With Meru (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) writer S.B. Divya is launching a new sci-fi space opera series called The Alloy Era. In the following email interview, Divya discusses what inspired and influenced this series, as well as why the Era series will be more like Ian M. Banks’ Culture novels than a multi-book saga or the ongoing adventures of a single hero.
For people who were unfamiliar with the comics, seeing a technologically advanced country populated entirely by black people in the movie Black Panther was a revelation. But in her new novel Where It Rains In Color (paperback, Kindle), writer Denise Crittendon is going one step further by creating a black planet. In the following email interview, she discusses what inspired and influenced this Afrofuturistic sci-fi space opera story.
Though it spawned two sequels, a couple side games, a mobile game, a pair of novels, two animated movies, some graphic novels, and a bunch of toys, t-shirts, and collectibles, the 2008 survival horror game Dead Space is often just considered a cult classic.
Which made it rather surprising when Electronic Arts announced a remake of the game for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (and just a few years after Glen Schofield, one of the original Space creators, announced a spiritual successor, the recently released Callisto Protocol).
But a lot can happen in fifteen years, especially in video games, something I kept in mind as I stepped once more into the breach.
Sometimes it can be difficult to keep literary subgenres straight, especially where science fiction, fantasy, and horror are concerned. Dieselpunk, grimdark, silkpunk — you practically need a dictionary to keep them all straight. Or, barring that, a really good genre-specific anthology. Which brings me to the follow email interview with Justine Norton-Kertson, the editor of Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology (paperback, eBook), in which they not only explains what “lunarpunk” means, and how it relates to “solarpunk,” but also what went into this collection of short stories and poetry.
With The Infinite (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) writer Ada Hoffmann is concluding the epic cosmic horror sci-fi space opera trilogy she launched in 2019 with The Outside, and continued two years later with The Fallen. In the following email interview, Hoffmann discusses who and what inspired and influenced this third and final installment, including some rather familiar fuzzy bastards.
With The Rush’s Echo (paperback, Kindle), author Ginger Smith is completing the story she began in 2020’s The Rush’s Edge. In the following email interview, Smith discusses what inspired and influenced this semi-romantic, somewhat military, sci-fi space opera story.
With Poor Man’s Sky (hardcover, Kindle), writer Wil McCarthy is continuing the series of hard sci-fi space opera / political spy thriller novels he started with 2021’s Rich Man’s Sky.
Though as he explains in the following email interview, you don’t need to read Rich to get Poor.
Like any good sci-fi space opera universe, the setting of the strategy board game Twilight Imperium has a lot of different kinds of aliens, and is thus a good place to set a lot of different stories.
Which is what editor Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells has done in the novelette collection Twilight Imperium: The Stars Beyond (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Llewelyn-Wells discusses what went into assembling this anthology.
Canon can sometimes be a tricky thing, especially when it crosses multiple forms of media, numerous decades, and a wide variety of contributors. Unless, of course, you’re an expert like Star Trek author and show consultant David Mack.
In the following email interview about his newest Trek novel, Star Trek: The Original Series: Harm’s Way (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Mack not only explains what inspired and influenced this story, but also how it does and does not connect to the Vanguard series he co-created in 2005.