With Echo Of Worlds (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer M.R. Carey is concluding The Pandominion duology he started with last year’s Infinity Gate.
In the following email interview, Carey discusses what inspired this two-part story, why it’s only two books and not three or four or thirty-seven, and why they’re might soon be another story that’s part of this universe but not part of this series.
In Elaine Gallagher’s new novella Unexploded Remnants (paperback, Kindle), a woman who seems to have taken career advice from Indiana Jones and Lara Croft is hunting for treasure in a Star Wars-like galaxy.
But when asked in the following email interview if this is a science fiction space opera story or a cyberpunk sci-fi story, Gallagher went old school by calling it “…a planetary romance.”
If you’ve ever done it, you know: cat sitting for a friend is annoying. Stupid cats never stay still long enough for you to sit on them.
But for writer April McCloud, cat sitting for a friend wasn’t that bad, since it inspired her to write this new noir-ish cyberpunk sci-fi thriller novel The Switch (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, she explains how that happened, as well as what else inspired and influenced this novel.
A lot of fictional characters can see the future. But in the case of Preble Jefferson, the main character of Alexander Boldizar’s sci-fi thriller The Man Who Saw Seconds (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), that future is only 5 seconds away.
In the following email interview, Boldizar talks about how this novel was inspired and influenced by a lucid dream, Philip K. Dick, and a bear.
We’ve all had “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” thoughts, where you wonder what would happen if two seemingly disparate things came together. Like if Prince jammed with Black Sabbath. Or if someone made tacos with falafel.
Or, in the case of The Runes Of Engagement (paperback, Kindle), the new military sci-fi / fantasy novel by Tobias S. Buckell and Dave Klecha, what if marines went to Middle-earth.
In the following email interview, Buckell and Klecha discuss how this mash-up came together, and why they took is so seriously…and not seriously.
When writer Premee Mohamed released her climate science fiction novella The Annual Migration Of Clouds in 2021, she thought it was a one and done kind of thing.
But let this be a lesson to you, kids: Sometimes, if you ask nicely, good things will happen. Which is why fans of Mohamed’s Clouds are getting not one but two sequels to that story.
In the following email interview, Mohamed talks about the first one, We Speak Through The Mountain (paperback, Kindle), as well as the other, and the two other new books she’s recently released.
Some writers embrace the genre in which their story fits. Others deny genre like it’s a prison from which they cannot escape.
But in the following email interview with author Vajra Chandrasekera about his science fiction novel Rakesfall (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) — in which we also discuss the new paperback edition of his urban fantasy novel, The Saint Of Bright Doors — he says the latter, “…wears the skin of an epic fantasy story in much the same way that Rakesfall wears the skin of a science fiction story.”
This past weekend, at Summer Game Fest: Play Days in Los Angeles, the good people at Evil Raptor and Plaion Games gave me some time to play the third-person sci-fi action game Akimbot, which will be released August 29th for PlayStation 5, Xbox X|S, and PC.
What follows are my impressions of my brief time with the game.
In the following email interview about his military science fiction novel Rogue Sequence (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), author Zac Topping talks about the military and sci-fi stories that inspired and influenced this story…before adding that, “it’s probably about as ‘military’ as the Mission: Impossible franchise.”