David Greer asked Brian Harvey:

You say David Quammen is an influence, which shows you have good taste, as he's one of the best non-fiction writers on the planet. How has he influenced you?

Brian Harvey Two things. First, he keeps the narrative going, even when he's basically asking the reader to follow a pretty technical path. He uses several techniques to do this - foreshadowing and direct address to the reader, which works in small doses. The other inspiration is his ability to make a clear argument based on masses of information. Having tried the same thing myself in my non-fiction, I admire someone who's prepared to put in the time with a stack of scientific papers rather than just skim the abstracts.

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