Often times when aliens invade Earth to manipulate us, it’s for some nefarious reason. But in Sylvain Neuvel Take Them To The Stars trilogy of novellas, the aliens are actually on our side. In the following email interview about the first installment, A History of What Comes Next (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), Neuvel talks about what inspired and influenced this story and this series, and talks about where the latter is going from here.
Between Rick And Morty, Star Trek: Discovery, and everyone joking that we’re living in the bad timeline, stories about multiverses are all the rage. But jumping from one to another may not be as fun as Rick and his portal gun make it seem. Exhibit A: Doors Of Sleep (paperback, Kindle), a multiverse sci-fi novel by Tim Pratt.
In the following email interview, Pratt explains how things work in this parallel universe novel, what inspired and influenced it, as well as his two other new books: the sci-fi space opera novel The Fractured Void (paperback, Kindle) and the sci-fi space opera novella collection The Alien Stars (paperback, Kindle).
No matter how smart we may be, we can’t always predict the outcome of our actions, especially ones that are complex. But in his new science fantasy novel Threader Origins (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Gerald Brandt’s main character gets to see exactly what he’s going to do to his world…by visiting another version of it.
Stina Leicht isn’t the first writer to combine Westerns with science fiction. Or the first to gender flip a familiar story. Or the first to rework Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 samurai classic Seven Samurai into something new. But she might be the first to do all of those things in a way that makes something think of the phrase “viciously feminist.” In the following email interview, Leicht discusses her new sci-fi Western novel Persephone Station (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), including how she explains that interesting tag.
In the original Planet Of The Apes movies, simians were originally domesticated to be pets because dogs and cats had gone extinct. But then, of course, they realized the monkeys, etc., could be used as slave labor, and the next think they knew, it was the future, and apes had become our masters. But what if, instead of trying to turn gorillas into pets, they had created designer dragons. It’s an idea explored in Dan Koboldt’s new sci-fi novel Domesticating Dragons (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview about it, Koboldt discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as why, despite being about dragons, it’s not a fantasy tale.
Space…the final frontier. But what if it’s like the frontier that became the United States, one that had already been discovered by the time we got there. This is the premise behind Patrick Chiles’ hard sci-fi space exploration novel Frozen Orbit, which has just been released in mass market paperback (and is also available as a trade paperback and on Kindle). In the following email interview, Chiles discusses what originally inspired and influenced this story.
As anyone who’s read any of the Halo or Dungeons & Dragons novels will tell you, novels based on games usually require readers to be players of said games to be understood, let alone appreciated. But apparently, it need not be that way.
Take The Fractured Void (paperback, Kindle), a sci-fi space opera novel based on the strategic board game Twilight Imperium. As author Tim Pratt explains, not only do you not have to play T.I. to enjoy this story, you wouldn’t have had to play the game to write this novel, either.
Siblings, am I right? Can’t live with ’em; can’t throw them out of an airlock. Especially since there are no airlocks on Earth worth throwing anyone out of. But while relatives may be annoying in real life, they do make for some interesting stories. Take the sibling rivalry at the center of Kristyn Merbeth’s science fiction space opera trilogy The Nova Vita Protocol, which she kicked off last year ago with Fortuna, and now continues with Memoria (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview about the latter, Merbeth discusses what inspired and influenced this second sci-fi story of three.
In her satirical dystopian sci-fi novel Zed, writer Joanna Kavenna kills a guy with a robot. Or did she? With this novel newly available in paperback — and still available for Kindle, audiobook, and hardcover — I spoke with her via email about what inspired and influenced this story…and never once made a joke about Zed being dead, baby.