Tag: hard sci-fi

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Exclusive Interview: “Zoi” Author Jane Mondrup

Jane Mondrup Zoi

 

It’s arrogant to think that we are the only life in the universe. But “life” takes many different forms, and it’s likely that, on some planets, that life will simply be single-celled organisms.

It’s that kind of life at the center of author Jane Mondrup’s hard science fiction / science fantasy novel Zoi (paperback, Kindle). Except that, unlike unicellular organisms found on Earth, the one in her sci-fi story is big enough to give people rides around the galaxy.

In the following email interview, Mondrup talks about what inspired and influenced this sci-fi story — and no, that amoeba episode of Star Trek isn’t one of them.

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Exclusive Interview: “Bee Speaker” Author Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

While it may sound like the name of a Paw Patrol-like cartoon about military dogs, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2017 novel Dogs Of War was actually a hard science fiction novel in which the military engineers animals into weapons…including, yes, dogs.

With Tchaikovsky now releasing a second sequel to Dogs called Bee Speaker (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), I spoke to him via email about what inspired and influenced this third book, as well as how it connects to the previous two.

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Exclusive Interview: “Sometimes In The Fall” Author John Van Stry

 

In his 2022 hard science fiction novel Summer’s End, author John Van Stry introduced us to Dave Walker, who ends up on a space cargo ship in an attempt to better himself.

Now Dave is back in Sometimes In The Fall (paperback, Kindle), in which — as Van Stry explains in the following email interview — now has “a more ‘settled’ or perhaps at least ‘legitimate’ life.” Though clearly that won’t last since, well, otherwise there’d be no point to this second book.

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Exclusive Interview: “Across An Ocean Of Stars” Author Robert E. Hampson

 

Zombie stories often take place in dark, foreboding places.

But in Robert E. Hampson’s new zombie novel Across An Ocean Of Stars (paperback, Kindle), which is the 14th novel in John Ringo’s ongoing (and often collaborative) Black Tide Rising series, he has the living impaired taking a vacation to Hawaii. And man, are the buffets plentiful.

In the following email interview, Hampson — who is a neuroscientist and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — talks about what inspired and influenced this story, as well as how it connects to the other Black Tide Rising novels and stories.

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Exclusive Interview: “Crisis At Proxima” Co-Author Les Johnson

 

With careers that have included stints working for and with NASA, it’s safe to assume that authors Les Johnson and Travis S. Taylor are no dummies.

Though you could probably also glean that from reading the novels they’ve written, most notably 2021’s hard sci-fi thriller Saving Proxima.

Now the duo have completed a sequel to that sci-fi story, Crisis At Proxima (hardcover, Kindle), which is the second book in a trilogy they call Orion’s Arm.

In the following email interview, Johnson — speaking for himself and Taylor — discusses what inspired and influenced this second story, including how they rectify conflicts between science fact and science fiction.

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Exclusive Interview: “Alien Clay” Author Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Stories about prisons and prisoners are not new, and that’s as true in the realm of science fiction as it is in real world fiction (and horror, and fantasy…).

But in his sci-fi prison novel Alien Clay (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), author Adrian Tchaikovsky throws in the added wrinkle of having the central prisoner be a professor and xeno-ecologist (and, uh, political dissident) while the prison happens to be a place friendly to his area of expertise.

In the following email interview, Tchaikovsky discusses where he got the idea for this story, and the idea of making the main character a man of science.

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Exclusive Interview: “Tales Of The United States Space Force” Editor C. Stuart Hardwick

 

When President Donald Trump started talking about establishing the U.S. Space Force, a lot of people — myself included — thought it was an idea whose time had not yet come.

But as I learned while doing the following email interview with C. Stuart Hardwick, the editor of the new short story and essay anthology Tales Of The United States Space Force (paperback, Kindle), the Space Force’s roots actually go all the way back to the Cold War,  albeit under other names, including President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

In the following email interview, Hardwick discusses how this anthology came to be, as well as how it reflects both the truth and the possible future of the Space Force, while not shying away from the snarky comments of us doubters.

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Exclusive Interview: “Exadelic” Author Jon Evans

 

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Hydra used an algorithm to determine what people posed the biggest threats to their new world order. And in Jon Evans’ new hard science fiction novel Exadelic (hardcover, Kindle), an AI does something similar. Except that, in Exadelic, the threat is not a master of the mystic arts or a scientist with breathtaking anger management issues, but a mild-mannered member of middle management. In the following email interview, Evans discusses what inspired and influenced this sci-fi story.

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Exclusive Interview: “Halo: Outcasts” Author Troy Denning

 

Having read nearly all of the novels based on the Halo games, and having interviewed many of the people who’ve written them, I’ve always thought of these books (and the games, and the comics…) as sci-fi space opera stories. But in the following email interview with Troy Denning, the author of seven Halo novels — including the newest, Halo: Outcasts (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — he explains why these books (and games, and comics…) are more hard science fiction and space marine stories than anything operatic.

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