Vaughn Treude's Fictional Biography

I became interested in science fiction while growing up on a farm in North Dakota. The remoteness of my home and the loneliness of my upbringing made it a welcome escape. Television was also a major influence. SF shows such as Star Trek, Lost In Space and Time Tunnel were popular at that time, as well as my favorite, the genre-bending Wild Wild West. The Apollo program was in full swing, and stories of UFO sightings and alien abductions were commonplace. I kept a scrapbook of news clippings related to flying saucers and the space program - an interesting blend of the scientific and the spaced-out. I enjoyed fantasy, too. At age 12, I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I was the archetypal geek, keeping my journal in Elvish script.

I always thought I'd become a Sci-Fi writer, but the demands of life kept getting in the way. In the 1980's, I made a concerted but unsuccessful effort to get published, writing several so-so short stories, which I may dust off and publish online some day. I attended several science fiction conventions and their obligatory writers' workshops. I gave this up for a while under the pressure of operating my own business. After I'd spent several years as a software consultant, I realized that the same kind of discipline I'd developed for writing code in C and C++ could be applied in writing fiction.

As a child, my preferred authors were Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and that prolific young adult fiction writer, Andre Norton. My taste has expanded a bit since then. My favorites include cyberpunks William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, the late great satirist Douglas Adams, political sci-fi writers Vernor Vinge and Ken Macleod, alternate historian Harry Turtledove, and the immortal Philip K. Dick. Though I'm not as much into SF's sister genres, I really like J K Rowling (who cares if Harry Potter's for kids?) as well as horror writer SP Somtow, whom I once drank with at a Phoenix sci-fi con eons ago.

In my opinion, science fiction isn't often represented well on the small or the big screen. Too often, the stories are dumbed down or made campy by the marketing geniuses at the studios, and they end up with something like Buck Rogers. Philip K Dick's stories have made the transition well, perhaps because they were campy to begin with. I'm also a big fan of the Alien series, rare examples of SF horror done right. As far as television goes, the unquestionable milestones were the original Star Trek, Babylon 5, The X-Files (which bounced between genius and execrable) and the tragically short-lived Firefly.

My politics swing between libertarianism and full-blown anarchism, depending on our government's current behavior. This is relevant because despite my best efforts, all my writings become quite political. I finally surrendered to this impulse when writing my recent novel (the first one I actually completed), which is called Centrifugal Force. To over-simplify it a bit, it's the tale of a group of computer nerds and techno-geeks who successfully overthrow the US government. Currently I'm revising it for the third and final time; I plan to begin serializing it within the year.

For most of my life, I've been the only science fiction fanatic in my family. I've done my best to remedy this problem by exposing my son to proper literature. His early bedtime readings included Rowling's entire works, Tolkien and Larry Niven. As a child of the millennium (or maybe it's the influence of Japanese-made video games) he's into anime and manga, so I've become a fan of these as well. One of the best is the manga series Death Note, with its profound message about the corrupting influence of power. It makes me wish I had artistic talent. But unless I find an artistic collaborator who shares my sentiments, I'll stick to the written word.