Algis turned over the hat of Coordinating Judge of the Writers of the Future Contest to grand-prize winner and fellow judge Dave Wolverton.

ASI: Why do you write science fiction?

I write from the viewpoint that writers can communicate new realities and illuminate human behavior, which then inspires readers to look about them newly and draw conclusions of benefit to mankind’s continuing endeavor to survive and escape extinction.

I believe that I share that viewpoint with L. Ron Hubbard.

ASI: Algis, you have been reading science fiction for a long time. What are some of the stories by L. Ron Hubbard that you have enjoyed the most?

The Ole Doc Methuselah stories really captivated me. I remember reading the first one in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in the late 1940s. It’s set in the far future, but Ole Doc is not old. He is actually young and spry. You learn that he is a member of the Universal Medical Corps and that he travels around space with his four-armed companion, Hippocrates. They land on this one planet to do some fishing, but Ole Doc ends up having to use his medical skills to help the colonists trying to settle there. Toward the end of the story you discover that Ole Doc got his medical diploma from Johns Hopkins University in, as Hippocrates puts it, the Maryland system of some far-off galaxy, a long time ago. That’s when you suddenly have the realization that Ole Doc Methuselah is immortal. It’s great fun and bounces right along. Everybody loved Ole Doc.