About the story Think Tank

Mark Dunn
Award Winner Mark Dunn
The nucleus of "Think tank" was an experience I had on holiday at Expo 86 in Vancouver, where westerners were queueing up at a stall to have their names written in Arabic script. It didn't occur to me until much later that the man at the stall could have been writing any old rubbish - after all, who was going to check? And do western names even have Arabic equivalents? He must have had to do hundreds of these per day. Perhaps he was amusing himself by writing "moron", or "kick me", or "camel's breath", or some Arab witticism. I thought this would be a fun thing to put in a story.

But it needed a plot. And a science fiction twist. Okay, the tourists are aliens, and the person writing their name in human script is the hero. But why is he doing this? Isn't it rather petty? It's a form of rebellion. Humanity has been subjugated by alien colonizers. The aliens are petty, bureaucratic, arrogant. How do I show this?

And so the story builds up. My hero ends up being a bit of a know-all, which is not a good thing when there's a science fiction scenario to set up, so I make another character into a newcomer who has things explained to him. But the relationship between the characters isn't going anywhere. Let's make one of them female and see what happens...

About Mark Dunn

I'm 29 years old, originally from Blackpool, and since leaving university have worked as a lexicographer on the Oxford English Dictionary, researching and writing definitions, and latterly working on its web site (http://www.oed.com). It's more fun than it sounds, but less well paid. In my spare time I play badminton and tennis, take part in pub quizzes, and do the odd bit of (hitherto unpublished) writing. The writing has mainly taken the form of scripts. As a student I co-wrote pantomimes which a group of us took on tour round local primary schools, and now at work I co-write the annual Christmas show.

I live in Oxford with my girlfriend of several years, Emma, who read each draft of the story and made me change things that didn't make sense, including the ending. For this I am extremely grateful. She is standing over my shoulder as I write this.

My first introduction to science fiction was Doctor Who (in the Tom Baker era), which captured my imagination at an impressionable age. The first written science fiction I read was Douglas Adams, swiftly followed by Isaac Asimov and Brian Aldiss. It wasn't my intention to read science fiction in alphabetical order of author, but that's pretty much how it turned out. I still haven't read anything by Roger Zelazny.