Writer David Edison isn’t alone in being influenced by video games. Or Frank Herbert’s Dune. Or Tori Amos. Or anime. But being influenced by all of them…at the same time… In the following email interview, Edison talks about how these influences coalesced into the sci-fi space opera / epic fantasy mash-up that is his second novel, Sandymancer (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
As someone who’s hit middle age, and hard, I find myself appreciating stories about older heroes more these days. Like Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. Or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s a similar position that author Valerie Valdes finds herself in, one that led her to write her new space fantasy novel, Where Peace Is Lost (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Valdes discusses what else inspired and influenced this story.
Four years after he launched his Sun Eater series of epic space fantasy novels with 2018’s Empire Of Silence, writer Christopher Ruocchio is preparing to bring it to a close with the penultimate installment, Ashes Of Man (hardcover, Kindle). In the following email interview, the ever prolific Ruocchio discusses this second-to-last novel, as well as why it won’t be the second-to-last book.
With Nightwatch Over Windscar (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer K. Eason isn’t just ending The Weep duology she launched with 2021’s Nightwatch On The Hinterlands, she’s also ending the saga she originally started with her previous duology, The Thorne Chronicles: 2019’s How Rory Thorne Destroyed The Multiverse and 2020’s How The Multiverse Got Its Revenge. In the following email interview, Eason discusses what inspired and influenced this space fantasy horror novel, and why it’s the end of the story.
With Threader God (Kindle, audiobook), writer Gerald Brandt is concluding the Quantum Empiricia trilogy he launched in 2021 with Threader Origins, and continued the following year with Threader War. In the following email interview, Brandt discusses what inspired and influenced this final installment.
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.
With Kingdoms Of Death (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), writer Christopher Ruocchio is presenting the fourth novel in his space fantasy series, The Sun Eater saga.
But as he explains in the following email interview, this series just got longer, sort of, and is all the better for it.
Usually when we talk about sci-fi space opera / space fantasy stories, there’s aliens, spaceships, politcal intruige, maybe some weird food. But in the following email interview about his sci-fi space opera / space fantasy novel The Circus Infinite (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Khan Wong instead talks about crimebosses, acrobats, and Oliver Twist.
While the Dune novels and Star Wars saga are clearly as entrenched in the genres of science fiction and space opera as the Foundation novels and the Star Trek saga, there are also fantastical and spiritual elements to those former stories that place them in the realm known as space fantasy or science fantasy.
It’s also where you’ll find the stories collected in a new anthology called Sword & Planet (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, S&P editor Christopher Ruocchio discusses how this collection came together.