JMW: How did you come to focus in this area of writing?ĮB: I am a third generation SF fan, so I took it in with mother’s milk. I guess I subscribe to the well-worn definition of “Whatever I am pointing at when I say speculative fiction.” I like to call science fiction the literature of testing things to destruction – usually ideas, sometimes planets – but science fiction is only a small subset of spec fic. How do you define that, in terms of your own work?ĮB: Oh, I’m sort of bad at definitions. JMW: You’re best known for your speculative fiction. Her hobbies include rock climbing and murdering helpless houseplants.” “Born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins,” she tells Book Buzz, “but in a different year,” she now lives in Connecticut “with a giant ridiculous dog, a cat who is an internet celebrity, the best roommate ever, and the roommate’s enormous adolescent cat. Her most recent Hugo came last year for Best Novelette for Shoggoths in Bloom.

Elizabeth Bear, strongly identified with speculative fiction, is the Sturgeon and multiple Hugo Award-winning author of over 70 short stories and 20 novels.