Warren Ellis is an English author of comics, novels and television scripts well known for their exploration of transhumanist themes, particularly cryonics, nanotechnology and human enhancement. He has won numerous Eagle Awards for best comics writer. His first nonfiction book, Spirit Tracks, is due out this year (published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and looks at the “future of the city, the ghosts that haunt it and the science-fiction condition we live in.”

Vassili Christodoulou: Let’s kick off with science fiction. What sort of things did you read when you were younger, and how did this inspire your adult work?

Warren Ellis: I was a voracious reader as a kid. But I didn't really get a sense of what science fiction was supposed to be until my early teens, where in quick succession I discovered Michael Moorcock, William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Jack Kerouac. Science fiction is social fiction, using the tools of science fiction as a scalpel with which to examine the present day. That's what science fiction is for, and that's when I learned it and what I learned from it.