Start the Presses: A starman reaches for infinity

On a recent Tuesday, I pulled open the sliding wrought-iron gate securing the driveway of a tidy home in a Riverside subdivision. The barking started immediately.

The bark belonged to Gus, a four-legged creature that turned from watchdog to wiggling licker the moment I crossed the threshold into a darkened front room that had the faint smell of extinguished cigarettes.

Gus’ human, David Silva, a former city editor for the Burbank Leader and Glendale News-Press, greeted me warmly and took me to the well-lit kitchen and family room area, where he spends much of his days.

Silva, 51, wanted to talk about his first novel, a sci-fi book set in the 26th century that echoes the issues we as a society face today — racism, political corruption and greed. Fortunately, there is no President Trump. It’s sci-fi, not horror.

“We wouldn’t leave the problems behind just because we’d reach the stars,” he said, sitting in an overstuffed brown recliner. “We’d just take our problems with us.”

Silva spends a lot of time in that recliner. He is dying of renal cell cancer.

He was diagnosed in December 2013, about two months after finishing the nine-month writing and editing process for “After the Starman Flying.” Bad news, for sure, but with a flickering 15-watt bulb of a bright spot: It was type two, meaning the tumors grow just a bit more slowly.

“If you have to have terminal cancer, that’s the one to have,” he said wryly, adding he decided to self-publish the book — available on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com — because waiting for an agent, hell, buying green bananas, was not a viable option.

The book weighs in at more than 500 pages. The other two books of the trilogy are likely to be just as long, though a scare that the cancer may have spread to his brain has required alternate arrangements.

Silva said he’s created a detailed outline for the remaining work, and has enlisted friends to finish the writing if he is unable. He is frank about his chances.

“If I’m a betting man, I’d say no,” he said, as his wife Sharon burst in from her home office to make coffee. “But every day I’m working.”

In his Mohave-dry humor way, he claims more concern about the famously obese George R. R. Martin’s health than his own, praying the “Game of Thrones” author is able to finish his series before going out like one of his characters.

“Put the pasta down and think of your fans!” Silva said with a laugh.

As for his book, Silva said moving from the day-to-day grind of journalism to fiction writing was, for him, exactly the correct and only move.

“There’s something about sitting down and writing and not worrying about word count,” he said, adding he’s often surprised where the process takes him.

“The story takes over,” Silva said, with his black, brown and white dog wagging his tail at Silva’s feet. “You start a chapter, reach a critical juncture and you think, ‘This character has to die.’

“It goes down a different path than intended, but that makes for a better story.”

If you happen to be in Riverside on Nov. 13, Silva will be reading from his book and signing copies at the Renaissance Book Shop on 3722 Elizabeth St. The program starts at 7 p.m.

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DAN EVANS is the editor. He can be reached at (818) 637-3234 or dan.evans@latimes.com.