration interests me. I'd always found time travel stories fascinating, and back in the nineties so many people were focused on the new millennium — I wanted to try and examine the Twentieth Century from a skewed perspective. The Titanic struck me as an interesting bookend for framing my story." Given his enthusiasm for the subject, that fascination has been maintained even after ten years of writing around it.

The other aspect of the book that grabs the reader's attention is the way it deals with world politics. "I don't pretend to understand world politics," he admits, "but history and recent systems analysis that has been brought to bear on that subject is a major hobby of mine. I'm always reading around the subject, whether it's the rise of Rome or the Russian Revolution."

The international politics angle in the novel makes for an epic adventure for some of the characters. It could easily have been seen as a thriller or as an action/adventure novel. So did he have science fiction in mind when he wrote it?

"I knew the book would be hard to categorise. It wasn't written with any particular genre or market in mind. I wrote a story I really wanted to read, a story that wasn't out there and available for me."

We both agree that speculative fiction is a wide genre, something that The Specusphere tries to capture. David nods. "Yes, it has a broad catch-all. Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union fits in there as neatly as anything written by China Mieville."

His comment about who his audience is grabs my attention. It has always interested me who a writer writes for. Only that morning I'd seen an interview with Jeffery Deaver and he had said that when he writes, he writes for his fans. Given that David didn't have any fans when he started (apart from family and friends of course) who was uppermost in his mind when he wrote?

"I wrote for myself," he says. "My aim was to create the kind of story I thought I'd enjoy."

But was there an imaginary person looking over his shoulder?

"I always have an imaginary reader in mind when I write. An abstract reader who wants something that is challenging and engaging and thought provoking and also, hopefully, fun. I promised myself a while back that I would not cut corners or underestimate the intelligence or discernment of anyone kind enough to read my work."

And he succeeds in creating many dimensions to the novel. One of the things that appealed most to me was the technology of the alternative world. It was almost steampunkish, a kind of advanced Victorian era technology. How had he decided on the level of technology to use?

"I put a lot of research into the book and read widely. I wanted my world to be strange but plausible. I wanted it to have a stunted feel about it, a baroque quality that implied a certain stagnation."

The crucial factors in framing the technology was a supposition that in the alternative world there was no Allied victory in 1918, and nor did it go through a Second World War.

"I think the war was a stimulus for a lot of the technology we have now. Computational devices in the form of code breakers and so on, and rocket and jet technology, were all given a boost. Additionally, the sociological changes that followed were far-reaching, in terms of women's roles and civil rights."

We move on to more personal ramifications of his achievement. I wondered if winning the Golden Aurealis for his first novel might be a bit scary, a double-edged sword. Did this instant success bother him?

"I certainly worry that I might be peaking kind of early. Though after so many years of writing, nothing feels instant. The fact that my novel was compared with the quality of writers who were short-listed for the Aurealis is extremely gratifying."

But does he have any fears that it may be all downhill from here?

"I haven't really thought about it, it's more the idea of moving forward with the next project that drives me."

His next project is a fantasy novel. "I don't want to go in to any details about it but I'm very excited with how it's turning out." Will it take seven years to write? "No," he says emphatically.

David is also collaborating on a screenplay with a friend of his who works in film, and he has some ideas for some short stories, "... but they're on the backburner for the moment."

David's author site is at: www.djkowalski.com
There's a book site and a blog at: www.thecompanyofthedead.com

The Company of the Dead was released in August, and should still be readily available at most bookstores. Most specialty stores have made it available for online sales.

Some personal profile information:

• Books: Currently, The Circus of Doctor Lao by Charles Finney.
      In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.
• Films: This changes form time to time. Currently, No Country for Old Men.
• TV: Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica.
• Musical taste: Various. From classical to contemporary.
• Radio: "Anything with Tony Martin in it."