Forty-two years after the image of a Star Destroyer flying overhead blew my nine-year-old mind, the Star Wars saga is finally coming to an end. Again. But not really. But while Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker may not feel like the end of a space fantasy saga four decades in the making, and it’s surely not the last time we’ll visit that galaxy far, far away, it is an epic and exceptionally exciting sci-fi space opera.
As some people who’ve purchased video games and eBooks have discovered the hard way, digital is not necessarily forever. Or available if your Internet goes out (which is sadly more of a problem than you might expect). Which is why I applaud the good people at Paramount Home Video and CBS Home Entertainment who’ve seen fit to release seasonal sets for the premiere show of CBS Access, Star Trek: Discovery, the latest of which, Star Trek: Discovery: Season Two, is now out on Blu-ray and DVD.
On occasion, a writer will go back and make small revisions to one of their older novels when they’re being reissued. But most of those times, the stories aren’t radically different. No so for Christopher Hinz’s 1988 out-of-print debut novel Anachronisms, which is getting a very different new life as the sci-fi space opera thriller Starship Alchemon (paperback, Kindle). In the following email interview, Hinz discusses how this top-to-bottom rewrite happened, and why, as well as some quick questions about his recently released novella Duchamp Versus Einstein, which he cowrote with Etan Ilfeld.
With Salvation Lost (hardcover, Kindle), writer Peter F. Hamilton is presenting the middle part of the sci-fi trilogy The Salvation Sequence he began in 2018 with Salvation and will (if all goes to plan) conclude in 2020 with The Saints Of Salvation. In the following email interview, he discusses what inspired and influenced both this series and this second installment.
With his new novel The Quantum Garden (paperback, Kindle), sci-fi writer Derek Kunsken is continuing The Quantum Evolution series he began last year with The Quantum Magician. But in the following email interview about this sequel, he not only discusses what inspired and influenced it, but his rather interesting plans for The Quantum Evolution series going forward.
With The Forbidden Stars (paperback, Kindle), writer Tim Pratt will be concluding the trilogy of sci-fi space opera novels he started two years ago with The Wrong Stars and continued last year with The Dreaming Stars.
In the following email interview, he explains what inspired and influenced this new novel, when he first came up with the idea for it, and how he hopes to continue the Axiom series.
As anyone who’s ever been stuck in traffic will tell you, it’s not really conducive to creative thought. But in the following email interview with writer K. Eason about her new novel How Rory Thorne Destroyed The Multiverse (hardcover, Kindle), she explains how being stuck on L.A.’s infamous 405 led her to write what she calls “a feminist fairy tale in space.”
With The Cruel Stars (hardcover, paperback, Kindle), writer John Birmingham is kicking off a new sci-fi space opera trilogy. Though as he says in the following email interview — in which he discusses what inspired and influenced this story — his plan for this series goes well beyond just three novels.
In Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith, Obi-wan laments that Anakin was supposed to bring balance to The Force, not enable a hostile takeover of the galaxy. But what if instead of being The Emperor’s enforcer, Anakin had fulfilled the prophecy?
Such is the premise of The Sun Eater, a series of original sci-fi fantasy novels by writer Christopher Ruocchio.
With the second novel, Howling Dark, newly available in hardcover and Kindle, and the first, Empire Of Silence, recently released in paperback, I spoke to Ruocchio via email about what inspired and influenced these novels, as well as his plans for future stories.