While some writers assemble short story collections around a theme, or connected with a framing device, most just pull together their latest and greatest…and then often find that a theme has emerged all on its own. Which is basically what happened to writer Kameron Hurley when she assembled Future Artifacts (paperback, audiobook), her second short story collection after 2019’s Meet Me In The Future. Well…except for the “latest” part.
Usually, sci-fi stories don’t make me want to visit the place in question. Reading Dune didn’t make me want to visit Arrakis; watching Star Wars didn’t make Tatooine look like a fun vacation spot; while Alien and Aliens made LV-426 look like a shithole. But in doing the following email interview with writer Brian Yapko about his alien invasion / apocalyptic fantasy / psychological thriller / gay romance novel El Nuevo Mundo (paperback, Kindle), I ended up wondering how much hotels cost in Santa Fe, New Mexico and, once there, where to buy alien repellant.
While every Alien and Aliens novel is, of course, connected to the movies, comics, and games, David Barnett’s Alien: Colony War (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is in the unique position of being the first in a loosely-connected mini-series that will also include Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija, and Mary SanGiovanni’s Alien: Enemy Of My Enemy. In the following email interview, Barnett discusses what inspired and influenced this military sci-fi space opera novel.
They say that love conquers all. But they also say that time waits for no one. It’s yet another good reason why someone should hurry up and invent time travel. Until they do, though, we’ll simply have to live vicariously through stories of time travel romance like the ones in the new anthology Someone In Time: Tales Of Time-Crossed Romance (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, editor Jonathan Strahan discusses how this collection came together, as well as how mushy and sexy it gets.
With her second-world fantasy novel The Void Ascendant (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Premee Mohamed is concluding the sci-fi, fantasy, cosmic horror series Beneath The Rising that she launched in 2020 with the titular first novel, and continued in 2021 with A Broken Darkness.
But as she admits in the following email interview, while Void was not this series’ original ending, it does bring this series to a decisive close.
Usually when I interview the author of a science fiction novel for this site, and get to the questions about influences, they’ll cite other sci-fi novels or movies or TV shows, even occasionally some games. But in the following email interview with D.J. Butler about his situationally-humorous sci-fi mystery thriller Abbott In Darkness (paperback, Kindle), he instead cited such decidedly not-science fiction-y stuff like Horatio Hornblower, Rudyard Kipling, and the East India Company.
In her new novel Marvel: Crisis Protocol: Shadow Avengers (paperback, Kindle), writer Carrie Harris gets to send Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, and other Marvel Comics characters on an epic adventure. But it’s not one that’s related to the comics, or based on the movies and TV shows, or connected to the video games; instead, it’s inspired by the miniatures game Marvel: Crisis Protocol made by Atomic Mass Games. In the following email interview, Harris discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, as well as how it connects to the game she loves to play.
As someone who loves zombies almost as much as he loves sci-fi, I of course love stories about zombies… in… SPAAAAAACE!! It’s why I’m excited for the remake of Dead Space, it’s why I can’t wait for the animated show Marvel Zombies, and why I was excited to do the following email interview with writer Tim Waggoner about his novel Zombicide: Invader: Planet Havoc (paperback, Kindle), a military sci-fi horror story based on the space zombies board game Zombicide: Invader.
Most post-apocalyptic stories are, naturally, dark and sad. But in her new novella The Future Second By Second (paperback, Kindle), writer Meridel Newton decided to give us something not so dour. In the following email interview, she not only explains this tonal decision, but also what inspired and influenced this hopepunk sci-fi story.