Thomas Halliday Longlist Author Interview

How does it feel to be longlisted?

What an amazing honour to be considered for such a prestigious list! I have loved several of the previous winners, so to now be listed alongside one - whichever it turns out to be - is really exciting.

How did you conduct your research?

I researched Otherlands through the scientific literature, mostly. I'd start with a list of organisms known from a site and work out what stories could be told that linked together under a single ecological theme to be explored in that chapter. Once I'd settled on a few organisms to focus on, I'd fill in the rest of the story, making sure to (once again) find justifications in the literature for choices about behaviours, details of the environment, and so on. Much of the experiential aspect comes from having been in various types of environment myself, and where that was lacking, I'd read others' accounts of travelling and living in, say, polar landscapes, or watch videos of lahars, to get a sense of what things actually would feel like.

What do you hope people will gain from this glimpse into our planet’s past?

In short, I think the answer is perspective. Earth has been home to millions of species and an uncountable number of different ecosystems. Almost all those species and ecosystems share one thing - they are gone. Life is persistent, but the specifics of how that life exists at any one time can be very fragile. The past teaches us that when you get major changes to the environment or climate, change is rapid and radical, and loss is permanent. We have evolved in an icehouse world, and should be very concerned about the prospect of the changes we are bringing to the climate and environment that have supported us since we emerged only a couple of million years ago.

How difficult is it to write about a world that existed long before humanity came into existence?

I have an advantage over historians in writing about the past - I do not have to worry about intent. Culture complicates matters, having to interpret whether an object has ritual or functional significance, or figuring out the perspective from which a manuscript was written. In biology, while evidence can often be interpreted in different ways, the differences are often more prosaic. As for reconstructing the worlds as a whole, the revolution in palaeobiology that has allowed us to discover ever more information about past ecosystems means that a lot of the work is done for you by the scientists - it's just a case of translating the academic writing and bringing it together into a cohesive whole.

What are you working on next?

I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you yet... I'd love to continue to write for a general audience, though. The experience of publishing Otherlands has been a revelation - consistently constructive feedback is not the norm in academic writing!