One of the cardinal rules of modern life is “Don’t engage the trolls” (followed closely by “Don’t read the comments” and “Get guac on that!”).
But for once, I’m glad someone didn’t follow that rule because — as she explains in the following email interview — it’s why Beth Revis wrote her sci-fi space opera novella Full Speed To A Crash Landing (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), which is the first installment of the Chaotic Orbits series.
They say the only guarantees in life are death and taxes.
But what if the former wasn’t a problem anymore…and you still lost someone.
This is where things start for Amber, the twenty-something history professor at the center of Mattie Bukowski’s new science fiction space opera novel Up The Entropic Hill (paperback, Kindle).
In the following email interview, Bukowski discusses what inspired and influenced this story, as well as his famous namesake.
As someone way smarter than me once said, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.” It’s why getting from one planet to the next can be tricky. In some science fiction stories, traversing the vastness of space takes faster-than-light travel. In others, cryogenic sleep is involved. And in still others, it takes a willingness for some people to start the journey knowing that their ancestors will finish it.
Then there’s Aliette de Bodard’s science fiction space opera novella Navigational Entanglements (hardcover, Kindle), in which traveling through space involves eldritch monsters and…y’know, we’ll just let her explain it in the following email interview, as what as everything else you need to know about this character-focused sci-fi story.
When someone first coined the term “final girl,” they did so in reference to how, in many horror movies, the lone survivor is often a woman.
But in Chase Gamwell’s young adult sci-fi space opera novel Aiko’s Dive (paperback, Kindle), the final girl is not just the only person to survive a massacre, she’s the last human. Anywhere. Like, in the entire galaxy.
As for why, and what happens when she tries to figure out what’s going on, I direct you to the following email interview with Gamwell, in which he discusses what inspired and influenced this story.
Science fiction is often about looking to the future, and this is especially true about sci-fi space opera stories.
So it’s not surprising that a sci-fi space opera short story anthology called New Adventures In Space Opera (paperback, Kindle) would also be forward looking. As editor Jonathan Strahan explains in the following email interview, “I edited two books [of space opera stories] with my good friend Gardner Dozois toward the end of the 2000s. … I wanted to put together a book that looked at what came next.”
There are a lot of things mercenaries can do when they retire: start their own private military companies; train other mercenaries; ride off into the sunset…
But in Cat Rambo’s sci-fi space opera novel You Sexy Thing, some retired mercs started their own restaurant…only to still get into trouble of the mercenary kind.
Now they’re getting into even more trouble in Devil’s Gun, the second book in Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series. With that book newly released in paperback — and a third, Rumor Has It, coming September 24th — I spoke to Rambo about what inspired and influenced this second story, and this series.
While DC and Marvel did it first, Star Trek was an early pioneer when it came to having a shared universe. For instance, when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine launched in 1993, it did so with an appearance from Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Captain Picard, while the latter show’s Worf joined the former station’s staff in DS9‘s fourth season.
Now the connections between TNG and DS9 are being strengthened by Dayton Ward’s new Star Trek novel Star Trek: The Next Generation: Pliable Truths (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Ward explains how this crossover novel came together, as well as why it doesn’t also connect with a certain Captain’s late-in-life adventures.
In most trilogies, the Big Bad is usually defeated in the third and final installment, while its impact is often left as an afterthought.
But in Megan E. O’Keefe’s The Devoured Worlds series, the central antagonist was [SPOILER ALERT] beaten in the second book, The Fractured Dark, which meant she could really delve into what happened next in the last book, The Bound Worlds (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, O’Keefe explains why she altered the trilogy formula, as well as what else inspired and influenced this horror- and dystopian-infused sci-fi space opera story.
Since 1923, the iconic science fiction / fantasy / horror magazine Weird Tales has presented stories that, as their own website puts it, are “so bizarre and far out, no one else would publish them.”
Well, now they’re doing the same thing with novels, starting with Jonathan Maberry’s deep space cosmic horror novel NecroTek (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, Maberry discusses how this book came to be, what inspired and influenced it, as well as his plans for The NecroTek Series.