Leticia Lara interviews Emma Newman

I have the distinct pleasure of publishing Leticia Lara's interview with the great science fiction and fantasy author Emma Newman. You can also read the interview translated into Spanish at Leticia's blog, Fantástica Ficción. Hope you enjoy it!

Leticia Lara: If you are able to, would you mind letting us know if you've ever been contacted by a Spanish publishing company to publish your books in translation? What would be your sales pitch for your Split Worlds Series in Spain? 

Emma Newman: I have not been approached regarding a Spanish translation of The Split Worlds series. If I were able to pitch it to a publisher there, I think I’d say;

The Split Worlds is a completed urban fantasy series filled with mad sorcerers, evil faeries and feuding dynastic families vying for power. It explores personal freedom, social responsibility and the way that patriarchy can destroy the lives of both men and women. It also has a talking gargoyle and a kickass feminist heroine.

Leticia Lara: You write fantasy and science fiction. Which genre do you prefer to write? Do you use a different approach with each one?

Emma Newman: I don’t think I have a preference; for me the story-telling is the most important thing, rather than the genre that story happens to be in. I love different things about both. In science-fiction I really enjoy looking at current technology and thinking about how it could develop into the future, and how those changes impact upon the human experience.

When I write fantasy (and I have only written urban fantasy so far), I enjoy thinking about how magic influences power structures and the impact that would have on society and everyday life.

Leticia Lara: You are well-known as a writer and also as a reader of audiobooks. Is it very different to perform your own audiobooks in contrast with those written by other authors? 

Emma Newman: When I narrate my own books there is very little prep to do beforehand! I already know the story and the characters, and which accents are required to perform it. I love having the opportunity to perform my own work, as it means I can portray the characters exactly as I imagined them.

When I narrate books written by other authors, there is a lot of work before I even get to the studio. I read the book through, making notes about what happens in each chapter, and detailed notes about all of the characters. I look out for words that I am not sure how to pronounce and highlight dialogue that needs to be read in different accents. If there are characters who speak in accents that I am not able to perform, I need to acquire that skill. That can be a lot of work.

I enjoy audiobook narration very much, as it is challenging and interesting work. It’s like stepping inside the book. It is also very tiring!

Leticia Lara: Do you read your sentences aloud while you are writing to have an idea of how it will sound as an audiobook?

Emma Newman: I always read my work aloud as a fundamental part of my writing process. I think it is the best way to smooth the prose, and to get a sense of whether the dialogue sounds realistic. Sometimes the things characters say seem good on the page, but then when you read it aloud, you realise that no-one really speaks like that in real life!

Leticia Lara: In a recent newsletter, you told us that you were thinking about self-publishing new instalments of the Industrial Magic series. What can you tell us about this?

Emma Newman: That’s the plan! At the moment I am focusing on producing audiobook versions of the first two novellas (which were published by Tor.com), which I’m doing in partnership with the recording studio where I do most of my narration work. Once those are done and released, I’ll be writing the next novella in the series and plan to publish it later in the year.

Leticia Lara: I have eagerly read the three published books in the Planetfall Universe series. They are so different from one another but they also share some characteristics. How did you plan the series to develop this way?

Emma Newman: To be honest, I never planned a series at all! When I wrote Planetfall, I knew it was a stand-alone novel, and I had no idea if anyone would want to publish it. When Ace/Roc bought it, they asked for a second novel. I had some vague ideas about a baby left behind by one of the colonists in Planetfall, and I wanted to explore what the Earth they left behind was like. 

Planetfall was such a success that two more novels were bought, and by that point I’d had an idea for a psychological thriller set on Mars, and once that was written, I knew what I wanted to explore in Atlas Alone. As they are all set in the same universe, it made sense to have connections between the books in the form of common characters, and for important events to have ripples that affect all of them. It’s been a lot of fun tying the books together in a shared universe, but having the freedom to write stand-alone novels. 

Leticia Lara: Many of the characters in the Planetfall Universe series struggle with mental disorders (anxiety, depression…). I was specially touched by the postnatal depression in Before Mars. How did you manage to write such complex personalities with these problems?

Emma Newman: It’s a combination of drawing upon personal experience and doing a lot of research. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder many years ago, and while it is not the same mental illness as Ren has (the protagonist in Planetfall), there is enough of an overlap that I can write about common elements with authenticity. There’s a scene where she has a panic attack that many people have commented on as being hard to read, as it is so realistic because I wrote what I have experienced myself. As for the other aspects of Ren’s illness, writing those needed research and empathy.

I also suffered from post-natal depression, so again could draw upon my own memories of that time when I wrote Before Mars. That was really tough, actually.

Leticia Lara: In After Atlas we can see some of the problems that continued surveillance and the loss of privacy can cause in a society as well as the power of gigantic corporations. Were you trying to write a “cautionary tale”?

Emma Newman: That was certainly on my mind, although the thing that I was really concerned about at the time of building the world of After Atlas was the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) deal that looked like it might be agreed at the time. I was really worried about how that could have given corporations the power to sue governments, and in the historical timeline of the Planetfall novels, the TTIP was agreed and corporations used that power to cripple governments financially so they could effectively commit a coup and take over all aspects of society, leading to the ‘gov-corps’ of After Atlas.

Thankfully the TTIP didn’t get through in the real world, but things have become worse since then in other ways. My novels are political, as science-fiction always has been. I do want people to look critically at the way things are now, and writing about how things could be if they carry on in this way, is my way of drawing attention to them.

Leticia Lara: There is a lot of expectation about your next novel, Atlas Alone. As the “end?” of the Planetfall Universe series (so to speak), what can we know about the book?

Emma Newman: I don’t see it as the end of the series, as I’d like to write two more novels set in that universe, but I may take a little break from the series before I do.

The protagonist of Atlas Alone is Dee, Carlos’s best friend from After Atlas. It follows on six months after the end of that novel. It’s all about recovering from trauma, immersive gaming and revenge.

Leticia Lara: Do you like going to literature festivals like Worldcons? What do you prefer to do in these places?

Emma Newman: I do! I have been to several Worldcons and am looking forward to the one in Dublin this year. 

As someone who finds crowds difficult, and who is quite shy, I do find them hard work, but worth it. I have many friends that I only get to see at these events, so it is lovely to catch up with them, and also with industry professionals like my editors and my agent. 

I like to keep busy at them if I can, and am always very pleased to get on the program, as I see those events as a way of giving back to the community. Whenever I can, I run my workshop on writing and anxiety, which lots of people have found helpful. It’s also wonderful meeting people who like my work.

Leticia Lara: What can you tell us about your new projects?

Emma Newman: I have started to write regular short stories set in the Planetfall universe for my newsletter subscribers, which I am really enjoying. 

I recently took up painting, and to my surprise, have sold some of my first ones! I have my first exhibition coming up at a UK convention which is so exciting.

As for my next novel, well, I can’t quite say what that is yet, as I am waiting for some news. But whatever happens, I do plan to write more Industrial Magic novellas and I’m also planning a new YouTube offering. I will certainly be busy!

Leticia Lara interviews Adrian Tchaikovsky

Leticia Lara has interviewed science fiction and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky and has been so kind as to letting us publish the English version here, on Sense of Wonder. Remember that you can read the translation into Spanish at Leticia's wonderful blog, Fantástica Ficción. Enjoy!

Leticia Lara: Your novel Children of Time has been published in Spain as Herederos del tiempo and in the future we will also see Spiderlight translated. What do you think about getting published in our country? Can you tell us something about the translation process?   

Adrian Tchaikovsky: I’m absolutely delighted that I’m now published in Spanish, and it’s especially nice to see Spiderlight get the attention. I visited Spain for the Celsius festival a few years back and was delighted by the enthusiasm and energy of the fantasy fans there, and I’ve been desperate to get into print in Spanish ever since.

LL: Recently, you have announced the beginning of your new career as a full-time writer. How did you manage to write so much while still working as a lawyer? Have you noticed any difference in the way you write now?

AT: I think my natural writing style tends to be fairly economical – I don’t do a lot of multiple drafts or re-writing, but try to get things as prepared as possible before I embark on a book, meaning, hopefully, I can use my time efficiently. I am also lucky enough to write well late in the evening.

LL: This year you are going to publish three books (that we know of…): Cage of Souls, Children of Ruin and Walking to Aldebaraan. (Seriously, when did you invent the time-travel machine?). Maybe the most waited-for is the sequel to Children of Time but... what can you tell us about the three of them?

So Children of Ruin is indeed the sequel to Children of Time, and picks up from the hook in the very last epilogue chapter of that book, with the expedition to another terraforming site. Cage of Souls is a very different book – and the write-up on Amazon that my editor provided is probably a better pitch for it than anything I could do, but it’s a book set in the far future when the world is simultaneously dying and erupting with new life. The hero is a political dissenter sent to a prison out in the hostile jungles, and from there he gets to watch his world fall apart. Plus lots of monsters and some duels and murders. Walking to Aldabaraan is a novella about an astronaut who is sent as part of a team to investigate a bizarre alien object out around the orbit of Pluto, and who gets lost inside its impossible interior, which defies time and space. He’s trying to get home but he’s beginning to understand that if he does, neither his home nor himself may be the same as they were.

LL: Some of your books have an audiobook version. For example, Guns of the Dawn was performed by the wonderful Emma Newman. What do you think about this way of reading?

AT: I have become a big fan of audiobooks myself, and I’ve been very lucky that everyone picked to read one of mine has done a really good job of it. Audiobooks for me are a great way to re-experience books that I’ve read on paper because the narrator’s voice adds so much additional context.

LL: Are spiders your “trademark” as a writer? They seem to appear in different ways in a lot of your books. 

AT: I am very fond of spiders, although I’m also fond of arthropods in general, plus octopuses, reptiles and just about anything else that most people don’t like. Spiders have proved to be a particularly useful tool to write about because, of all Creatures, they are probably the most despised by most people. Hence if you want shorthand for an outsider or something inhuman, spiders are a Good bet.

LL: In Spiderlight you take the preconceptions readers may have about the classic D&D partyRedemption's Blade the story starts at an unusual point: the Big Bad Guy has been already defeated and the characters try to find a sense of purpose. These are very far from what one usually expects about this genre. What are you trying to achieve by introducing these changes into a classic fantasy story?
and you twist them with the introduction of a wild card. In

AT: Well, first off, the regular way of telling epic fantasy stories – Good defeats evil in a big fight – has been done a lot, and the one thing I do feel I have to try for is originality. Hence I love fantasy stories, but I want to give them my own spin. Also traditional fantasy (at least the post-Tolkien wave of the 80’s and 90’s, say) had many Works that didn’t really examine the implications of the worlds they were setting up – characterising everything as Good or evil means that Good gets to slaughter evil without remorse, and in both Spiderlight and Redemption’s Blade I really wanted to deconstruct this genre tradition and challenge it a bit. 

LL: Dogs of War and Ironclads are two novellas set on a near future. Both present to the reader possible problems of warfare-applied technology. However, Children of Time is set in the far future, Earth is not a relevant scenario and the spotlight is shared between a ragtag assortment Humanity's leftovers and a brand new species and its evolutionary road. What kind of science fiction do you like the best to write? 

(NOTE: Dogs of War is a full novel, albeit a shorter one)

AT: Honestly it’s a matter of letting the key concept of the book dictate the setting. Children of Time could only be a far future book because the spider evolution needed time to work. Ironclads and Dogs of War are both very much about the Now – our attitudes to wealth and privilege, to class and service and to the immediate future of humanity, hence if they’d been set in the far future they wouldn’t have the same impact.

LL: You've written many different books besides the previously mentioned like Guns of the Dawn a sort of Pride, Prejudice and Women at War, the Echoes of the Fall trilogy and the very impressive Shadows of the Apt (10 novel plus short stories!). At this rate, you'll end up writing on every format and about every main topic in science fiction and fantasy. Why is your range that wide?

AT: Thus far, I have stayed very much within genre, and I like to stretch myself about that far. I don’t tend to write horror (although there are some sections of some of my books that go there, a Little), I have occasionally cast looks at neighbouring genres like historical or crime/thriller, but I’m not one to assume that shifting styles like that would be easy, and I know I’d need a proper period of acclimatisation before I tried it.

LL: Maybe it is not well-known that you are a frequent boardgame player. Do you think some of your stories could be taken as a basis for developing a game? Which kind of games are your favorites?

AT: I would absolutely love to see a board game (or any game) based on my work! I’m personally something of a Eurogame player a lot of the time, and I like games that generate an emergent story just from the way the rules and player choices interact.

LL: What can you tell us about your new projects?

AT: I have just sent my agent the manuscript for a book called “The Brain Garden” (although it could be called something quite different by the time it hits the shelves) which is a great big story about parallel timelines and evolution and a whole load of other stuff. There’s also a novella I’ve just finished which is partly about wizards and partly about mental health, which was interesting to try. I’m still searching around for a title for that one.

Cristina Jurado reviews Unholy Land, by Lavie Tidhar

It is a great pleasure for me to host this review of Lavie Tidhar's Unholy Land, written by none other than Cristina Jurado. Hope you enjoy it! And remember that you can also read this review translated into Spanish.  

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar: 

Travelling through fragmented reality 

Review Soundtrack: Cristina suggests reading this review while listening to a session by Palestinian DJ Sama (YouTube).

This review of Unholy Land is a bit different from others I’ve written over the years. Let me explain you why. Sometimes, you encounter a story at a particular moment, and at a particular place, that changes your whole perspective about the theme. This happened to me while reading Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar, an ARC my friend Elías passed on to me, and for which I am greatly appreciative. You see: I was staying with my in-laws in Lebanon this summer when the novel came to my hands. The most extraordinary is that, right when I was in the middle of the story, we were invited to visit some friends in the South, a small village called Qlayaa, just few kilometers from the border with Israel. In the afternoon, before going back home, our hosts proposed us to go near the border, to Odaisseh, where one can see Israel at the other side of the fence. The contrast is striking: a perfectly manicured landscape over there, and a cluttered and disorganized one, here. I saw other visitors taking pictures with the Italian UN peacekeepers that were patrolling the Lebanese side. For a moment, I could identify with the main character in Unholy Land, Tirosh, the author of unexceptional novels, being a writer myself struggling to be known as an artist. But not only that. Also like him, I often times feel in between worlds. In my case, the Western culture in which I grew up, and the Middle Eastern of my husband. Both of us, I thought, share the sensation of being inserted in a hurry into our realities. I understand that I’m not a character and this is not my story, but I think the circumstances in which I read the book have enormously influence my experience, and I had to made them explicit. 

In Unholy Land, Tidhar chooses a second person narrator to immediately appeal to the audience. It's a risky move, but I found it very effective, more risky if one takes into consideration that later he alternates also first and third person narrators. But his proves to be an intelligent choice, although revealing why at this point it would mean to spoil the book. 

The story follows the journey of an average writer into his native country, an alternate Jewish State called Palestine and created in East Africa (today’s modern Kenya). Tidhar follows the efforts of Hungarian Theodor Herlz in the early 20^th century in establishing a suitable land for the Jewish people at an (supposedly) unclaimed territory. While Tirosh goes back home to escape from an unimaginable loss, the disappearance of his niece brings to the surface the violence of the colonial political and economic model, and the existence of cracks in time and space. We discover a fragmented reality, not only through Tirosh or Special Investigator Bloom, the man who follows him and the voice “conductor” of the story, but also through Nur, the female agent who tries to reestablish balance in the time-space continuum. 

I must confess I tremendously enjoyed this story. Not only the culture sounded very familiar (Lebanon is even briefly present); the dynamics of a fundamental social fracture -in alternative Palestine it is between Africans and Palestinians- are sadly known territory for everybody who follows the news. Many countries are divided now more than ever, between national sentiments, religious affiliations or political stances. The product of all this is, precisely, a permanent fragmented state of things, in which each group seems to live in their own reality. 

Tidhar’s magic touch is the result of a very concise and evocative prose, an ingenious imagination, and the ability to poke the reader’s social conscience. The story nicely flows, like the smoke of a water pipe, and in the descriptions the reader can almost sense the scent of cinnamon, cumin and roasted pine nuts in the streets of Ararat city. Any fan of good speculative fiction with a pitch of noir, some pulp hints and a lot of sense of wonder will enjoy Unholy Land, Lavie Tidhar’s voyage into the power of historical possibilities. 

Alexander Páez reviews Mecha Samurai Empire, by Peter Tieryas

Alexander Páez has kindly reviewed for us Mecha Samurai Empire, by Peter Tieryas, the sequel to United States of Japan. You can also read this review in Spanish at Alexander's website, Donde acaba el infinito. Hope you like it!

Review Soundtrack: Álex suggests reading this review while listening to the main theme of Mazinger Z, by Ichirou Mizuki (YouTube, YouTube) 

Some years ago, I got an ARC copy of a book at my email. It was an Angry Robot book: United States of Japan by an unknown author at that time, Peter Tieryas. I contacted him by Twitter and since then we speak now and then. With that warm and proximity that is so Tieryas. Now, in 2018, Peter Tieryas has positioned himself as one of the emergent authors that you must read. He has succeeded in the international market as in the anglosaxon. And he hasn’t lost this close touch, this proximity to the readers. The story repeats itself, I got an ARC copy of his new novel and I start reading it as soon as it gets into my Paperwhite. I need more of his world. I need more mechas. I need more sci-fi. Mecha Samurai Empire is this new novel that is also a sequel to the previous novel but both can be read as stand-alone works. Oh, and it was worth. So much.

If the first novel was a dystopia, a homage to a Phillip K. Dick novel, this second one is a novel about war, about humanity, a tribute to the sub-culture surrounding mechas, videogames and probably a more Heinlein-reminiscent novel. In Mecha Samurai Empire, Japan and Germany won the World War II and they divided North America. West is Japanese, a hybrid between Japanese and North American culture, while in the East, the Germany area, it is more divided between non-Aryans and “normal” citizens. You probably already knew this if you read the previous novel. The truce between the Japanese Empire and the German Reich is uneasy, mechas versus biomechs, but they usually stay out of each other businesses. Usually.

Mecha Samurai Empire begins with Mac, a student struggling with his grades, but a guy who is incredibly good at videogames, especially with “portical”, something that grants with a chance to enter the mecha examination program so he can fulfill his dream: to be a mecha pilot. Mac is attended by the state, since both his parents were killed in The Battle of San Diego. They were both mecha pilots.

Peter Tieryas doesn’t write typical heroes. You probably are wondering when Mac will have his chance to save the world, to be a hero. Well, actually on different occasions, but the way Tieryas drives the plot is brilliant. This are not hero worthy situations, most of them are a fruit of chance, or sometimes he is in the right place at the right time. Tieryas also does a lot of criticism to the military structure, with poor leaders that lead to a lot of trooper deaths and so on. While I don’t really care about military criticism (I guess this is an important issue in USA, but in Spain not really) I think it’s very clever because you can take the philosophical exploration and put it into a bigger picture. While I was reading this novel, I reckoned it felt a lot like a Kojima game. A Metal Gear Solid game. It’s about soldiers, but it has a bigger picture. Mac isn’t a philosopher, but he encounters situations that really question his motivations. For instance, he has a German friend, and that is not very keen to the eyes of his companions. 

I have to admit, the best in this novel? The mecha battle. Oh my. So funny, so well written, so epic. This was something the readers wished for more in the first novel. And here we have our wish. Granted by Tieryas. I would LOVE to see a movie about this novel. Mecha Samurai Empire isn’t as dark as the previous work, it’s more war-like, more dynamic, faster. And I really enjoyed the change in style and narrative. It really feels like Tieryas had a lot of fun writing this novel. And you know, mechas vs other things is always a win-win. My recommendation is that you should read it, but don’t expect a new dystopia, this is not (very much) it. It’s a criticism to war, military states and totalitarianism. Another great work by Peter Tieryas.

Alexander Páez reviews Summerland, by Hannu Rajaniemi

It is a great pleasure to have Alexander Paéz reviewing for us Hannu Rajaniemi's latest novel: Summerland. Hope you enjoy it and remember that you can read the review in Spanish at Alex's blog, Donde acaba el infinito.

Review soundtrack: Alex suggest reading this review while listening to In The Summertime, by Mungo Jerry (YouTube, Spotify).

I do hold some respect before reading a book by Hannu Rajaniemi. The Quantum Thief was a tough book, full of hard to understand ideas. But it was thrilling and full of that sense of wonder. I did not discover that in his Collected Fiction that I read some years ago, which for me was a little bit weird. Some short stories were really good, and some others not that much. Added to this, I’ve decided since some months ago not to review books that I dislike. But with Summerland I’ll do and exception because I think it holds some great ideas that you may find interesting.

Summerland takes place during the Spanish Civil War and it is told as a chronicle or a story about some secret wars played by the most powerful European countries at the time. So yes, it is a novel about spies. But then fantasy comes in, they have discovered that life and death have no meaning whatsoever. They can communicate with the Dead using some mediums through a possession. A fight to possess and control the Summerland begins.

Hannu Rajaniemi mixes real history events and people with characters, and this gives a perspective to the story and a point for the reader to hold to reality and to certain events. The bad part (and there is always a bad part to every story) is that the characters felt really misused or unused. Some of them feel like tools, some other like “hey, look at this guy, he appears here”. I can’t restrain myself in doing a (maybe unfair) comparison between Summerland and The Last Days of Paris by China Mieville, which blew my mind when I read it. Mieville book does everything right where Summerland just fails.

Summerland was a long awaited project by Rajaniemi, and science takes a huge role in the book. It is Marcone and no one else who discovers this world beyond Dead or Alive. And yes, it is fantasy at its purest, but the huge elements of science work really well in the story. Rajaniemi also takes part in the ongoing gender discussion, but for me it just felt like “agenda”. It’s not elegant at all and it feels like some characters just screaming to the reader “hey, we think women are not weak, you see us? We really think that!”. I wished for a cleverer way to put it. Rajaniemi works best at criticizing politics and some ways the System works.

Some other interesting ideas in Summerland are the safe way to travel to this world beyond with a ticket so the soul can fix itself to the world in order to not disappear. And the interesting idea of a god, or the absolute force. Sadly, I do not recommend this book whatsoever. I felt it was pretty boring for the most part of it, and I had the impression that it was just spinning around. There are a lot of ideas and story parts that I did not enjoy at all, but let’s just leave them aside. I will be waiting for the next Rajaniemi book, overall I think he is a really interesting author to follow.

Alexander Páez reviews The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander

I am greatly honored to host this review of The Only Harmless Great Thing by my friend Alexander Páez, a huge fan of Brooke Bolander's work (and, in fact, the translator into Spanish of one of her stories). Hope you enjoy it, and remember that you can also read the review in Spanish at Álex's blog, Donde acaba el infinito.  

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to Radium Girls, by Pat Burtis (Spotify).

I’m going to make this short, as the story here is short as well. A quick punch to the guts. A brief “Holy cow” swearing. A short realization that you’ve read a huge and profound story. An angry story. An “I’m tired of this shit” story. If you have read "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" you may know what I am talking about. I will call it Rage Writing. Stories that comes as a ferocity burst of being tired of this society that allows inequality, injustice and suffering. 

The Only Harmless Great Thing is a story hard to talk about. I read it in two days and I felt like I was in a hurry. I needed to finish it as soon as possible. Get rid of that anger. Get rid of than painful story. This novella is a mix of two real stories: Topsy the Elephant and the Radium Girls. The first one is about an elephant that was publicly executed on Coney Island and the Radium Girls is a group of women who ended poisoned because of their work with radioactive stuff. Although the events happened in different timelines (1903 and 1917) Bolander builds her fiction among these two events occurring at the same time. In Bolander’s novella we have the electrocution of an elephant that causes a nuclear explosion at the coast of New York. The story goes back and forward between many protagonists and characters, before and after the Topsy execution and the aftermath explosion. Bolander introduces songs, lullabies, a fable about an ancient elephant mother, and media pieces. All of it makes a collage of small stories, tiny points of view that the reader must put together to understand what is going on. Just imaging that someone throws a lot of documents on your table and you have to reconstruct the whole story. It is fun. It is exhausting. It is challenging. It is Bolander.

The transitions in the story are smooth and perfect, you don’t feel like as a reader you are being pushed around in a fuzzy way, but that you are being on your own in a huge gallery and you kind of choose what piece you approach. The book is very short, yes, but is has so much to say. It actually says so much. Funny how many things we have to say about such tiny pieces and so less about the incredible long ones. The Only Harmless Great Thing is a fable about nuclear waste, slavery, fighting women, animal abuse, patriarchy and many more metaphors you will find. To end this, I will speak about the beginning of the book, which opens with a huge mountain of nuclear waste, the total extinction of humanity. And over there are living the irradiated elephants. Eternal. Brooke Bolander’s writing is like a roar, a vast battle cry. And we can’t ignore it.

Interview with Ada Palmer

Today I have the pleasure of teaming up with Leticia Lara, from Fantástica Ficción, to interview Ada Palmer, the author of two of the most fascinating novels I've read in a long while: Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders. Hope you enjoy the interview and remember that you can read the translation into Spanish at Leticia's blog!

Leticia Lara & Odo: When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

Ada Palmer: I wanted to write fantasy & science fiction novels ever since I was a tiny child.  All through school I worked on extra writing projects in my free time, and did writing courses over the summers whenever I could.  Writing is a skill which comes very slowly, only with practice—some skills like music and mathematics have prodigies, but others genuinely only come with years and years of practice, and I think writing is one of them.  Every word I wrote, whether essays for class, drafts of early stories that will never be published, poems for a poetry course, even e-mails if you work on crafting them well, everyone of them is a tiny step forward for a writer.

LL&O: Which authors have influenced you the most?

AP: My father has a big library of classic SF, so I grew up reading Alfred Bester, Heinlein, Asimov, William Tenn, and especially Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany.  Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun became my model for how dense and real world building could feel, and how complex and intense a first person narrator could be. But I also read a lot of historical literature, so many influences on Terra Ignota come from outside F&SF: 18^th century literature like Voltaire and especially Diderot’s Jacques le Fatalist et son Maitre, and also Robert Graves’ I Claudius was a strong source, both for the narrative perspective and the way of looking at politics through family and dynastic relationships.

LL&O: Is there any current writer that you admire?

AP: Many, yes!  The two who still make me speechless with awe when they walk into a room are Gene Wolfe and Samuel R. Delany.  There are also authors I really admire for how they’ve both produced brilliant work but also used it to address important issues in the world and make real change, people like Ken Liu, Cory Doctorow, and Daniel José Older.  One of the great pleasures of beginning to publish has been getting to know so many great writers as friends, people like Jo Walton, Pamela Dean, and Susan Palwick.  And there are fantastic newer writers that I’m honored to be writing alongside, people like Malka Older, Ruthanna Emrys, Yoon Ha Lee, Charlie Jane Anders, and Max Gladstone.  I especially admire masters of short-form fiction, since I’ve always struggled with shorter form and find it immensely powerful.  Some of the most exciting to me are Ted Chang, John Chu, E Lily Yu, and Alyssa Wong, but there’s so much great short F&SF being written and published now, it feels like living in a fiction treasure trove.

LL&O: Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders have been published as two books but they feel like just one novel. Could you tell us a little bit about their writing and publication process?

AP: Guilty as charged.  I planned the series as two long books, and wrote what are now Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders as one book, but Tor decided to divide it up into four.  For the third and fourth books it works well, since I wrote them knowing they’d divide like that, but the first two were written as one thing, and had to be cut in half after the fact.  I did my best to make the first book give as much resolution as I could, showing the reader shape of what is going on, and bringing lots of threads together, but it was challenging rewriting it to end when so many themes and elements were mid-stream.  I think I did a pretty good job, but I do feel it’s imperfect, and that it’s best to read the first two books close together.  Books two and three both have fine endings to stop on, though.

LL&O: Both Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders are profoundly philosophical (and political) books. Do you think that science fiction is especially suitable for exploring this kind of topics?

AP: Yes, very much so.  Science fiction lets us explore other ways human societies could be set up, alternate kinds of politics and crisis, and it lets us preview kinds of moral dilemmas and moral decisions that advancing technology will cause before we actually get there.

LL&O: One of the questions you pose in Seven Surrenders is whether the end justifies the means. What do you think of mental experiments such as the “trolley problem” in which you have to decide if you “kill” one person to save five? Do you think that these philosophical issues will become more important in the future, for instance with the development of self-driving cars and all that?

AP: The trolly problem is delightful for debate, but happily the real world (and realistic fiction worlds) don’t correspond to it because we have the ability to change the situation over time, to gradually develop better trollies and safer walkways to prevent something like that from happening.  We have the ability to reject the terms of the process in the first place.  For example, one of the steps of the trolly problem is whether you would kill a person to harvest organs you could use to save the lives of five people—the real-world answer is that we are working together to develop artificial organs so everyone can live.  I’ve been following this with self-driving cars, and those who’ve been designing them expected to face the trolly problem, but have discovered that in actuality their simulations can’t design any realistic situations where endangering the driver is the only way to save others; in reality there are always multiple possible actions some of which are good for the driver too, and things which endanger the driver tend to be the same ones which endanger passers-by.  So in many ways the aspect of the trolly problem that the books look at—and which I think is more relevant to real life—is the question of whether or not you accept the status quo.  If trollies are killing a small number of people, does the society leave them that way considering these deaths and acceptable loss for the greater good, or does the society reject the terms of the trolly problem and dedicate itself to solving this so no one has to die?  The Utopians, for example, are dedicated to “disarming death” and whenever anything kills one of their members they put it on a list and keep working on improving the situation until it can’t recur—even if this requires large sacrifices, like using their own flying car network which is slower and thus is a bit of a drain on their economy compared to using the faster ones.  In many ways it’s a question about complacency, and about responsibility—whether society is content to continue sacrificing a few lives in order to enjoy peace and plenty, or whether the society refuses to accept that and continues to work to reduce the body count, even if it means the majority giving up a life of ease for a life of working harder.  To use a real world political example, a few years ago they did a poll in Canada asking if Canadian citizens would be willing to pay higher taxes to give people in the USA better healthcare, saving and improving lives (not Canadian lives, people in the USA).  The Canadians strongly answered “Yes.”  That is a society which rejects the terms of the trolly problem, preferring to work harder to help everyone instead of settling for “acceptable loss.”  The characters in Terra Ignota face a similar question, though with much higher stakes.

LL&O: Another philosophical issue at the root of your novels is what the natural state of people is. Do you think that we are born as “noble savages” or do you agree with Hobbes on this one?

AP: While I’m glad sciences is helping us learn more and more about what part nature plays in human character, studying history makes it very, very clear to me how completely different people are when raised in different ways and different societies.  Children’s brains are incredibly good at learning, absorbing, analyzing patterns, and repeating them, and children raised in different ways can have profoundly different values, world views, and fundamental human capacities.  A few of the characters involved in events in the book believe that humans are naturally bellicose and that violence will inevitably recur no matter what, but most of them don’t—most believe instead (much as I do) that humankind certainly has the capacity to achieve permanent peace, but that doing so will require a lot of cultural, political, and educational development.  That it’s not something we can achieve in a few decades—culture is too complicated, and we are too complicated.  But, just like with curing diseases, if we work at it, study ourselves, learn more, we can take steps toward it over time.  Humanity spent many centuries trying to develop medicines before we finally developed really effective ones like penicillin, but that doesn’t mean that we cured all diseases within a few decades of developing penicillin, nor does it mean that all the early doctors whose efforts didn’t bear fruit didn’t contribute anything.  Just so, some characters in Terra Ignota believe that, while humanity in their 25^th century has gotten very good at peace, we aren’t yet so good at it new outbreaks of violence aren’t possible—rather, like doctors armed with penicillin, they’re better at peace than any earlier age, but still have a lot more to learn.

LL&O: The world we see in Terra Ignota is, to paraphrase Le Guin, an ambiguous utopia. Do you think an actual, stable utopia is really attainable?  Or are social and political constructs always flawed in some way?

AP: Stable definitely not—we keep inventing, discovering, and expanding too much too fast.  Even if we somehow completely mastered all of science (which will take many centuries if it’ seven possible) we’d keep innovating in the realms of art and literature, which in turn stimulate social change.  But I do think society sometimes achieves improvements which would feel impossibly amazingly utopian if we showed them to earlier generations, though often at the same time generating accidental bad side-effects which we then need to remedy, and making other changes people from the past would find dystopian and frightening.  Let’s imagine showing 2017 to someone from 1767.  Our medical advances, our globe-crossing airplanes, our flawless industrial fabrics, our automated washing machines, our 80 year average life span, our greenhouses supplying fresh fruit in the dead of winter—all these would feel absolutely utopian.  Other changes, such as the fall of so many eternal-seeming empires, the transformed roles of women, new weapons, new diseases—these would seem alarming, uncomfortable, frightening, like something has gone wrong.  And certain continuities, such as the continuation of religious violence, famine, controversies over the use of torture, these would seem depressingly familiar.  I set out to create a 2454 which would feel like that: utopian in many ways, disorienting and uncomfortable in others, depressingly similar in others.  Because I think that’s very plausibly the kind of future we are going to make.  I don’t think the flaws and merits of the real 25^th century will be the same ones in my imagined 25^th century, but I do think there will be flaws as well as merits, much as I set out to depict.  Because when we talk about making a better future, we also have to accept that it won’t be in our control precisely what develops in that future, and while it will contain many things we wish for, it will contain a few we don’t.  And it will also keep changing.  Because it’s not a stable utopia—its a dynamic, changing, growing world.  The question is not “Is a perfect society possible?” it’s “When a pretty good society is confronted with its deep and toxic flaws, will it succeed in changing for the better?”

LL&O: The society of Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders has, apparently, given up discrimination for reasons of gender, sexual orientation, religion or political affiliation. However, sex, faith, and power are still strong driving forces. Do you think this kind of “urges” are at the root of all human behavior?

AP: Not unchangingly or permanently so.  Societies, people, brains, are all very complex, and right now complicated cultural attitudes toward gender, sex, race and religion are woven all through our society and passed on to our children in a thousand unconscious ways from early childhood.  These aren’t unchangeable or inherent parts of human nature, but they are facts of our current culture, ones we are still learning to understand and affect.  Thus I think that, while we’re making huge changes in them even now, realistically they’re going to continue to be parts of our society in ever-changing ways for several centuries to come, because they are so complicated it will take us that long to fully understand and change them.  The future of Terra Ignota looks at the question of whether progress on these axes might take a long time, and what might make it more or less successful over the next centuries.  For example, you will notice that, in the Terra Ignota universe, social progress on some of these axes has progressed a lot more than others.  Race relations between people of European and African descent, for example, are in great shape, while race relations between people of Europe and East Asian descent are tenser.  We see no evidence of any discrimination related to sexual orientation, but we do see (especially from the narrator) a lot of tension about gender.  And as we learn more about the society, we also encounter a pattern: the elements which have progressed less are the ones where the conversation has been partly or completely silenced.  For example, there’s a severe taboo on even mentioning gender, so gender tensions are not progressing much because without discourse, study, without talking about things, exploring, innovating, progress has stagnated.  But there’s no taboo on talking about sex or who’s having sex with whom, so there things have advanced.  One of my hopes is that people will come away from these books thinking about how destructive silence can be, how invaluable discourse is to progress.  Because sometimes you hear people say things like “Feminism has done what it set out to do, women have equal rights, we don’t need all this gender stuff anymore.”  Trying to shut the conversation down.  Whereas in fact we’re still in the infant days of truly liberating humanity from old rigid forms of gender, gender binaries, and gender inequality, so shutting down the conversation could lock us into a bad outcome, like Terra Ignota where very little progress has been made on gender in four centuries—four centuries of silence.

Infinity Engine, by Neal Asher

(Disclaimer: English is my second language, so I want to apologize in advance for there may be mistakes in the text below. If you find any, please let me know so that I can correct it. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.)

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to Penny Royal, by Evokescape (Spotify, Soundcloud)

Dark Intelligence and War Factory, the first two instalments of the Trasformation trilogy, were two of my favourite books in 2015 and 2016 and are two of the best space opera novels I've read recently. In fact, I liked them so much that Night Shade used and excerpt of my review of Dark Intelligence as a blurb in War Factory. As you can imagine, I was really excited about the series coming to its conclusion with Infinity Engine. Sadly, I must say that this third book was a bit of a disappointment.  

Many of the elements that I loved in Dark Intelligence and War Factory are present also in Infinity Engine. For instance, Penny Royal is still pulling strings in the shadows and provoking transformations in many of the other characters. The new, central role of the Brockle, as counterpoint to the evil AI, is especially interesting in this regard, giving raise to the best chapters of the novel. The explanation of Penny Royal's back history, including the reasons for its becoming rogue, are also very good and I did enjoy them very much. 

However, and despite those interesting parts, I couldn't help feeling that the rest of the book was largely forgettable. Most chapters just involve characters going from one place to another, occasionally fighting each other, but all without much relevance to the main plot. In fact, this kind of problem was also present (in a less obvious way) in the final part of War Factory and I seriously think that the series would have been much better if these last two novels would have been fused in just one, keeping the only the best parts of Infinity Engine. 

I have read other, much more positive reviews of the novel and thus I must say that mine could very well be a minority opinion. In fact, I've noticed that, lately, I find it difficult to enjoy the second or third instalments of series whose first book I loved. It happened to me with A Night Without Stars, by Peter F. Hamilton, which I think was really not up to the standard of The Abyss Beyond Dreams (contrary to the popular opinion) and, to a lesser extent, also with Luna: Wolf Moon, by Ian McDonald, which everybody seems to love as much as Luna: New Moon. And it has happened to me again with Infinity Engine, so you may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt. Your mileage may vary and all that. 

All in all, I regret to say that I expected much more from Infinity Engine and that, even though the Transformation trilogy is still a very good series on the strength of Dark Intelligence and War Factory alone, it leaves with a bittersweet taste. This could (should?) have been one of the best space opera sagas ever but, to my taste, failed to deliver with this third and final book.        

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)

Interview with Caroline M. Yoachim

Caroline M. Yoachim is one of my favorite short fiction writers (I highly recommend her collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories), so it is a big pleasure for me to team up with Leticia Lara to interview the author. Hope you enjoy it and remember that you can read the interview translated into Spanish at Fantástica Ficción. 

Leticia Lara & Odo: When did you know you wanted to become a writer? Which authors have influenced you the most? Is there any current writer that you admire? 

Caroline M. Yoachim: I wrote fiction when I was a kid, but quit when I started college. Back then I thought writing wasn't something ordinary people did--I knew books were written by people, obviously, but I didn't know any authors, so I figured I probably couldn't do it. Several years later a friend of mine casually mentioned that he was writing a book, and it dawned on me that if he could do it, maybe I could, too!

I grew up reading a lot of classic science fiction--Asimov, Clarke, Niven. I loved the vast scale and the sense of wonder they evoked, but I never really saw myself in any of the stories. At some point I discovered Octavia Butler, who is one of my all-time favorite authors. I love her ideas and her characters.

I admire too many current writers to list them all, but a few of my favorites are: N.K. Jemisin, Ken Liu, Nalo Hopkinson, and Ted Chiang.

LL&O: Does your background in psychology help you with your writing? 

CMY: It does! I think the human mind is fascinating, and several of my story ideas are drawn from by background in Psychology. "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion" was inspired by the Kübler-Ross model, which was originally used to describe the emotions experienced by terminally ill patients. "Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind" incorporates detailed descriptions of neurons. I also have several stories that examine the nature of human identity-- what defines us as individuals and makes us who we are?

LL&O: Lots of your stories are about family and grieving. Has becoming a mother influenced your way of writing? 

CMY: Even before I had children, family and grieving were themes that showed up in my work. I like to explore the relationships between characters, and how those relationships change over time. Having a baby is the beginning of a new relationship, one that is initially very asymmetrical because infants begin with such a limited understanding of the world around them. But as people age, children often become caregivers for elderly parents. Dealing with the loss of a loved one is almost an extension of that focus on relationships--a way of looking at what happens when a relationship ends.

Having children didn't introduce those themes in my writing, but I do think that being a parent gives me a deeper understanding of the parent-child relationship, because I've seen it from both sides now.

LL&O: You seem quite fond of using special structures in your stories, such as the flashmash or the “choose-your-own-adventure” format. Could you explain what a flashmash is and how you use it in your work? Does writing in a particular format influence the way you create your work? Or does the topic you want to write about lead you to a particular format?

CMY: My natural tendency is to write stories that are very short: flash-length stories of around 750 words. One of the things I sometimes do to write longer stories is to write a series of interrelated flash stories, which I can then mash together into one longer story. The first flashmash story I wrote was "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion," which is a series of five flash stories, each one focusing on a different stage of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) told from the perspective of a different character.

When I'm writing a flashmash story, the structure usually comes first, and then I generate an idea to go with it. At one point I made a long list of things that I could use to divide a story into flashmash sections, many of which have since become stories: rock, paper, scissors; four seasons; five stages of grief; seven wonders of the world.

For most of my other stories, including my recent choose-your-own adventure story, the idea comes first and then I pick a structure that I think might suit the story I want to tell.

LL&O: In addition to writing, you also practice photography. Does seeing the world through the lens of a camera change your vision of the worlds you create (making them more visual, for instance)? Do you think that all arts are somehow related and that techniques can be borrowed techniques from one to another?

CMY: I think one of the reasons I'm so strongly drawn to photography is that I am not a visual person. The visual elements of my memories tend not to be particularly vivid or clear in my mind, and so photographs are sometimes a tool for me to recall the details that are not encoded in my memories. I'm not consciously aware of any ways that being a photographer influences my writing, but I don't have any way of knowing what my writing would look like if I didn't spend so much time looking through a camera lens. I've heard people say that short stories are like snapshots, and I definitely have a tendency to write things short.

I do think there are techniques that are similar between photography and writing. Perspective, for instance. A familiar subject viewed from an unusual perspective can work well in both a photograph and a story. Framing is important, too. What are the edges of your photograph/story--where does it start and end? How much of a photograph/story should the main subject fill and how much background should there be? 

LL&O: In many of your stories you explore the idea of identity and its relationship with our body, with our physical form, referring several times to philosophical problems such as the Theseus Paradox. Do you think that science fiction and fantasy are especially suitable for exploring this kind of questions?

CMY: The ship of Theseus is my favorite philosophical paradox. For anyone not familiar with the paradox, in its basic form it asks the question: If you have a ship and replace it, one board at a time, and all through these replacements it continues to sail, is it still the same ship? What if you take the boards you remove and build a second ship with those--which ship is the true ship of Theseus?

I like the paradox even when it involves ships, but where I think it gets really interesting is when you apply it to people. If you take someone and replace every one of their cells gradually over time, are they still the same person? What do we need to change about someone before we are forced to say "this is no longer the same person" or even "this is no longer a human"?

Science fiction and fantasy are well-suited to exploring these kinds of questions, because they allow me to transform my characters in a wide variety of ways. I've had sugar characters that dissolve and re-form, characters that transition from old bodies to new ones, characters that give up their bodies entirely. My goal is often to raise questions in the reader's mind, rather than to answer them. I hope my stories encourage people to think about what it is that makes us who we are.

LL&O: You write both science fiction and fantasy, and even some horror. Do you think that, nowadays, the frontiers between genres are blurring? Is there any genre that you feel more comfortable with?

CMY: I definitely think that the boundaries between the genres can be blurred. I sometimes play around with post-apocalyptic fantasy (which ends up being somewhere in between fantasy and science fiction), and some of my darker fantasy has a horror element. That said, I'm definitely more comfortable writing science fiction and fantasy than I am with writing horror. 

LL&O: You have written humoristic stories for anthologies such as Alex Shvartman’s UFOs, for instance. Is it difficult to combine humor and science fiction?  

For a long time I assumed that I couldn't write funny stories, but at some point Alex mentioned that some of the funniest stories he gets for his UFO anthology series have come from authors who didn't think they could write humor. So I decided to try my hand at it and submit a story for UFO3. Alex ended up accepting the story for the anthology, and since then I've written a handful of other humor stories.

Combining humor and science fiction was a lot easier than I expected, but only for a small subset of story topics--taxes, dissertation research, medical clinics. Overall I don't get very many ideas that lend themselves to humor, but I do enjoy writing them. 

LL&O: What are your opinions about the situation of women and POC in genre fiction? 

CMY: I tend to be a relatively optimistic person, and I'm encouraged by things that are currently happening in genre fiction. There are stories being published now that are told from a wide range of perspectives, and it is increasingly easy for people in marginalized groups to see themselves in stories, as protagonists and heroes.

I still see a tendency for white males to be the default, and everything else to be the exception. When people make reading lists, they tend not to be balanced. Reading lists that are all male authors will be labeled "top ten SF writers of all time," but a list with all female authors will generally be called "top ten women SF writers."

So overall I think we are making progress and moving in the right direction, but there is still work to do in embracing a more diverse range of characters and voices.

LL&O: Are social networks important for your relationships with other authors and with your readers?

CMY: Absolutely! Writing can be such a solitary endeavor, and social networks are a fantastic tool for connecting both with other writers and with readers. I am friends with authors around the world, and being able to stay connected with them online is immensely valuable to me. Things like fb and twitter also let me keep readers updated on what I'm working on. The main trick with social media is finding the right balance--I think it is good to spend some time there to stay connected with the online community, but if I spend too much time online I don't get as much writing done.

LL&O: What are you working on right now? Could you give us a sneak peek on your future projects? 

CMY: My fantasy story "Carnival Nine" will be out in Beneath Ceaseless Skies later this spring--of the short stories I wrote in 2016, this one is my favorite.

I've also been writing a lot of stories for anthologies recently. I have a few where the table of contents haven't been announced yet, but one that I can tell you about is that my story "Dreams as Fragile as Glass" will appear in The Sum of Us (http://laksamedia.com/the-sum-of-us-an-anthology-for-a-cause-2/), a charity anthology featuring stories about caregivers.

LL&O: Where can our readers learn more about you and your work?

CMY: I have a website: http://carolineyoachim.com and I'm also on twitter as @CarolineYoachim

LL&O: Any other thing you'd like to add? 

CMY: Thank you for inviting me to do an interview, these were fantastic questions!