Derek Künsken, winner of our 2013 Readers’ Award for best novelette, returns to Asimov’s for the 13th time with “Worm Song,” appearing in our [July/August issue, on sale now!] Find out how a Chinese publisher helped Derek’s latest story come to be in this illuminating Q&A
Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Derek Künsken: I was approached by a Chinese publisher who had previously translated some of my stories. They were looking for a new story that included the elements of “new year” and “dragons.” I really like imagining weird places and inventing strange aliens with unconventional relationships with their environments. My vision of this story was pretty clear right away. From the beginning, “Worm Song” had most of the elements that ended up in the final draft: the gas giant, families apart and hoping to reconcile, insights into the alien, and the gas giant.
AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
DK: I think we’ve all had our hearts broken. I think we’ve all been in relationships that are important to us where we feel that one person or the other is drifting away. I think I was going for that kind of tragic personal vibe in this story, to reflect the larger alien dragon tragedy going on in the depths of the gas giant.
AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
DK: I don’t know that my process for titling is very conscious or systematic. Titles are very much a feel thing, a gut thing for me. Although I was supposed to be focusing on dragons, and we did get there in the story, the key to the dragons is of course the worm song, which felt like the right title for the piece.
AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
DK: I think this is my 13th Asimov’s story. Sheila Williams bought my second short story sale back in 2008 and I’ve been very lucky with Asimov’s since then. Its readers have been very supportive—I won the Asimov’s Reader’s Poll in 2013. And the editors have been great to share creative space with.
AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations?
DK: I think there are early influences, which didn’t really help me understand science fiction or how to be a writer, but they were fun at the time: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien, Frank Herbert, and way too many Marvel comic books. Later, I think I was much more consciously inspired by Iain M. Banks, Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod, and other exemplars of British Space Opera, which is the sub-genre I feel I’m most often writing and reading.
AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
DK: I seem to keep coming back to worries about the genetic engineering of humanity. This comes across most strongly in my Quantum Evolution novel series (starting with The Quantum Magician) where humanity has genetically engineered itself into several subspecies, and ultimately, evolutionary arms races that are no good for anyone. A distant second is probably just weird places in space: strange stars, strange moons, strange planets. Heck, even strange gas clouds . . .
AE: How did you break into writing?
DK: Slowly haha. Yeah, slowly. I was writing for real seriously for about 20 years before I was good enough to make my first sale around the time I was 35 years old. That’s one of the reasons I call myself a slow learner. Around that time, I also started listening to podcasted short stories. That really helped me sharpen my writing instincts and craft. About 3 years of intensive listening/reading and writing stories and sending them off got me to a place where most of what I was writing was selling. When I had enough of a track record with short fiction publications, I tried with a novel to get an agent. I had a number of novelfails but finally, in 2018, The Quantum Magician was published by Solaris Books to some great responses and I’m finishing drafting the 4th novel in the series right now.
AE: What are you reading right now?
DK: I have a toddler, so I don’t get all the sleep I would like, so my reading is a lot of rereading right now, or podcasts about comics or video games. I’m currently rereading The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks and some older science fiction. On new books, I recently enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, by Wole Talabi, and Empire of Sand by Tashi Suri.
AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
DK: I know it’s not for everyone, but try to break in through short fiction. My agent asked me for my novel on the basis of my pitch and my short fiction track record. That means reading (analytically) a lot of short fiction. I wish I’d followed that advice sooner.
AE: What other careers have you had, and how have they affected your writing?
DK: I’ve worked with street kids as a volunteer, and I’ve done cancer research for my masters degree, and I’ve been a diplomat with an occasional focus on humanitarian issues. All three of those things show up in my writing from time to time, sometimes at center stage.
AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL…)
DK: I’m actively at bluesky @derekkunsken, very passively at twitter @derekkunsken, and my website is www.derekkunsken.com. I occasionally end up on podcasts talking about comic books, like the Magazines and Monsters Podcast, the Graymalkin Lane podcast, and once each on the Quarter-Bin podcast or House of X Book Club podcast. It’s fun talking comics.
From Earth to the Stars 