Marc Neuffer: From Naval Nuclear Engineer to Starship Captain

Mookie's Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory launches its 50th episode with fellow anthology contributor, former naval engineer, and prolific author Marc Neuffer. They met through the 2026 SciFi Anthology, going strong for six years since Marc proposed the idea to the Science Fiction Novelists FB group. Mookie points out that he's had half the contributors from this installment on his podcast, with Marc joking there's still time to get the rest of them.Born into the "science" of scifi, Marc grew up in Huntsville, Alabama during the Apollo era surrounded by rocket engineers and space-race optimism, later serving as a nuclear propulsion engineer. Later in life he discovered an aptitude and appetite for writing, since publishing dozens of novels, short stories, and guidebooks on craft. Hitting it off from the start, Marc and Mookie talk Heinlein, Asimov, Kubrick, Andy Weir, hard science fiction, AI, artificial gravity, indie publishing scams, bookstore nostalgia, and the weirdly addictive joy of locking yourself in a room for twelve hours and disappearing into a fictional world.But the real fun starts when they joust: Mookie champions instinct, improvisation, and throwing characters into crisis to see what happens. Marc counters with psychology, authenticity, immersive setting, and his belief that most modern writing “rules” have been flattened into useless workshop clichés. The two spar over “show don’t tell,” ideological fiction, Star Trek versus Star Wars science, modern clickbait science journalism, and whether writers ruin stories the second they start preaching at readers instead of following their characters honestly. The fun part is that neither guy completely gives ground, but both clearly enjoy the friction and wind up sharpening each other’s perspectives along the way.The episode also gets unexpectedly personal at times, with Marc reflecting on aging, creativity, engineering discipline, and why he doesn't care about chasing literary fame or bestseller lists. He’d rather write stories he loves, help younger writers avoid bad advice, and keep exploring ideas that fascinate him. Mookie, meanwhile, keeps dragging the discussion away from abstract writing theory and back toward character, emotion, imagination, and storytelling as lived experience.If you like science fiction conversations with humor, blunt opinions, nerd arguments, creative philosophy, old-school engineering brainpower, and two writers poking holes in each other’s ideas while still clearly enjoying the hell out of the conversation, Episode 50 of SFFF is your morning cup of joe. The GuestMarc is a retired naval engineer who has found his geographic center in rural America. He spent more than 20 years roaming the world with the U.S. Navy, visiting dozens of countries in Europe, Down Under, the Eastern Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. He has lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Saratoga Springs, NY, and Huntsville Alabama.After selling his business, he took up the piano and started writing multi-genre fiction novels. In addition to his ten published novels, and five non-fiction works, Marc's shorter works have been published in Scientific Barbarian Magazine, Frontier Tales, Science Fiction Novelists Anthologies 1-6, and as dramatic narrated stories by Untold-Tales.His BooksWant to be on the show? Have feedback? Send Mookie a text!Support the show