Nick Wolven’s latest contribution to Asimov’s explores colonialism, false repentance, and the line between suspicion and paranoia; available to read in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]
Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Nick Wolven: I got the idea for this one back in 2020 or so when white privilege was a hot topic. So I was thinking about the horrors of European colonialism and the ways in which people respond to that history. The philosopher Liam Kofi Bright has this idea that white people tend to either be repenters or deniers with respect to the crimes of our ancestors, and when I read his work I thought to myself, “Those are just different ways of avoiding punishment.” The truth is, I’ve always been a bit suspicious of people who repent on behalf of a group that did bad things, as if they’re sneakily trying to wriggle out of being judged along with everyone else. So the story presents a scenario in which that suspicion is underlined. If someone comes to you full of passionate denunciations of the crimes of “their people,” are they for real? Or are they just trying to put one over on you? How can you tell?
AE: Is this story part of a larger universe, or is it stand-alone?
NW: Oh, it’s definitely stand-alone. I’m not a worldbuilder. I used to love reading old science fiction stories where the whole world had clearly been slapped together in a weekend just to illustrate one idea or concept or whatever, and the author would patch over the cracks by cramming in offhand references to the “Pixel Guild” or the “Azimuth Wars,” or what-have-you. “Potemkin stories,” I call them, after the fake villages the Soviets used to throw together to impress visitors. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing–for any craft where a few little details are used to suggest the presence of a larger world, whether we’re talking about Lego sets or theme parks or dioramas. Part of me wonders if this is a lost art, at least when it comes to narrative forms like films and TV shows. The trend now seems to be to fill in every little detail, down to the last little scrap of scenery, the last tidbit of backstory.
AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
NW: The only character in this one who feels real to me is the heroine, Maya. All the other characters pop up like little demons and angels to apply pressure to her and try and get her to act in certain ways, but she’s the one who actually has to balance out those competing views and make a tough decision.
AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
NW: This was one of those cases where I had no idea for a title at all, so I just pulled out a word from the story and stuck that where the title needed to be.
AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story?
NW: I always think of Asimov’s first for every story.
AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations?
NW: I grew up on the SF of my parents, which was mostly adventure stuff from the 50s (Heinlein, Tolkien, Andre Norton, C.S. Lewis) and New Wave literature from the 60s and 70s (Delany, Le Guin, Tiptree). I also read a ton of 80s fantasy. So that’s the wellspring when it comes to inspiration. But I’d say I’m more influenced by reading works by younger writers and checking out all the new things people are trying.
So the story presents a scenario in which that suspicion is underlined. If comes to you full of passionate denunciations of the crimes of “their people,” are they for real? Or are they just trying to put one over on you? How can you tell?
AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
NW: I think I’m less affected by events themselves than by the conversations people have about those events. I don’t find Donald Trump very compelling, for instance, but I follow all the conversations around Trump and the debates about why people support him. Those debates often end up stressing me out more than the presence of Trump himself. I’m not sure why I’m put together that way.
AE: What is your process?
NW: My process has had to flex and adapt to accommodate various vision troubles I’ve developed in recent years. I used to just sit down at the computer and tinker around. When my eyes went to pot, I went back to writing longhand, and I was able to draft a lot of stuff that way, but it was too much work to type everything up. So for this story, I wrote everything by hand on a Remarkable tablet, then used various tools to turn the draft into a submittable document. But that was a very cumbersome process. At the moment, I’m back to writing on a laptop, and I mostly write with my eyes closed and use accessibility tools to read things back to me, which has led to a situation where I finish drafts but never get around to revising them. Oh well.
AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
NW: These days, I just totally and completely surrender to writers’ block whenever it looms. I give in to it joyfully. I don’t make any real income by writing, and I feel no obligation to share my visions with the world. So writers’ block is like a gift from the universe saying it’s time to stop beating myself up about my productivity goals and go read something instead.
AE: What SFnal prediction would you like to see come true?
NW: The weird thing about science fiction is that I kind of wouldn’t want to see any of it come true? Like, the whole point of SF is to tell interesting stories about new technologies, which means the technologies have to be tied to some conflict or dilemma or disaster that makes for an exciting plot. If the mRNA vaccines were the centerpiece of an SF book, the story would probably be about how they were part of a secret government plot to install mind control devices, or how they unexpectedly turned people into murderous mutants, or how they had terrible side effects and the government covered it up. Or the vaccines would be presented as a miracle cure that an evil corporation had been hoarding for the benefit of the rich. But in the real world the vaccines are just a nifty technology that lowers your chances of having a bad case of COVID. I sometimes wonder if one effect of reading lots of SF is that it teaches you to be more sensitive to this distinction—to the way the human instinct for story works, and consequently to the unstorylike qualities of reality. If I hear someone talking about a new technology, and what they describe sounds like a good science fiction story, I’ll often think to myself, “Well, THAT’s never going to happen—because THAT sounds like a good story, and reality doesn’t work that way.”
AE: What are you reading right now?
NW: I got to see an advance copy of Rich Larson’s new collection, and that was a blast. Right now I’m halfway through Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress.
AE: What other careers have you had, and how have they affected your writing?
NW: All my careers have been writing-related in some way. I trained as an English teacher, started as a technical writer, worked for a textbook publisher, and now I’m a librarian. What I’ve learned is that most writing in the world isn’t written to be read, but to provide tangible evidence of cognitive labor. That is, there are various institutions that recruit people to sit around and do intellectual work, and those institutions want to see that work has actually been done, so they ask people to produce X amount of pages by such and such a date. I think realizing this had the effect of making me extremely anxious about the value of writing, since anyone who sits around writing stuff all the time presumably wants to do more than just fulfill a bureaucratic requirement. A lot of people seem to be feeling a similar sense of anxiety now, because it’s this proof-of-thought function of writing that AI is poised to disrupt.
From Earth to the Stars 