While some authors are hesitant to admit their influences, others understand that no one lives in a vacuum, and that it’s okay to admit that yes, you were shaped by those who came before you.
And then there’s author James Bow who, in the following email interview, not only says what authors had an influence on his young adult sci-fi The Sun Runners (paperback, Kindle), but he also notes that he paid homage to one of them in a rather clever way.
To begin, what is The Sun Runners about, and when and where does it take place?
The Sun Runners is a novel about the colonists of Mercury in the last half of the 22nd century, after the collapse of Earth. The people of Mercury live on latitude-towns, which ride on rails stretched across their planet, to keep ahead of the intense Sun.
The story takes place across 50 years, and features two generations. We see Lieutenant Adelheid Koning at the start of the Earth’s collapse when it goes silent and all contact and space travel cease. With Mercury heavily dependent on Earth for most of its food, she faces some cold equations and has to make hard decisions in the face of starvation and the collapse of order and, as a result, ends up wearing a wrought-iron crown as she takes charge of her latitude town, The Messenger.
Fifty years later, Adelheid’s granddaughter Frieda is a young princess who would rather be an engineer. Her world is shattered when a suspicious accident takes one of her arms and also kills her mother, Queen Beatrix. Frieda is left a young and vulnerable queen, locking horns with her grandmother, who is now dowager and regent. When the Earth suddenly emerges from its silence and contacts Mercury, Frieda is eager to end Mercury’s isolation, but Adelheid is suspicious of the Earth’s motives and is wary of the other latitude towns’ desires to accept all that the Earth is offering, without question. Is it wise to hope for healing, or all we defined by what we do in the dark?
The Sun Runners is a story of intergenerational trauma, the cost of survival, and the necessary risks of hope.
Where did you get the idea for The Sun Runners?
There were a few sources. I remember coming up with the first line early on, and it seemed to coalesce the story for me: “For as long as she could remember, Her Highness the Crown Princess Frieda Koning had wanted to be an engineer.” I liked the juxtaposition of someone having such a privileged position wanting something a lot more down to earth.
I was also inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel 2312, and his Mercurian city of Terminator, which sits on rails that expand in the heat of the sun, pushing the city along and keeping it on the dark side of the planet. From these elements, I set about exploring the universe, asking myself who these people were and how would they respond to events. The idea of Mercury being an isolated colony appealed, which brought me to the idea of the Silent Earth, and I asked how the Earth fell silent, what happened to Mercury when that happened, and so on. From that one line, and those initial inspirations, a universe bloomed.
You kind of just answered this, but why did you decide to set this story on Mercury as opposed to the other places people live in your universe: Mars, Venus, or the asteroid belt? Or on what’s left of Earth for that matter?
Setting shapes the story, and I think the story shapes the setting. I was inspired by the image of cities in motion across Mercury. It may have been partly influenced by my ongoing love of trains. In any event, Venus and Mars have different environments which demand different settings. You’d be in gigantic Zeppelins on Venus, and you could have static domed cities on Mars. The asteroid belt would tell a different kind of story. As The Sun Runners came together, Mercury had the setting I needed, and that setting helped build the story I wanted.
Now, The Sun Runners is a young adult sci-fi story. But YA novels are sometimes written specifically for young adults, and other times can be enjoyed by anyone, they just don’t have anything inappropriate for young adults. Where does Runners fall? Is it just for young adults or could, say, a 56-year-old sci-fi fan enjoy it as well?
I write and read a lot of YA fiction because I feel there’s often a clarity in the story that I don’t always get from more adult literature. I also feel that the coming-of-age story, which is a common plot in YA fiction, is a very powerful tale that can be told in many different ways. I didn’t set out to choose to write a YA story because I was aiming for just a YA readership. Rather, I was just writing the books I wanted to read.
In my opinion, YA fiction is perfectly suited to the PG-13 market. There are mature themes here, and even a swear word or two, and plenty of adult moviegoers watch and enjoy PG-13 and PG movies. So, hopefully, readers of all ages who enjoy YA on its own merits will enjoy this story. Everybody is welcome to read my work, regardless of age.
The Sun Runners is your sixth novel after the three in the Unwritten Book Series [The Unwritten Girl, Fathom Five, and The Young City], Icarus Down, and The Night Girl [which is being rereleased May 25, 2025]. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Runners but not on anything else you’ve written?
The stories of the Unwritten Books series and The Night Girl are both urban fantasy, whereas Icarus Down and The Sun Runners are science fiction, so there are different influences there.
I am also influenced by particular books I may be reading at the time that I’m writing a particular novel. I [mentioned] the influence of Kim Stanley Robinson and his book, 2312, with his moving city of Terminator. Though I added my own features to this concept, I made sure to show my work by referring to the rails Mercury’s latitude towns operate on as “Robinson Rails,” and having Mercurians crediting the inspiration of Robinson himself in their design.
What about non-literary influences? Was The Sun Runners influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
The comp list for The Sun Runners is “like a combination of The Crown and Snowpiercer.” As I wrote the story, I found myself watching Frieda explore her privilege. In spite of her injury, and the impact it has on her life, she realizes she still has a lot of privilege, and she has to think hard about whether she should have it and whether she can do something good with it, even if it means going against her grandmother. So, there’s a lot of pomp and circumstance in this story, which feels overwhelming and wrong to the young queen, but like Elizabeth in The Crown, she rises to the occasion. And, of course, there is the claustrophobic plot of people under pressure, like in Snowpiercer, necessitated by the closed environment on the edge of disaster.
There are also stories that I come back to a lot. I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who since I was six and TV Ontario played episode six of “Genesis Of The Daleks” back in 1978. The program’s science fantasy has had a tremendous influence on all my work, including The Sun Runners.
Now, along with The Sun Runners, you also edited a companion short story collection called Tales From The Silence, which features stories by Phoebe Barton, Kate Blair, Cameron Dixon, and others. When and where in relation to Runners are these stories set?
Remember what I said about building a universe out of a first line, a literary inspiration and a setting? Tales From The Silence is an extension of that.
Tales From The Silence features sixteen stories, with contributions by ten authors, besides myself, set on all the other places affected by the Earth’s Silence, such as Venus, Mars, The Moon, the asteroid belt, Ganymede, and the Earth itself. The stories are in roughly chronological order, from the day the Earth collapsed, to just before the day when the Earth makes contact with Mercury.
And who came up with the ideas for the stories, and how did that aspect work? Like, if Phoebe Barton came up with the idea for hers, did you have to sign off on it? Or if you had the idea for Kate Blair’s story, how did you decide she’d be the best person to write it?
Tales From The Silence came together organically starting in July 2023, when I asked Kate Blair if she wanted to participate, and she said “yes.” I reached out to a number of authors on this project, and when we had enough, we got to work. I established a loose timeline for the inner solar system up to and including The Silence, and gave the authors access to The Sun Runners and an early draft of The Cloud Riders — a companion novel I’m working on set on Venus and Mars about seven years into The Silence.
I didn’t have to do much work wrangling the tales; possibly, the universe was big enough for everyone to play in without serious continuity errors or conflicts. There may have been some minor encouragement to take on a particular planet to ensure an even distribution of stories across the inner solar system, but the writers came up with their own plots, and their stories only needed light editing.
They came up with a few things that surprised me, which made me adjust The Cloud Riders to incorporate their ideas. Mark Richard Francis’ “The Muskhole King” offers a term describing the original dwellings of the Martian Colony that just speaks volumes about the history and the culture of the planet. Similarly, Phoebe Barton is the reason why there are asteroid scows in dead storage in high orbit around Venus.
That’s one of the great things about composing an anthology like this: the different styles, the different ideas, all coming together and playing off each other, building something new that you don’t anticipate at the start.
So, who came up with the idea for this collection?
My exploration of the Silent Earth universe not only created The Sun Runners and the early drafts of The Cloud Riders, but it also created a novella set on Ganymede entitled The Phases Of Jupiter and a story idea for another novella set on Earth entitled The Fall Of McMurdo. When I approached Ed at Shadowpaw Press about publishing The Sun Runners, I wanted to find a way to get these short stories into print. Relying on a magazine to publish these tales presented a challenge since that’s another series of submission and editorial processes I had to jump through. I wanted the stories to come out at roughly the same time as The Sun Runners, and I wondered about printing them out in their own book. But a single novella and the idea for another one was rather thin content for an anthology.
However, as a writer, I came up through fan fiction in the ’80s and the ’90s. I’ve edited fan fiction magazines, and have always loved gathering stories from a variety of authors and putting them together in such a way that they build off each other and produce something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. This is why I reached out to other authors, inviting them to explore the Silent Earth with me, and submit stories from their corners of it. Work continued through the end of 2023 and into early 2024, and Ed agreed to publish the anthology alongside The Sun Runners, and the rest is history.
Along with editing it, you also contributed a story to Tales From The Silence…
I actually have five stories with my byline in the anthology. There’s “The Phases Of Jupiter,” set on Ganymede, and a series of stories set on Earth, entitled “The Guards Of Chelela Pass,” “After The Apocalypse In Moosonee,” “Big Fish, Little Fish,” and “The Fall Of McMurdo.”
“The Phases Of Jupiter” shows the start of Earth’s silence from the viewpoint of a group of scientists drilling through the ice on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, in the hopes of reaching the ocean kilometers below. They are even less prepared for the cessation of Earth’s supply shuttles than Mercury, so the sudden isolation is a death sentence. How do they face it?
The remaining stories follow the events of Earth through its silence, as it recovers from environmental collapse and nuclear war. This covers fifty years of history, from the immediate reaction to the first nuclear strikes, to the long recovery, and the emergence of the new power that contacts Mercury in The Sun Runners.
Now, having Tales From The Silence alongside The Sun Runners makes me think these two books are the start of a larger series. What are your plans moving forward?
I would say that The Sun Runners and Tales From The Silence are part of The Silent Earth Sequence. It’s not an official series title, yet, but we can see what we do about that.
As I mentioned, I am also working on The Cloud Riders, which is an interplanetary “country mouse / city mouse” type novel set on Venus and Mars, about seven years after the Earth falls silent.
Earlier I asked if The Sun Runners was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Runners could work as a movie, a TV show, or a game?
I could see The Sun Runners as a limited TV series — say, around eight to ten episodes. The story is very episodic in nature, jumping between young Adelheid and young Frieda’s similar but different tales, fifty years apart. I’d be happy with that. I’d be happy if somebody were able to pull everything together in a movie, though if getting a novel published is like winning a lottery, getting it adapted is like winning the lottery twice.
I’m not an active gamer, having played nothing but City Skylines, but I am seriously impressed at how game designers have put together an entirely new style of narrative. I can’t really comment on the type of game it should be. Who knows what somebody else may come up with? I’m sure it will be awesome.
And if either a movie or TV show happened, who would you want them to cast as Adelheid and Frieda?
It’s hard to say who I’d want them to cast as Frieda, since she’s seventeen. Movies take years to go from commissioning to filming to debut. By the time we’d be filming, an actress that I thought would be ideal to play seventeen-year-old Frieda would be in her mid-twenties. I think a character that young would be played by somebody who would be a new discovery. Hopefully it would be the start of a successful career.
I wanted Maggie Smith [The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel ] to play grandmother Adelheid, but she’s passed on, now.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Sun Runners, and they’ve already read Tales From The Silence, which of your other books would you suggest they check out while waiting for The Cloud Riders?
Icarus Down is my other science fiction novel. It’s also YA, and it’s similar in that I started with an idea — of people living in cities suspended between cliffs halfway down deep chasms, in order to avoid the deadly sun on the top of the cliffs — and built from there. The story expanded as I explored the world, and we see that world through the viewpoint of two characters speaking wildly different languages. These two have to work together to solve the story’s mystery.
