Andrew Hunter Murray - Four Way Interview

Andrew Hunter Murray is a scriptwriter and fact-hunter for BBC2’s QI. He co-hosts the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, which has had 200 million downloads, and has toured the UK, Europe and Australia. He also writes jokes and journalism for Private Eye magazine, and hosts the Eye’s podcast, Page 94. He is author of the science fiction novel The Sanctuary, published by Century.

Why science fiction?

Compared with ‘proper’ literature (big tongs there), sci-fi has had a slightly shonky reputation almost since the word go. It’s often seen as a slightly bonkers, pulpy poor cousin which you might read as a teenager before growing out of. But literally all the name means is that the story takes place in a world where the rules are somehow different, and explores human behaviour in response. Dozens of brilliant authors know not to be scared of it. Several Kazuo Ishiguro books? Sci-fi. Lots of Margaret Atwood? Sci-fi. The snooty view of sci-fi holds it back – but really it’s the loss of anyone not reading it. Plus, you can also have gigantic space spiders.

Why this book?

The Sanctuary is an attempt to get to grips with the way the world is going to change in the next century, to present a vision of how things might go wrong, to show which utopians (read: billionaires) might try and swoop in to instruct the rest of the world how to live, and to tell the story of one young man discovering a seemingly perfect world on the brink of an enormous change. I think we’re all thinking about inequality now, and asking questions about the hyper-rich (a new category I’ve invented above the super-rich), so there’s a lot of that too. Also, my first book (The Last Day) was quite dystopian, and I thought it would be fun to set this one in heaven. Or, at least, somewhere which seems like heaven at first glance…

What’s next?

Another book, of course! Although I’m not going to say what it’s about just yet, because the idea is still at that lovely fragile stage where you can still see through the eggshell to the chick slowly incubating inside. And you don’t necessarily want to invite lots of people to look at the egg you’re growing because then the poor chick will feel lots of pressure and probably develop a complex. I’ve tried to think of a better way of describing this but I honestly think this might be the best one.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

Book-wise? Whatever comes next. I have literally no genre boundaries so my next four books lined up are the first ever book by PG Wodehouse, a piece of fragile 1950s domestic fiction, a German memoir from the trenches of the first world war and some loopy seventies spider-based sci-fi. These are just the topsoil of the TBR pile and mainly I’m excited to bring it back to some sort of structural integrity.

Interview by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a digest free here

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