Learn more about author Sean McMullen’s writing process as well as some of his upcoming projects in this informative Q&A. Also, don’t miss his latest novelette After the Winter Solstice in our [Jan/Feb issue, on sale now!]
Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Sean McMullen: The setting for After the Winter Solstice is a world with an orbit more like that of a short period comet. During the brief, intense inner summer, the world is closer to the host star than Venus is to the sun, but in the long outer winter the temperature drops so very low that breathing unheated air is lethal. In these months all life forms enter a state called hiber, in which they can safely be frozen solid. They then thaw and revive as the world approaches its star again. Lady Sendal, an astronomer in a civilization at about the level of Fifteenth Century Europe, has devised a way to survive unfrozen during the outer winter, and she explores her world during this bleak and deadly season. Inevitably, her breakthrough brings with it the scope for entirely new types of criminal activity and immense social disruption.
AE: Is this story part of a larger universe, or is it stand-alone?
SM: After the Winter Solstice is the first chapter in a novel that I recently completed, The Outer Solstice. The novel follows events during a full orbit of the world, from outer winter to outer winter. The characters realise that being awake during the outer winter might give them absolute power over those who choose to enter hiber and freeze solid, yet if every kingdom has hiber suits and hiber refuges, nobody will have an advantage. There will still be wars, they will just be fought differently. Worse, those who remain awake for the entire year will age twice as fast as those who spend half the year frozen. Only the very rich will be able to afford the huge amounts of firewood and fuel needed to last the outer winter months awake and unfrozen, yet the frozen poor will live longer. Worst of all, Lady Sendal has built an intelligence test into her new technology: people have to understand the science behind it if they want to use it without getting themselves killed.
AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story?
SM: The story unfolds on two levels. We are introduced to a habitable planet where extreme climate change is an annual event, yet we also see the beginnings of the enormous social changes that Lady Sendal’s new technology will cause. The story’s foundation of hard science, alongside the threats, opportunities and temptations that are unleashed by Sendal’s technical innovations, seemed to make After the Winter Solstice ideal for Asimov’s and its readership.
AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
SM: My story Exceptional Forces was published in the February 2016 issue of Asimov’s, and was a finalist in the magazine’s readers awards the following year. Other than that, I have been particularly interested in stories by Australian and New Zealand authors that appeared in Asimov’s. When not writing my own science fiction I have written histories of science fiction in Australia and New Zealand: Strange Constellations (1999—with Van Ikin and Russell Blackford), Outpost of Wonder (2017), and New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy 1872—2019 (2020—with Simon Litten). All three of those works involved chasing up a lot of excellent stories written by Australians and New Zealanders that were published in Asimov’s.
AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
SM: Current events can be powerful influences when writing stories involving the way society can be changed by technology. I was working in scientific computing just as the internet and the world wide web were expanding from novelties to become the foundations of society in general and commerce in particular, so I had a great overview of how it happened. Two decades later social media transformed our personal lives just as radically, and now AI and data manipulation have allowed people to construct and publish their own versions of reality, independently of the real world. How can one’s writing not be influenced current events like that?
Strange ideas and themes for stories have always been tumbling about in my mind, the inside of my head is a pretty weird place.
AE: What is your process?
SM: I wish I could nail down my process, ideas for stories just arrive in my mind all by themselves. If I have any control over the creative part, I suppose it is only to do lots of reading, listening and watching in a great variety of areas. This gives my subconscious processes something to work with and—hopefully—throw good plots and ideas my way. I seem to get along pretty well with my subconscious, and so far it’s never failed me.
AE: What inspired you to start writing?
SM: Strange ideas and themes for stories have always been tumbling about in my mind, the inside of my head is a pretty weird place. At high school I got honors grades for a couple of my science fiction stories, but at the time I thought I had no hope of getting published. I had the idea that professional science fiction authors were so intelligent that they were not entirely human, and that no publisher would ever take an ordinary person like me seriously. Then in 1979 a friend of mine at Melbourne University, Coralie Jenkin, formed a sort of two person book club with me. One of the books she gave me was The Altered I, an anthology of science fiction stories written by aspiring Australians during a workshop run by Ursula LeGuin, and sponsored by the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention. The anthology had attracted some serious critical praise, but after reading it I decided that I could write at least as well. I bought a little electric typewriter and started typing. Fast forward to 1985, when Australia hosted another World Science Fiction Convention. This time the organisers ran a short story competition. I submitted my story The Deciad—and it won! Suddenly I had something on my literary cv with “World” beside it, and that opened a lot of doors.
AE: What SFnal prediction would you like to see come true?
SM: Genuine artificial intelligence. What we have now is at best a sort of mimicry of human creativity and talent. At worst it is artificial stupidity. A true artificial intelligence would not have a taste for fame, status, wealth or recreational reproductive activity, and it might not even be interested in world domination. That means trying to imagine how it would behave is quite a challenge, and I don’t think any author or futurologist has managed to describe a true AI convincingly. The thing will be really alien to us, in fact it will be the first true alien that humanity will encounter. It will probably be created by around 2035, and its attitude to us will probably be: “You humans are weirdos, go away and leave me alone.”
AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers.
SM: We are currently living in a science fiction epic, and have been for a long time. Computers, nuclear power and space probes transitioned from science fiction to real life in the 1940s. Fifteen years later viewers saw a lot of cool futuristic technology in episodes of Star Trek and decided that a bit more science fiction could easily be turned into reality. In 1984 Neuromancer gave us a vision of a futuristic wired society, yet the foundations of the modern internet had already been laid the year before when ARPANET adopted the TCP/IP protocols (trust me, that was important). The excellent television series Black Mirror presented some highly confronting predictions about social media, but by the time the episodes aired many of those predictions had become history. Conclusion? Aspiring writers should ask themselves what sort of science fiction would be popular with people living in this science fictional epic, because that is the readership that is already out there.
AE: What other careers have you had, and how have they affected your writing?
SM: I had a brief career as a librarian, reasoning that by working in university libraries I could attend lectures more easily, and that by doing evening shifts I would be free to attend lectures during the day—and I would have way better access to textbooks. Eventually I got a job in the Bureau of Meteorology, starting in satellite tracking, then moving on systems development, spending five years as Year 2000 conversion project coordinator, and finishing up in disaster contingency planning. Quite a lot of meteorology rubbed off on me while I worked in the Bureau, and later went into my climate change revenge novel, Generation Nemesis (Wizard’s Tower Press, 2022), in which everyone born before the year 2000 is put on trial for climate crimes.
All that hardware and hard science gave me a very strong taste for using workable science in my fiction, and led to me writing novels like The Centurion’s Empire (Tor, 1998) and Souls in the Great Machine (Tor, 1999), and stories like Eight Miles (Analog, Sept, 2010), Steamgothic (Interzone, Jul/Aug 2012) and Technarion (Interzone, Sept/Oct 2013). That said, I was also a semi-professional folk singer in my spare time during the 1970s, and folk music ballads about elves, sorcerers, witches and magical things in general led me to reading fantasy novels – and eventually writing them. Lastly, I am a 4th dan karate instructor, and my background in martial arts has given me a very good grasp of how my characters can defend themselves using real muscles, real weapons, and realistic martial arts skills.
AE: How can readers follow your writing?
SM: Website – (www.seanmcmullen.net.au) has news of my latest work, plus myself reading some of my stories.
Facebook – (Sean McMullen) is an open site, and whenever I have any literary news I include it amid the cat pictures, family gatherings and martial arts events.
Instagram – (sean-c-mcmullen) I have been running a feature on Retro Australian SF Art (1940s to 1980s) but will soon be starting a new feature on the artwork done for my own novels and stories.
Youtube – (www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsS6RYqbqo) Hard Cases is a short climate change movie, directed by Terry Shepherd, screenplay by myself. It is a prequel to my novel Generation Nemesis and stars Mike Bishop, Liam Amor and Eve Morey. It even has me in a cameo as Mr Guard/Death.
From Earth to the Stars 