Betsy Aoki makes her Asimov’s fiction debut in our [September/October issue, on sale now!] In our interview with Betsy, find out why she believes community is so important for writers, and discover how this latest story pays homage to her Japanese-American family members who were interned during World War II
Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Betsy Aoki: I was taking a few months’ sabbatical from the game industry and set myself a challenge to write some new fiction. My Clarion West classmate, Cadwell Turnbull, had just started pitching the Many Worlds writers collective, with a shared multiverse framework and I was determined to write something for the collective as a member.
“And To Their Shining Palaces Go” was originally supposed to be a short story but, well, it got longer and longer the more I realized how complicated the setting was.
(Besides this story in Asimov’s, and fiction published on the Many Worlds web site, Many World stories can be found in the 2023 anthology Many Worlds: Or, the Simulacra. Under the pen name Darkly Lem, several members have gone on to sell a Many Worlds multiverse novel to be published in 2025.)
AE: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
BA: It began to germinate for me emotionally with the idea of the Shining Palaces—the lure of being in a beautiful place working with beautiful/genius people and receiving the societal status to go along with that. The feeling that one is doing the most important and coolest creative work of one’s life, in a place where just being there as a worker bee gains you societal approval. And that work is done in a culture where it is expected you will spend all your time and juice to create worlds for others to believe in.
The Alariel simulation’s resemblance to the game industry is of course, entirely coincidental . . .
The Alariel’s brutal approach to productivity is more understandable when you realize they resemble giant, swarming praying mantises and don’t really understand human psychology. Their interest in statistically proven behaviors is due to the fact I have worked as both a marketer and a technical program manager for Bing, the search engine. Search engines at that time did a lot of A/B testing where a feature would be killed if it failed to create the right clickthrough behaviors in a test segment of the audience. To keep the feature online you had to prove the correct behaviors were happening with statistical significance.
I also wanted to pay homage to the Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II (members of my family, including my father, went to camp), so I made the main character and her family of that lineage. Being sent to a “special place with walls around it” hits differently with certain backgrounds and of course generations close to the historical event and farther away from it will react differently.
AE: Is this story part of a larger universe, or is it stand-alone?
BA: This story is definitely standalone, but sits within the Many Worlds multiverse. My alien race, the Alariel, have misunderstood some of the things they learned about the Simulacrum from a wandering member of the Arcalumis, and, well, as a result they became obsessed with simulations as well as finding means to allow them to transit the multiverse. That obsession to swarm all the things leads them to a history of taking over places like Earth, and this story is what happens after that conquest.
“And To Their Shining Palaces Go” was originally supposed to be a short story but, well, it got longer and longer the more I realized how complicated the setting was.
AE: What is your process?
BA: Because I have always a busy day job (tech or games), writing tends to happen weekends and vacations (or if very lucky, a writing residency). I don’t strive for a specific word count though I know some folks have had success with that.
AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
BA: The pandemic and then the death of my mom meant I just wasn’t up to writing at various points. In this case, mental health/grief processing has to come first before you can “deal” with the block. Your brain is a wonderful thing, and can grind on, but it will start wearing down and smoking and burning out if not careful. I think if the writing block is because of life events, you have to roll with that and trust your psyche will come back to the writing.
AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
BA: After my debut poetry collection, Breakpoint, launched in 2022 I did a lot of book promotion and am glad to now be in more of a writing phase. I have a second poetry manuscript I need to flesh out, and I continue to try and improve my short fiction writing.
Projects with others include helping out with the Many Worlds collective, and also serving as poetry editor for Uncanny Magazine. My household also recently adopted two quasi-teleporting kittens who will serve to be a project in and of themselves.
AE: What are you reading right now?
BA: Just finished these three:
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi (fantastic sexy caper novel)
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (complex worldbuilding, amazing characters and sense of magic behind every door)
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (Cozy horror and love story all in one)
Now I am rereading for prose craft: This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
I am about to read these two for poetry craft:
The Selected Shepherd: Poems By Reginald Shepherd
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
BA: You don’t have to go so far as to join a collective but it’s good to have a community—a critique group, a bunch of writer friends interested in the same writing you are, and of course that essential friend group to have: non-writers. Let yourself be dorky and reach out to create with others.
In fiction or in poetry, study the form, and read widely to understand how people are making authorial choices they do. Are they taking risks you want to take? Are they creating space for you to spread your wings and fly there? Study how they do it. Do it.
AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing?
BA: Folks can best reach me directly via the web form at https://www.betsyaoki.com . I am on twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon but erratically across each.
From Earth to the Stars 