Interactive Interview with Rhys Henry Hughes

Prolific, absurdist author Rhys Henry Hughes is doing a three-part interview with AmeriCymru. The first two parts of the interview are ordinary question and answer, the third and final installment is questions by Hughes to the readers of the interview. To participate, go here and post your question as a comment and Hughes will respond.

Rhys Hughes is an incredibly prolific short story writer who plans to write exactly 1000 works in his lifetime and has, so far, completed 468. Hughes has written science fiction, fantasy, absurdism and in the style of OuLiPo. His stories are playful, intricate, challenging, outrageous, sometimes difficult to accept, never boring. In addition to an amazing bibliography of short stories, including many published in Postscripts, he is the author of two novels, The Percolated Stars (2003) and Engelbrecht Again! (Dead Letter Press; October 2008).

Rhys Hughes can be found at his blog, rhysaurus. His latest collection "The PostModern Mariner" can be found here together with a sample story "Castor on Troubled Waters" which can be read in full online.

From Part I of this interview, on AmeriCymru:

1.You write like you're having a fantastically fun time, are you?

Usually, yes, it's fun. That's one of the best reasons for doing anything. Writing for me is many things. It's an urge, almost a compulsion, but it's also a pleasure. That doesn't mean it's fun all the time. No fun is always pleasurable, strange as that sounds! There's always some anxiety in the background as well, a little tension, the worry that the work I'm doing won't be the best it can be, that it won't express clearly whatever I'm trying to say, that it won't be enthralling for the reader. It's fun but it's also hard work!

But fun is definitely the guiding principle of everything I do. I don't want writing to be a chore. If it becomes a chore I'll stop doing it. I hope this sense of fun conveys itself strongly to the reader. Having said that, the fact that something has been created in a spirit of fun doesn't necessarily mean it's not completely serious, profound or poignant. It may sound a bit cheesy, but great fun creates great responsibility...

2. Who did you like to read when you were a child? What did you like in their stories, what made the biggest impression?

I had a somewhat unusual childhood when it came to bedtime reading. I was given adult encyclopedias and history books to help send me to sleep, but in fact I ended up reading most of them several times. I also enjoyed reading about explorers. Marco Polo is still one of my biggest heroes. Until the age of seven or thereabouts I wanted to be an explorer myself. Then I was told there were no new places on Earth left to discover and I remember feeling an acute disappointment! Since then, of course, I've discovered that this isn't entirely true...

Another early disappointment was the realisation that not everything that appears in print is always correct! I was very gullible in my youth and believed everything I read. I also believed everything I heard, so I was easy prey for shaggy dog stories. I was told various incredible lies by plausible adults and accepted them all as facts. They told me the Eiffel Tower was an obstacle that horses jump over in races; that the town I grew up in was Australian, not Welsh, but that this was a secret; that Mount Everest was in Scotland; that rhinoceroses lived in coal mines; that dinosaurs were extinct everywhere except in France; that a mouth ulcer can be used as hard currency in shops.

I sometimes still find myself wondering why all those things aren't true...

Part I continued
Part II
and Part III