It’s always fun to see how someone describes a story when they’re trying to be pithy. Take, for instance, how Solaris described John Appel’s sci-fi space opera thriller Assassin’s Orbit (paperback, Kindle, audiobook): “Golden Girls meets The Expanse with a side of Babylon Five.” But as Appel himself admits in the following email interview, that weird mix isn’t that far off.
On the surface, Nicole Kornher-Stace’s new illustrated novel Jillian Vs. Parasite Planet (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) sounds like it’s a middle-grade sci-fi adventure story. But as she and illustrator Scott Brown explain in the following email interview, the story is a bit deep, and thus may also appeal to people in grades 22, 34, 47…
If things continue the way they have been, we will one day be living in underwater homes. Which also means someone will be murdered in their underwater home. And when that happens, someone may say, “This reminds me of Midnight, Water City.”
In the following email interview about that novel, author Chris McKinney discusses this noir sci-fi novel (which is now available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook).
Traveling great distances is only possible because the laws of nature remain unchanged. But if that wasn’t the case, then taking a trip could be, well, a trip. Just ask Robot, the 11-year-old girl whose travel is at the center of Justin Hellstrom’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi road trip novel The Tide Will Erase All (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Hellstrom discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as where this saga is going.
The legend of King Arthur and the Knights Of The Round Table has been told and retold, and in many different ways, from Monty Python to Bugs Bunny to the Transformers. And yet none of them have Arty getting coffee…until now. Which is just one of the interesting revelations in the following email interview with Swapna Krisha and Jenn Northington, the co-editors of the new Arthurian short story collection Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview about his new novel When The Sparrow Falls (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Neil Sharpson talks about how this story encompasses elements of dystopian science fiction, cyberpunk sci-fi, and spy thrillers. But if he had his way, we’d all just refer to it as “Le Carré punk.” Thy will be done.
Like a lot of video games, the Mass Effect series wasn’t just influenced by other games, but by sci-fi space opera novels as well.
But influence flows both ways, as evidenced by what writer Megan E. O’Keefe says in the following email interview about Catalyst Gate (paperback, Kindle), the third and final book in her Mass Effect (and other games) inspired The Protectorate Series trilogy.
As bad as the COVID outbreak has been, it has had one positive side effect: the environment has gotten better thanks to people driving a lot less. But that doesn’t mean the climate crisis is over… In her new cli-fi novel The Ice Lion (paperback, hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Kathleen O’Neal Gear explores life in a far future in which the environment has been irrevocably changed by global warming.