The idea of using robots to tell a story about slavery is hardly new. But in Madeline Ashby’s Machine Dynasty novels, she does something we don’t see as often: she tells the robot slave tale from the perspective of the enslaved. In the following email interview, Ashby discusses the newest book of the Machine Dynasty saga, ReV (paperback, Kindle), including what inspired and influenced this third installment.
These are serious times. And in serious times, it’s important to take things seriously. Well, when they’re things that should be taken seriously, that is. When it’s a book about unicorns and aliens, well… In the following email interview, writer Keith Rosson seriously answers my questions about his sci-fi / cosmic horror / magically realistic novel, Road Seven (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which has both a very serious-looking unicorn and a very serious-looking space ship right on the cover.
It’s been said that the Chinese word for “crisis” is also the word for “opportunity.” It’s not, but it’s still a nice idea. Especially if the crisis is a medical one and the opportunity is writing a series of dystopia hard sci-fi novels. In the following email interview, writer and former Army helicopter pilot L.K. Hingey discusses how being forced to medically retire led her to write Kimber (paperback, Kindle), the first book of five in The Elyrian Chronicles.
Twenty-five years ago, science fiction writer Catherine Asaro kicked off her Saga Of The Skolian Empire with the 1995 novel Primary Inversion.
But for the last six she’s been telling some mysterious tales from that fictional universe with her Major Bhaajan Mysteries series, which began with 2014’s Undercity.
In the following email interview, Asaro discusses the latest in this side series, The Vanished Seas (paperback, Kindle), while also providing background on both the Skolian series and the good major as well.
With Kill Orbit (Kindle, audiobook), writer Joel Dane is concluding the Cry Pilot military science fiction trilogy he began in 2019 with Cry Pilot and continued a few months ago with Burn Cycle.
In the following email interview, he not only explains how this third and final piece came to be, but he also offers suggestions of what you should read while waiting for his next sci-fi story.
Originally published in 2003, under the name Polvo, Yoss’ comedic sci-fi noir detective novel Red Dust (paperback, Kindle) is finally coming to the English-speaking part of the world, courtesy of Restless Books. In the following email interview — which had Spanish translation help from Jenna Tang — the Cuban-born author discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as the new English language version of Miguel Collazo’s The Journey (Kindle), another classic of Cuban science fiction, for which Yoss wrote a new intro.
Often when writers blend science fiction and fantasy, it’s by adding elements of the latter into the former, like how Star Wars infused its space opera story with swords and magic. But in his debut novel, Scarlet Odyssey (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), writer C.T. Rwizi is taking the opposite approach by setting AN epic fantasy tale on an alien world. Though as he explains in the following email interview, it’s not the change in genres, but rather a change in heroes, that really got this story going.
When author David Gerrold started writing his new sci-fi novel Hella (hardcover, Kindle), he figured it would be a stand-alone story. But as he reveals in the following email interview about it, Hella eventually took on a life of its own, and is now not only getting a sequel, maybe two, but it’s also inadvertently a sequel to three of Gerrold’s other books.