In his novels Mickey7, Antimatter Blues, and Mal Goes To War, author Edward Ashton mixed science fiction with a bit of situational (and slightly surrealistic) humor.
But things seem like they’re getting a lot stranger, spacier, and snail-like in his new one, The Fourth Consort (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook)
In the following email interview, Aston talks about what inspired and influenced this humorous sci-fi space opera novel.
To begin, what is The Fourth Consort about, and when and where does it take place?
The Fourth Consort is set in a near future where humanity is 20 years or so into a relationship with a bunch of giant space-going snails who claim to represent a galaxy-spanning benevolent society of intelligent species called Unity. Our protagonist, Dalton Greaves, is one of a select few humans who have been chosen to accompany our benefactors on their mission to seek out new species to be enlightened.
When the book commences, Dalton is three years into his hitch, and he’s beginning to suspect that we might have been misled a bit. His host, Boreau, seems more interested in plunder than enlightenment, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, has clearly only recruited Dalton so that she won’t have to risk her neck in face-to-face meetings with possibly carnivorous natives.
Moreover, there’s another group out there. They call themselves the Assembly, they’re actually interested in helping less developed cultures, and they hate Unity. More to the point, they really hate Unity’s new human minions.
When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself stranded on a hostile planet, caught between one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who may be the most dangerous of the three. In order to survive, he’ll have to navigate alien morality, court politics, and an offer he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera continues to see him as worth more to her alive than dead.
Where did you get the idea for The Fourth Consort?
This book, like my novel Mickey7, began life as a short story that refused to end itself in a reasonable amount of time. I wanted to play with a type of character I hadn’t attempted before, one that I’ve always thought of as the hyper-competent broken man. You don’t see that sort much in recent sci-fi, but they were very popular back in the day, and Dalton is my take on the form. Once I started noodling around with him it quickly became clear that he had a lot more than 5,000 words in him — and so, a year later, here we are.
So, is there a significance to Boreau being a giant sentient snail as opposed to a giant sentient sloth or a giant sentient turtle or a giant sentient version of some other animal that moves slowly? Or, for that matter, one that moves fast or at a normal speed relative to humans?
I wanted Boreau to be both menacing and vaguely ridiculous. I guess a sloth or a turtle could have worked as well, but I think snails and all their shelly brethren are neat, so I went with them.
As an aside, I really cannot recommend the National Shell Museum And Aquarium in Sanibel, Florida highly enough. You will learn many things there about the life of a fighting conch, which is probably as close a model for Boreau as you’ll find here on Earth.
Strombus Alatus, a.k.a. The Florida Fighting Conch
Like your other novels, The Fourth Consort is clearly a science fiction story, and a humorous one at that. But it also sounds a bit more space opera-y than Mickey7 or Mal Goes To War. How do you describe it, genre-wise?
I think space opera is a fair description, but it’s definitely a space opera of a specific type. The Fourth Consort is a bit of a throwback to the kind of sci-fi I cut my teeth on back in the ’80s and ’90s. As I mentioned, the protagonist is my take on the sorts you used to get from Vernor Vinge or David Brin, and the setting is for the most part the sort of optimistic, hopeful vision of what things are like out there that used to be pretty common but seems increasingly rare of late.
Speaking of Vinge and Brin, are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on The Fourth Consort but not on anything else you’ve written?
I think in terms of tone and setting you can probably find some influences in this book from Brin’s Startide Rising and Vinge’s A Deepness In The Sky.
What about non-literary influences? Was The Fourth Consort influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
Ehhhh not really. My sci-fi diet comes almost exclusively from novels.
Now, of your previous novels, Mal Goes To War was a stand-alone story, while Mickey7 got a sequel called Antimatter Blues, and I get the sense there might be more in that series. Is The Fourth Consort a stand-alone story or the first book in a series?
Hmmm…this is really a question that demands a “how the sausage is made” kind of answer. If you’re John Scalzi or Adrian Tchaikovsky or N.K. Jemison, you can tell your editor that you’re writing a three book series, and they will most likely smile and thank you. If you’re me, on the other hand, you really can’t do that.
There is a basic assumption (mostly accurate) in the publishing industry that each book in a series will sell a fraction of the copies that the previous one sold. So, a publisher is unlikely to commit to a sequel, let alone a series, for an author who is not a proven bestseller until they see whether the first book will sell. I got a bit of a pass with Mickey7 because we already had a movie deal before we signed the contract for Antimatter Blues, but my other books are not getting that same consideration. So, I make sure that all of my books are complete in and of themselves, so that if there’s never anything more written about those characters, nobody is left hanging.
All that being said, I do think Dalton, Breaker, and Neera have at least one more story in them, so if you want to see that, I guess make sure you buy plenty of copies of this one.
Earlier I asked if The Fourth Consort was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think The Fourth Consort could work as a movie, show, or game?
I think The Fourth Consort would make an awesome animated feature or series. It would probably be difficult (though not impossible) to do as a live action film because so many of the characters are non-human (and non-human in a way that can’t be done by a person with some green makeup.) However, the dialogue is snappy and there’s a lot of action, so I do think the book would translate very well to the screen.
And if someone wanted to make an animated movie or TV show based on The Fourth Consort, who would you want them to cast as the voices of Dalton, Neera, and Boreau?
I’m terrible with actors, but okay. Assuming this is animated, let’s go with H. Jon Benjamin [Archer] as the voice of Dalton, because I like almost all of his voice work and I think he could do the sardonic tone that we’d need for Dalton perfectly; [Velma‘s] Mindy Kaling as Neera, because she has both the brashness and the comedic timing that part would require, and Woody Harrelson [Zombieland] as Boreau, because he is by far the most snail-like actor of our generation.
So, is there anything else you think people need to know about The Fourth Consort?
Like my other books, The Fourth Consort is a fun ride with a lot of humor, but it also touches on some serious topics, from philosophy to morality to the mechanics of interspecies bromance. Also, it includes a character named Dirk Stonebreaker. Who doesn’t love that?
Finally, if someone enjoys The Fourth Consort, what humorous sci-fi space opera novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they check out next?
That’s a tough question, because there aren’t a lot of humorous sci-fi space operas out there. The two books I mentioned previously, Startide Rising and A Deepness In The Sky, aren’t really humorous, but if you liked this book you’d probably like those as well.
On the humorous side, maybe Scalzi’s Redshirts? Not much in common there plot-wise, but there are maybe some commonalities in tone.
