Dave Hutchinson's "The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man"

Dave Hutchinson is a science fiction writer who was born in Sheffield in England and read American Studies at the University of Nottingham. He subsequently moved into journalism, writing for The Weekly News and the Dundee Courier for almost 25 years. He is best known for his Fractured Europe series, which has received multiple award nominations, with the third novel, Europe in Winter, winning the BSFA Award for Best Novel.

Here Hutchinson dreamcasts the lead for an adaptation of his new novel, The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man:

This is an interesting one. I've noticed, quite recently, that I tend not to have a very strong image what most of my characters look like, just a general idea of height, hair colour, stuff like that. I guess this makes casting a movie a lot easier.

Having said that, there's an absolutely brilliant Scottish actor named Martin Compston who would be perfect to play Alex, the central character in Exploding Man.

I kind of imagined Ralph, his neighbour, as a sort of grumpy Latino Ernest Borgnine, but beyond that I have no idea.

I know some writers have a very strong picture of their characters in their head as they write, and that's fine - everyone works differently - but to me, unless a description is making some kind of point, it's more important what a character says than how they look. I'll leave that to a (hypothetical) casting director.

Learn more about The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man.

Visit Dave Hutchinson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue