Back in the ’90s, there were a string of action films that could be described as “Die Hard on a….” There was “Die Hard on a bus” (Speed), “Die Hard on a boat” (Under Siege), and even “Die Hard on a famous plane not a lot get to go on” (Airforce One).
But Joe Pitkin’s new sci-fi thriller novel Exit Black (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is one upping them all — well, with the movie references, anyway — by being “Die Hard on a space hotel…with Knives Out.”
To find out how, and why, as well as the who, what, and a more specific where, check out the following email interview.
To start, what is Exit Black about, and when and where is it set?
Exit Black is a hostage drama that takes place in the near future aboard a luxury hotel in low earth orbit. Imperium is the most expensive structure ever created. Once an orbiting laboratory, it’s been remade into a space hotel for the fantastically wealthy.
As the station preps for its first group of space tourists, Dr. Chloe Bonilla, Imperium’s resident scientist, finds herself questioning whether babysitting a passel of space glampers is worth the distraction from her research. But when a terrorist group protesting wealth inequality crashes the party to demand an $8 billion ransom of some of the wealthiest people on Earth, it’s up to Chloe to save them, and fast.
Where did you get the idea for Exit Black?
Brendan Deneen, my agent at the time, and Scott Veltri, my current agent, pitched the project to me when news stories started coming out about private firms planning to build the first luxury hotel in space. They were hoping for something with both the action of Die Hard and the interpersonal tension of Knives Out, all set aboard a luxury orbital hotel.
As you said, Imperium used to be a laboratory, but now it’s a hotel. Why did you decide to have it be a hotel as opposed to some other structure, like a residential space base?
Hotels are wonderful and curious structures; they’re both anonymous and intimate, luxurious and cookie-cutter. On earth, they’re places where secret and sometimes sketchy things can happen. The first time someone gets robbed in space, the first time someone gets murdered in space, it’s likely to happen in a space hotel.
Similarly, is there a significance to the terrorists being driven by economic inequality as opposed to environmental issues or animal rights or some other cause? Or is that not important?
There aren’t many things in the history of humanity that symbolize economic inequality more than space tourism. You can book a three-day orbital flight on SpaceX today for about $50 million. That’s roughly the money that many small American cities spend on all city services for a year. When Jeff Bezos touched down from his space flight in 2021, a lot of the news coverage took on a kind of breathless, celebratory tone about the event. But I bet there were a lot of Amazon drivers watching that footage thinking “I pee in a bottle every day on my route so he can go into space for 10 minutes?”
Exit Black sounds like it’s a sci-fi thriller…
I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with the concept of genre. I think that in many ways, genre is more of a marketing category than an artistic one: it’s basically a way to tell bookstore owners which shelf to put the book on. I’ve done my best in all of my fiction to focus on writing interesting stories first and only later to think about how to categorize them.
While Exit Black could definitely be called a sci-fi thriller, it also has elements of the suspense genre, since the story is told from multiple points of view and the reader knows quite a bit that the protagonist doesn’t. I’d just as happily call it a comedy of manners or a tragedy of miscalculation.
Exit Black is your second novel after Stranger Bird. Are there any writers, or stories, that were a big influence on Exit Black but not on anything else you’ve written, and especially not Bird?
Exit Black and Stranger Bird are so different from one another that I can’t think of any stories or writers that would have influenced both of them. But as I think about thrillers and thriller-adjacent books that I’ve loved, I’m sure that some of them affected how I wrote Exit Black: Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, The Man In The High Castle, and Ubik; China Miéville’s The City And The City; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union; Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana; Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial. Exit Black is not very similar to any of those books, but they all have some element of style or energy I was going for.
What about non-literary influences; was Exit Black influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? You mentioned Die Hard and Knives Out earlier.
I loved Knives Out and was hoping to capture some of its backbiting comedy of manners in Exit Black.
As for Die Hard, when I rewatched that movie, I was struck by what a presence Alan Rickman was on the screen: Hans Gruber is really the action movie villain against which all later villains have been compared. I hoped to build Exit Black around a character like that, someone who readers would hate but who also they would find fascinating, perversely compelling. I wondered if I could build a novel around an antagonist like Gruber, perhaps even someone who would be more antihero than antagonist, like the character of Satan in Paradise Lost.
Now, it sounds like Exit Black is a stand-alone story…
When I was writing it, I always assumed that Exit Black would be a one-off, and I believe it still is. But I’m also trying to cut back on my use of words like “always” and “never.” I’ve been surprised by projects before, and I’m open to being surprised by this one.
I asked a moment ago if Exit Black had been influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Exit Black could be adapted into a movie, show, or game?
I’d love to see Exit Black as a movie—I think it’s well suited for that. A miniseries would also be great, but I feel like it’s the perfect scope for a movie treatment.
And if someone wanted to adapt Exit Black into a movie, who would you want them to cast as Dr. Bonilla and the other main characters?
I guess if there was an unlimited budget, and I could just cast whoever I wanted, I would choose America Ferrera [Barbie] or Ana de Armas [No Time To Die] for Chloe. I’d love to have Jeffrey Wright [American Fiction] play Dion, though Idris Elba [Beasts Of No Nation] would also be great. Maybe [Ford V Ferrari‘s] Christian Bale for Hellmund, Lola Tung [The Summer I Turned Pretty] for Kassie, and [House‘s] Hugh Laurie for Sir Alexander. And [WandaVision‘s] Kathryn Hahn for Tirzah, not only because she’s perfect for that role but because of my shameless crush on her.
Why them? They’re all truly skilled actors who look and sound like the characters in my head.
So, is there anything else you think people need to know about Exit Black?
Orbital hotels are coming sooner than most people realize. I hope nothing like Exit Black actually happens at a real space hotel, but the book is not the most far-fetched idea I’ve ever had.
Finally, if someone enjoys Exit Black, what sci-fi thriller novel or novella of someone else’s would you recommend they check out?
While The Invention Of Morel is not a thriller in the traditional sense of the word, this 1940 novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares is some of the most suspenseful science fiction out there. It’s also deeper and more thought-provoking than many, many science fiction novels that have garnered more attention and awards. I offer a tiny nod to the novel at the end of Exit Black; I recommend The Invention Of Morel partly just to invite readers to notice the Easter egg in my book.
