Interview: Steven James Scearce

Name: Steven James Scearce

Age: I’ll be 43 this year (2011).

Author of: “The Eye of Africa”

Current Geographic Location: I’m nestled deep in the suburbs on the south end of Kansas City.

Original Hometown: I grew up in the Kansas City area. But I also spent some time in Detroit.

Twitter: @ShinkaiMaru5

Websites: www.stevescearce.com & www.unknowntransmission.com

Recent publications: “Second Sunday in September” in Rigor Amortis, edited by Jaym Gates & Erika Holt; “The Assistant from Innsmouth” in Cthulhurotica, edited by Carrie Cuinn; Unknown Transmission, an online science fiction web fiction serial

Do you think alien life exists in the Universe? Oh, definitely yes. I think we’d be foolish to believe that our little blue-green planet played home to the only life forms in the vast expanse of the universe. And if you believe that there is any merit to the Drake Equation at all, you can easily see that even the most conservative estimates on the number of star-bound planets – ecologically able to sustain and produce intelligent life in the Milky Way alone – is a number far greater than one.

If you could travel off Earth, would you? What if it meant you could never come back? Yes, absolutely. I’d love to check out the night life on Cissalda. If leaving means that I can never return to Earth, so be it. I think that half my expected lifespan on one planet is long enough.

What inspired your piece? I was inspired by a photograph of the real Eye of Africa that I found while doing some research on weird geological formations around the globe. Also known as the Richat Structure, The Eye is a circular depression in the Sahara desert of Mauritania near Ouadane. In an otherwise featureless expanse of sand and dirt, it’s a massive bull’s eye over thirty-one miles in diameter. It looks distinctly alien. Upon finding the image of the structure, I began to imagine that something could be buried there – maybe something as old as the Earth itself.

What music or movies helped you to write this story? I listened to soundtrack work by composers Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard. I think Zimmer is a genius and I’ve followed Gerrard since her days with Dead Can Dance. Their work together is powerful stuff.

How many rewrites did you do before submitting? I hate to say it, but I’m a crazed re-writer. There were numerous rounds of “print and edit” before I felt comfortable submitting the story.

What is your favorite bit?

The sun rose from the desert horizon like a fiery bloom of molten steel over an endless plane of yellow sand. Shadows scurried around sandstone pinnacles and over dunes encircling the mysterious Saharan depression. Through his scratched and weathered goggles, Dr. Jonathan Glasser stared at the strange desert formation. He’d seen it before – in pictures – but here on the ground, the size of the thing was astonishing.