As for Kalfař's history with literature, in an interview with Writer's Bone, Kalfař shares how he caught the storytelling "bug" early in his life. "My father had an extensive collection of horror and sci-fi videotapes, and those were the gateway to books. I was in awe of how much stories could move and shape a person," Kalfař says. This led him to try writing X-Files fan fiction, which eventually led him to write his own original narratives. As for reading, Kalfař's experience with X-Files fan fiction led him "to exploring the small library of [his] grandparents—Robinson Crusoe, any Jules Verne [he] could find. Those were the early days." After that, he discovered Tolkien, Pratchett, and Le Guin in middle school, and eventually began reading more advanced works, such as those of Kundera, Dostoevsky, and Dickens. Kalfař's writing process does not include outlining, but, instead, sitting in silence and allowing himself to "hear the characters in [his] head shout over each other." Specifically, his inspiration for Spaceman of Bohemia came from his fascination "with loneliness, its contradictions, how people experience it so differently. It seemed like there was no greater place to study loneliness than within the confines of space." However, he wanted to incorporate some politics into his debut novel. Naturally, an astronaut included both.
