In prepping questions for writer John Van Stry about his hard science fiction novel Summer’s End (paperback, Kindle), I had to fight the urge to make a joke about its title making it sound like a teenage sex comedy from the ’80s. And then, in his first answer, he had to go and say it’s about, “…a young man’s journey out into the world.” But don’t worry, sci-fi fans, as Van Stray goes on to say, Summer’s End is very much a space-bound action / adventure story.
When deciding where to set their stories, writers often pick places they know. But in the following email interview about her hard sci-fi novel The Dabare Snake Launcher (paperback, Kindle), writer Joelle Presby admits that while she did this as well, she was driven as much by science as it was by the self.
While intelligence is relative, we usually think of dinosaurs as not being as smart as, say, human beings. Well, some human beings. But in his new hard sci-fi novel Living Memory (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer David Walton explores the idea of dinosaurs that were intelligent…and not relatively speaking.
As the sci-fi loving son of a grade school science teacher, I’ve long lamented that our missions to the moon ended after only six trips. And no, not just because I’d love to eat a breakfast burrito while hopping along the surface of the moon (as cool as that may be). Well, at least I have fiction to feed my mind; fiction like Alan Smale’s new alt-history sci-fi novel Hot Moon (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Smale discusses what inspired and influenced this space story.
Last year, when I interviewed sci-fi writer Nancy Kress about her then new book Tomorrow’s Kin, she explained that this epic science fiction story was an expansion of 2014 novella, Yesterday’s Kin, one that had grown to the point where Tomorrow’s Kin was only the first book in a trilogy. With the second installment, If Tomorrow Comes (hardcover, Kindle), newly available, and the third, Terran Tomorrow, slated for November 13th, I once again find myself asking Nancy Kress about this sci-fi saga.
