In the twenty years since she released her hard sci-fi novel In The Company Of Others, Julie E. Czerneda has written more than a dozen novels, novellas, and short stories. But in the following email interview about the 20th Anniversary Edition of In The Company Of Others (paperback), she not only discusses what originally inspired and influenced this story, but how it influenced what came afterwards as well.
While surrealism works well in such visual mediums as painting and film, it’s a bit trickier to pull off in print, especially prose. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s writer Lavie Tidhar, who — in the following email interview — describes his new sci-fi / fantasy / what-have-you mash-up novel The Escapement (paperback, Kindle) in terms art critics might appreciate.
While some short story collections have a theme or framing device that loosely ties them together — see Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man — S. Qiouyi Lu’s new novella, In The Watchful City (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), goes one step further by having all of the stories be part of a larger narrative. Or, to put it another way, In The Watchful City isn’t a short story collection at all; it’s a mosaic story. In the following email interview, S. discusses what inspired and influenced this collective scifantasy tale.
For some, social media is a way to stay connected to friends, family, and the world at large. For others, it’s the engine that feeds much of the hate and stupidity that’s ruining society.
But for writer Premee Mohamed, it was a place to find an image that inspired her new dystopian sci-fi novella And What Can We Offer You Tonight (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview about it, Mohamed not only explains how that happened, but what else influenced this story.
Given that they both write epic sci-fi space opera stories, you might think Peter F. Hamilton (of the Salvation Sequence Hamiltons) and Gareth L. Powell (of the Embers Of War Trilogy fortune) would be cordial at best and bitter rivals at worst. But once again, your cynical nature has gotten the best of you, because the two not only get along, they actually appreciate each other’s work enough that they decided to collaborate on (what else?) an epic sci-fi space opera story. In the following email interview, Peter and Gareth discuss their new novella Light Chaser (paperback, Kindle), as well as their mutual admiration society membership
When it comes to science fiction stories about generational space ships, we usually hear about the people who are taking the trip…and what a terrible time they’re having. But in his new sci-fi Western road trip novel Twenty-Five To Life (paperback, Kindle), writer R.W.W. Greene tells us about someone who stayed behind…and, uh, the terrible time they’re having. In the following email interview, Greene discusses what inspired and influenced this sci-fi story.
If a writer cites Monty Python And The Holy Grail as having influenced one of their stories, you’d probably expect that story to be something in the historical or fantastical realms. But in the following email interview about his sci-fi short story collection Written In Light (paperback, Kindle), writer Jeff Young explains that the Python’s iconic Arthurian comedy was an inspiration to one of these genre tales as well.
Like his novel The Fractured Void, Tim Pratt’s The Necropolis Empire (paperback, Kindle) is a sci-fi space opera based on the strategic board game Twilight Imperium.
But while both novels share the same universe, as he explains in the following email interview about it, Necropolis isn’t a sequel to Fractured…well, not entirely.