Amanda Lohrey

So I set up my character, Jim Mather, and he has these people who don't suffer from mental illness.

They have good jobs.

They are functional in their lives.

They're good parents and they tell him these extraordinary stories.

Is he going to believe them?

I had what I think is the only sensible point of view, which I might add is shared by most scientists, which is we don't know.

We have no way of knowing.

And it would be fruitless to be dogmatic either way on yes or no.

We just don't know.

I mean, unhappily, I've never met an alien.

Unhappily?

You know, as you get older, you want to have more interesting experiences in life.

I've never seen a UFO.

I've got a friend who claims to have seen one.

But no, it did not in any way come out of a personal experience in that sense.

Well, not much, really.

I read a couple of books of people talking about their experiences, and as all writers do, you know, we're bowerbirds and magpies, we pick the bits we want to go into our particular mosaic.

And we don't want other people's ideas to dictate the form, because we're starting with our own ideas and preoccupations.

So after I got the gist of the spectrum of experiences, which is actually quite narrow, many of the people who claim to have had these experiences have remarkably similar experiences, I thought, okay, I've got enough now.

I've got enough to do the work I need to do.