With Tyger Bright, writer T.C. McCarthy has reached the halfway point of the sci-fi space opera series he began in 2019 with Tyger Burning. With Bright newly released as a mass market paperback — after originally coming out in trade paperback, for Kindle, and as an audiobook — I present the following email interview, in which he discusses what did, and did not inspire and influence this second installment.
It’s hard enough deciding who to invite to your wedding, and what table to sit them at; imagine if you had to decide who lives and who dies because you only have so many available seats on a spaceship. Which is the predicament faced by the twenty-two kids in James Breakwell’s new sci-fi novel The Chosen Twelve (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Breakwell discusses what inspired and influenced this odd, humorous, and thought-provoking story.
With multiverses being all the rage these days (just ask Spider-Man), and virtual reality video games becoming more and more common (hello, PSVR2), it was probably inevitable that someone would combine them into a story in which something goes awry. And that someone is writer Ron Walters. In the following email interview, Walters discusses the story in question: his new sci-fi thriller Deep Dive (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
As irritating as they may be in real life, Nazis are actually interesting when they’re IN SPAAAAACE! Y’know, like in Star Wars. Which brings me to John Birmingham’s The Cruel Stars trilogy, in which Space Nazis who were driven from Earth attempt to make a comeback. In the following email interview, Birmingham discusses the newly released second book in this sci-fi space opera series, The Shattered Skies (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
Towards the end of the following email interview about his military sci-fi space opera novel The Deep Man (paperback, Kindle), writer Michael Mersault says, “Science fiction should broaden the reader’s view of the world and the future, not cause it to narrow.” A point he actually reinforced earlier by talking about the deep thoughts and big picture implications of his book.
As they are wont to do, Baen Publishing are now systematically rereleasing the four books in Wil McCarthy’s hard sci-fi space opera series The Queendom Of Sol as mass market paperbacks nearly a year-and-a-half after reissuing this out-of-print series from the 2000s as trade paperbacks and on Kindle.
With the mass market paperback version of book two, The Wellstone, being released recently, I thought it time to subject Mr. McCarthy to the following email interrogation about this book, this series, and this new edition.
Having twice explored the Alien universe, and created one of their own in their Salvagers trilogy, writer Alex White is going where they’ve never gone before with their new Star Trek novel, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Revenant (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, White explains how this novel came together, when in the show’s chronology it takes place, and what non-Trek stuff influenced this noir-flavored sci-fi space opera story.
Some of the best things happen when you mix disparate elements together, like when you inject magic into science fiction or cross Back To The Future with nihilism or put tater tots in a breakfast burrito. It’s also where you find Brendan P. Bellecourt’s deco-punk science fiction novel Absynthe (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which, in the beginning of the following email interview, he describes as being a mix of a classic movie, a classic novel, and a movie that may some day be considered a classic.
When left unchecked, sibling rivalries can tear a family apart. But what’s terrible for families is good for fiction, as writer Kristyn Merbeth shows with her sci-fi space opera series, The Nova Vita Protocol trilogy.
In the following email interview, Merbeth discusses what inspired and influenced both this series and its recently released conclusion, Discordia (paperback, Kindle).