Author of over sixty published short stories (in five languages!) and twenty-six novels, Williams has been published around the world, not only in print, but also on-line and in spoken word editions. Since 1994, not a year has passed without his being nominated for at least one major award, and in the last twelve years he has won no less than 15 of those nominations. Not does he seem to have collected more Ditmars and Aurealises than any one else, but in 2001, 2002 and 2004 he won both of them! He won the SA Great Literature Award in 1999 and he was recently nominated for the prestigious Philip K Dick Award.

As if this were not enough, his musical talent has also been recognised by a Young Composer's Award in 1984 and he has also written a stage play and countless haikus, which often turn up on his blog

When I was assigned to interview Sean Williams, I headed first to his web site, which is a veritable catalogue of achievements. Deciding what to ask such a multi-faceted author was not easy, but finally I settled on a list of questions and found Sean Williams happy to answer them in a full and frank manner. Here, then, is the result: an insight into this remarkable author and his work.

SF: Your website is an encapsulation of many Big Moments of what has been a very busy life so far. Which of those moments brought you the greatest joy?

SW: That's an easy one: getting married last year. Does that make me a hopeless romantic? If it does, I can live with it. After such a long time looking for the right person, being able to celebrate the fact with our closest friends was a profoundly moving experience.

SF: And which of your achievements are you most proud of?

SW: Another easy question to answer! (I can't help but feel I'm getting off easy.) The achievement I'm most proud of is being a writer. By that, I don't mean being a full-time writer, or being able to support myself by writing alone, or just having something published, although all things do inspire a certain amount of satisfaction. Having the confidence to write and to identify as a writer is a big thing for the little boy inside me who loved Doctor Who books and dreamed of scribbling something of his own, one day.

SF: You are an extraordinarily prolific writer, with five books coming out in this year alone. There are other equally prolific writers out there but none of them regularly wins awards as you do. How do you keep up the pace - and the quality?

SW: I don't have any secret formula or anything (or a cellar full of clones strapped to typewriters) and at times I don't understand it myself. I just work hard and only ever write books that I love. If it was that simple, everyone would be doing what I do, but I guess that reveals the wonderful/terrifying mystery that is the writing industry. For me, as Frank Tibolt once said, action generates inspiration and inspiration generates action. New challenges and new areas to explore helps me grow and learn new skills, but it also means that I've written in several different genres for several different age-ranges, and that can be hard to market. When there are four or more books coming out in one year by one author, are people going to buy all of them? Will one book suffer because another one comes out at the same time? Will readers be put off by fantasy if they were expecting SF? It's a vexing issue, and one I'm only beginning to seriously address with pseudonyms and the like. I can't tell sometimes if I'm lucky, or doomed to run this treadmill for the rest of my life. Either way, I am immensely gratified that people like my work, from the editors and readers who buy it to my peers who vote in the awards. I consider myself to be extraordinarily blessed.

SF: Your work has been compared to that of many famous writers including Peter Carey, China Miéville and Ursula K. Le Guin. While comparisons may be odious, in this case they certainly give you something to live up to! Which authors, if any, have influenced or inspired your work to date?

SW: One of the more memorable moments of my career came when Shane Dix and I were described by Paul di Filippo as the "Niven and Pournelle for the 21st century". That meant a lot because Larry Niven was a huge inspiration for me during my teens. To see my work compared favourably to his was a real buzz, and meanwhile the list of name-checks to people I've been inspired by just keeps on getting longer. It includes the Three Gregs (Bear, Benford, Egan), Linda Nagata, Fred Pohl, Doc Smith, Jack Williamson, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Vernor Vinge, Stephen Baxter, Charles Stross, Cordwainer Smith, Robert Silverberg, Olaf Stapledon, Ursula le Guin, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King. Obviously I'm paying attention to such things, but what does it really mean? I'm not as successful as any of them, so there's obviously something I'm not doing right. There's work still to be done. Other influences, old and new, include Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Tim Powers, Stephen Donaldson, Terence Dicks, Alan Dean Foster, and Arthur C Clarke. I read quite widely, so authors from outside the genre also have their effect: Peter Lovesey and Lee Child are two I've been reading a lot lately. A comprehensive list would take forever and bore everyone, so I'll stop here.

SF: This is a busy year for you. The Changeling, part one of The Broken Land, your new dark fantasy trilogy for the YA market, was released in March, alongside your collection, Magic Dirt. Earth Ascendant, the second book in the Astropolis space opera trilogy, came out here and in the USA in May and your new Star Wars tie-in, The Force Unleashed, will be released in the USA in August. And in September, the second volume of The Broken Land will be released. They are with four different publishers, which no doubt reflects the astonishing variety of your work. Can you say a bit about each one? What was it like, writing them all at the same time? Do you like to have several very different projects on the go at once?

SW: Okay. Here's 2008 in a nutshell. THE CHANGELING: Working on the Broken Land series (THE DUST DEVILS is coming out in September) has been something of revelation. THE CHANGELING started out as a creative work written for my Masters degree. I set out to give myself the goal of writing for an audience I'd never directly targeted before (10 year olds) and also to examine some of the fears I suffered, usually for no rational reason, at about that age. Fear of my father, for instance, or of spiders. Neither stands up to scrutiny, but there they were, and they needed to be looked at. I'm a better writer for confronting these things, and THE CHANGELING is, as a result, one of the best stories I've ever written, and THE DUST DEVILS was even more fun (not just because it contains a string of really bad jokes). The series is also a return to the world I explored in the Books of the Change/Cataclysm, a landscape and magical system that I may continue to write about for the rest of my life. It feels like coming home, which in a very real way it is, given that it's based on the places in which I spent a lot of my childhood. You can take the SpecFic writer out of the country, etc. EARTH ASCENDANT: Each Astropolis book is intended to cover distinct stages in the progression of both a galactic empire and the psychology of the protagonist. Book one is the aftermath of collapse (with gender-bending noir-ish stylings and literary pretensions thrown in for good measure); book two portrays a time of apparent stability leading directly to another crisis; book three, THE GRAND CONJUNCTION, charts the confusion of change and dissolution, and takes the form of a chase novel. Add to that mix the stand-alone novella CENOTAXIS, which sits between books one and two and fills in some of the thematic gaps I didn't have space for in SATURN RETURNS. I've considered every step in the process very carefully, and found it all very complex and inspiring, and hard work. I feel like I'm working in several genres at once with this series, and the exercise sometimes hurts my brain--but in a very good way. MAGIG DIRT: On the surface of it, releasing a retrospective collection might seem a cinch, since the stories already exist and all you have to do is put them in the right order. In fact it was a lot of work, due mainly to including notes on each story – brief essays about where the stories came from, what they mean to me, etc. I'm slightly ashamed to admit I had forgotten the origins of many of these stories. Too much time has passed between conception and this collection, so I had to think very hard indeed to find something to say. In most cases, the effort stirred up interesting facts or feelings related to the story--and even where it didn't, I still had that absence of memory to talk about. So the exercise was warranted, and the finished product is even more special to me now. It's not just a snapshot of one aspect of my career. It's a dissection, an MRI scan, and a genetic analysis all in one. STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED: You can almost see the words scrolling up the screen: A window into the years preceding EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE... The adventures of Darth Vader's secret apprentice... The most exciting game ever to be released on the PS3... What's not to love? I jumped at the chance to write this book, and I had more fun than I ever imagined. I can't wait to see what the world thinks of it. It'll be a very proud moment to see my name on the cover when it comes out. Isn't that the craziest, most wonderful list? Sometimes I have to pinch myself. While I do like having several different projects on the go at once, the truth is that I didn't write all these books at the same time. THE CHANGELING was finished in 2005; THE DUST DEVILS and CENOTAXIS were written in 2006, THE FORCE UNLEASHED and EARTH ASCENDANT in 2007, and the story notes for MAGIC DIRT just a few months ago. So I was never really working on two projects in the same way at the same time. At any given moment, they were all at different, quite distinct stages of production. Despite that, it looked for a brief time as though four of them would all be coming out in April of this year. Thankfully that logjam was avoided, but not before I had to proof three full-length mss in October last year. That was hard, and I'll do my level best to avoid it ever happening again.

SF: The Changeling carries undertones of an environmental warning - this is what will happen if we don't start to take better care of our world. Was this deliberate or do you think this theme arose naturally from the current zeitgeist?

SW: It's interesting you should raise this, because it's not something I intended. In the context of the wider world, the world contained in the books that come later in the timeline, the world we live in has indeed undergone a cataclysm in order to result in the spaces Ros and other characters explore. But I didn't intend this as an environmental warning, except to avoid taking the status quo too much for granted. It's just part of the larger "ecosystem" in which that world exists, one surrounded by beings we might regard as gods locked in a Darwinian struggle, and one whose results result from the interactions of spheres much larger and stranger than the ones we're used to imagining. Change is the only certainty. I hope I don't give the impression in THE CHANGELING that Ros's world is a wasteland. Yes, it is arid and harsh, but that doesn't mean it's empty of life or wonder. The Interior is based very much on the interior of this country, a place I love and wish I could spend more time visiting. I feel much more comfortable there than I do in the lush environments usually associated with fantasy. I'm just writing what I know, and what I love.

SF: Are you enjoying writing for a younger audience? What do you see as the main responsibilities of a YA writer?

SW: I love writing for kids. It's so energizing, so much fun, and at the same time so emotionally complex and challenging. As an adult, what do I have to say that might appeal to anyone under 15? That's a very hard question to answer, sometimes. But at the same time, I know that I have perspectives on my own childhood life that I couldn't possibly have had back then, and that makes me (I hope) better able to tell a story that I would have liked back then. That young fellow is my first reader, really. Literature as time travel, if you like. I'm working on THE SCARECROW at the moment, and while it's no less challenging than the last book I finished (THE GRAND CONJUNCTION) the process of writing it is definitely less angst-ridden. Maybe because I've written so much adult space opera now that I find fantasy for kids fresher and inspiring. Maybe because there's something about the form itself that I really respond to. Maybe it just reminds me of all the books I loved when I was kid--stories by Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Ursula Le Guin, many of which I still read today. One of the joys (and dramas) of writing is working out exactly why you write what you do. This is one area I haven't quite nutted out yet. As to responsibilities...hmm. To be utterly honest: that would be one of them. And to tell a good story. I'd apply both of these things to writing for adults, but they're particularly crucial for kids. Kids are easily distracted and can spot proselytising miles away. They may be the cruellest readers on the planet.

SF: Your work as a short story writer has been recognised by the publication of five collections. I see the most recent one, Magic Dirt from Ticonderoga publications, contains a broad range of your stories, chronologically speaking, including “Ghosts of the Fall”, the story that won you a place in the Writers of the Future Award in 1992. Do you feel the collection represents a representative retrospective of your work to date?

SW: Without a doubt. Most of my short stories were published in the early to mid-90s, before novels took over my life, and many have them been out of print for a long time. I'm proud of all of them, of course, but without a doubt some are better than others. All the ones that I would want new readers to encounter first—the stories that people have nominated as my best, the stories that feed into later work, the stories that capture key moments in my development as both a writer and a person—are in this book, along with the odd haiku or two. This is the collection I've been dreaming of my entire writing life. I'm immensely grateful to Russell and Liz at Ticonderoga for bringing this book into existence. Working with people who are passionate about books is one of the great pleasures of life. Small press is where the action is, undoubtedly. There can be no cynicism when you're putting your own money and lives on the line. It's all for the love of it, and as a writer and a reader I can only respond to that.

SF: You're still involved Writers of the Future, although on the other side of the fence now, as a judge and mentor. What is it about this particular award that has held your loyalty over such a long period?

SW: Winning the award had a huge effect on my career. It validated this strange hobby I was pursuing; it introduced me to the global writing community; it exposed me to mentors I would never have met otherwise; and it challenged me to think about aspects of the job I'd never considered before (like publicity). All things considered, it was and remains a great deal for new writers creeping up the ladder, those who need a nudge or two along the way, particularly those who feel a long way from the action in North America. After all, it's pretty rare for a first-time writer to have a shot at a Nebula or be published in ANALOG, and thereby reach wider notice. Who wouldn't take the opportunity to leap-frog ahead of the pack? It seems a no-brainer to me. Back in 1992, I joked that I'd love to return as a judge, one day. It was one of those dreams you spout that are couched as a joke but aren't funny at all, really--like wanting to be a New York Times bestseller or to write for Doctor Who. They mean something, and they're worth pursuing, even as you brace yourself for the possibility that they might never come true. As the first Australian judge, and one of several "second generation" winners who have come back to judge the contest, it was a tremendous honour even to be considered. That little kid in me is awed by the fact that I can list Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Anne McCaffrey, Tim Powers, Fred Pohl and others among my fellow judges. It is truly a wondrous thing, standing among such giants. I always return inspired from the award ceremony. That the contest is still helping me along, is one of its key strengths. A winner's relationship with the WOTF doesn't end with the awards ceremony. It continues as long as you want it to. But this isn’t the only reason why I maintain this relationship. The culture of paying forward is very important to the WOTF, just as it's important to the wider writing world. I've judged for the Aurealis Awards in the past and for the Somerset College National Novella Writing Competition earlier this year. I've assessed applications for the Australia Council and am currently Chair of the Arts SA literature assessment panel. I sit on the SA Writer's Centre management committee and on the board of the Big Book Club Inc. Then there's tutoring and mentoring for organisations like Clarion South, plus seminars and workshops and readings and panels. The list of extracurricular activities gets longer each year, and while it can be a challenge juggling all these things, I'm convinced it's mostly beneficial. I'm a naturally shy and introverted person, you see. Given a choice, I'd never leave the house. As a writer that choice is a viable one, but that doesn't make it a healthy one. This lesson I learned the hard way. A measure of public life is important to writers. If I don't allow it, I suffer.

SF: And what plans for the future? Do you see yourself as diversifying still further?

SW: Well, I've just started a PhD in creative writing, the major component of which will be a "straight" crime novel, something I've wanted to work on for years. And then there's a contemporary thriller I'll be writing later this year, also a novel that's been waiting in the wings for the right moment to come out. So yes, the diversification will continue--but at the same time there are limits to how many genres I can write at once. I'd like to keep writing space opera; I'd like to keep writing fantasy. I'd also like to drop back to just one or two books a year, so obviously something will have to change. One thing is for sure: that it will work out in a way I haven't entirely anticipated. As Charles Brown is fond of saying, "Writing is one of the few jobs that gets harder as you go." Harder and more satisfying, I am sure.