Q&A With Sean McMullen

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.

For thirty-three years Sean McMullen had a career in scientific computing with the Australian Weather Bureau by day, then went home to write science fiction. Today he writes full time. Sean has had Hugo and BSFA award nominations, won seventeen other awards, and currently has 102 stories and thirty-two books published. His latest novels are the climate change dark comedy Generation Nemesis (Wizards Tower Press, 2022) and a children’s fantasy (with Paul Collins) This Spells Trouble (Ford Street Press, 2023). He has a PhD from Melbourne University, where he is an instructor at the university karate club.

Q&A With Marguerite Sheffer

In our latest Q&A, Marguerite Sheffer discusses her greatest influences, her writing process, and the piece of family history that helped inspire “The Disgrace of the Commodore,” her latest story in our [Nov/Dec issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Marguerite Sheffer: This flash story is based on a maybe-true bit of family lore that was passed down to me: the story of a famous Commodore who surrendered a ship to the British.  I have a drawing of the ship itself hanging near my writing desk.  The Commodore has been the subject of a lot of conversation, and a lot of jokes at family reunions.  I began to imagine what the Commodore would think about our family as it is today, if he were eavesdropping somehow on those conversations: what would shock him, what would infuriate him, and what would spark his curiosity.  Along the way I began to feel more tenderness towards him and found him to be more than a joke.  I hope the story is able to be a little brutal towards his worldview, but also give him a little bit of softness and hope, too.

AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story? 
MS: Yes!  I am one of the “descendants” in the story who is tearing apart the purgatorial version of the ship.  That’s my secret self-insert character, and I had such fun writing myself and my cousins in, from the Commodore’s point-of-view.

AE: What made you think of Asimov’s for this story? 
MS: I’ve been a reader and admirer of Asimov’s for so long! I had submitted several stories for consideration before this one, and had some encouraging near-misses.  In one of her kind rejection notes, Sheila Williams mentioned being open to slipstream. This is one of my more unhinged, slippier pieces, so I hoped—and was right—that it might be a great fit.  I’m so glad and honored to see my words among so many authors I admire! 

AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations?
MS: I’m a particular fan of authors who are merging historical fiction with speculative fiction, in particular Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, P. Djeli Clark, E. Lily Yu, Sam J. Miller and Caroline Yoachim. I’ve been lucky enough to speak with several of these writers about their work and their process.  Their stories inspire me to imagine the voices missing from the historical narrative, and to speculate, wildly and curiously, into those gaps.
My own writing has grown enormously as a result of writing together with others, in writing groups. I’ve been lucky to write as part of the Nautilus Writing Group with Kendra D. Sims, Gwen Whiting, Amy Johnson, and Archita Mittra. We were matched together as part of the (free) Clarion West virtual Write-a-Thon, and I’ve been so lucky to learn from them!  “Disgrace of the Commodore” began as a flash piece I shared with that group.  I write nearly daily with Tierney Oberhammer and Corinne Cordasco-Pak (Wildcats Writing Group) and their incredible work and insights continually push me to be braver in my writing.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
MS: While I don’t (consciously) write about current events, I do find myself, even when writing about history, circling some themes: of failing the next generation, of adults failing to protect the children in their care. I think in our era of looming climate disaster this is a subject that haunts me.  I was a high school teacher for ten years, and I also find myself writing about the ways in which adults can be complicit in systems which restrict or harm children.  One of the things I love about writing science fiction is the chance to imagine the world otherwise, even when it hurts to do so.

AE: What is your process?
MS: I could say so much about this one!  I’m a new parent with a full-time day job, so I’ve had to get creative and scrappy with my writing process to make the most of minimal time.  I write most mornings with a beloved writing group, the Wildcats, over zoom.  We check in, say what we’re going to work on, do that, then celebrate each other for every little bit we accomplish. Sometimes, that’s a full hour, other times, just a handful of minutes on the Most Dangerous Writing App.  
My day job is in teaching design thinking strategies as a tool for problem-solving and social impact, and I also apply design thinking to my writing: I write to explore, do a lot of brainstorming and ideation, and go through many (many) iterations of each piece. I try to set aside the idea of “good writing” and instead play around and see what happens.

One of the things I love about writing science fiction is the chance to imagine the world otherwise, even when it hurts to do so.

AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
MS: I’m in the final revision stages of my first novel, which is both thrilling and scary!  The novel is historical speculative fiction, set in the Gulf South (Louisiana and Florida) in the early 1900s, and concerns early conservation efforts during the “plume wars:” a time when egrets were nearly hunted to extinction for their feathers, which were worth as much as gold.  A female journalist, Theodora, heads to a remote island to cover a new egret sanctuary, and learns an other-worldly secret. I’m going to be seeking representation for this novel, hopefully in early 2024, after working on it for the last four years.

AE: What are you reading right now?
MS: Right now I am reading Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, as well as a nonfiction book (research for a new project) about Cold War espionage: Spies by Calder Walton.  I’m also reading my favorite genre mags: Asimov’s, Uncanny, Apex, The Deadlands, and The Dread Machine (among many others!).

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
MS: Writing with others keeps me inspired, and helps keep the work itself fresh, fun and playful.  So, my advice is to start joining communities and looking out for writers whose work excites you!  Kickstart a writing group: it is an investment of time and energy that pays off massively, in my experience.

AE: What is something we should know about you that we haven’t thought to ask?
MS: I love to use playlists as I write to get into the right mood and voice for each different story.  Sometimes I will go further and break it down by characters and scenes.  For “The Disgrace of the Commodore,” one song that I listened to over and over again was “Iron 2021” by Woodkid. Here’s the whole playlist on Spotify.

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL…)
MS: Readers can find me at my website, www.margueritesheffer.com, and on social media at @mlensheffer.  The Wildcats Writing Group is going to launch a Substack soon with information about workshops and publications.  You can sign up early here: wildcatswritetogether.substack.com.

Marguerite Sheffer is a writer and educator who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Epiphany Magazine, HAD, The Cosmic Background, Tales to Terrify, The Dread Machine, Cast of Wonders, The Pinch, and The Adroit Journal, where she is a 2023 Anthony Veasna So Scholar in Fiction. Maggie is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a community writing collective.

Q&A With Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber

Kevin J. Anderson and Rick Wilber discuss the follow-up story to their Asimov’s Reader’s Award-winning novelette, “The Hind.” Don’t miss “The Death of the Hind” in our [November/December issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: You two seem to make quite a team for these generation-ship stories. Did you have “The Death of the Hind” in mind when you wrote that award-winning first story, “The Hind”?
Kevin J. Anderson & Rick Wilber: Yes, we aimed all along at future installments. We really enjoyed working together on  “The Hind,” and the story as we told it had room for at least one more installment, since the ship was traveling under control again at the end of that story and we wanted to see where both the story and the ship would wind up. But the great reception of “The Hind,” winning the Asimov’s Readers’ Award for novelette and then later winning a Canopus Award for best interstellar fiction—short form, was certainly a motivator for us to press on and complete the second story.

AE: The very nature of a generation ship story is that, over time,  we meet new characters as a new generation takes over. You’ve kept some of the main characters from the first story in this second installment, but brought us some new ones, too. Tell us about these new characters.
KJA&RW: Right at the start of “The Death of the Hind” we meet Dothan, who’s our protagonist in this story. Dothan plays an important role in this sequel as a fine pilot and the calm voice of reason when disagreements arise. Readers first met Dothan as Kym’s infant in the final paragraphs of “The Hind.” Kym was the hero of that story so it’s fitting that her daughter, a talented and strong adult now, is the hero of the new story. There are villains, too, in the new story and they connect to the first story, as well, so there’s a nice through-line there. We wanted “The Death of the Hind” to stand alone for those encountering these characters and their troubles for the first time so we slipped in the backstory here and there to bring those readers up to speed. We think it’s pretty effective at that.

AE: Speaking of through-lines, when you blogged on the writing of “The Hind,” you two mentioned that it began as a conversation during a long drive through the Rocky Mountains. Did you map out this second story then, or is there another drive involved in this second story?
KJA&RW: There was another drive! Just as in “The Hind,” we were both teaching at the annual Residency for grad students and faculty of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University. Rick teaches in MFA program in Genre Fiction there and Kevin is Director of the Publishing Program. As usual, Rick flew from Florida, where he lives at nearly sea level,  to Colorado Springs a day early to acclimate and the two of us then drove the next day over to Gunnison, Colorado at 7800 feet, where the Western campus is, to start our parts of the residency. We roomed together at an AirBnb there and had a lot of great conversations, of course. But the bulk of the story was planned out during the drive to Gunnison and then really came alive when Kevin took a mountain hike one afternoon and dictated the story’s first draft during that hike. He handed that off to Rick who, a couple of months later, came back with a more polished version that was quite a bit longer, and after a bit more back and forth we submitted to Asimov’s. Happily, it won acceptance and now it’s in the current issue, to our delight.

First of all, we want to write entertaining and informative story. But it’s true that science fiction often offers a fresh perspective on contemporary social issues, and these stories have certainly done some of that.

AE: You’ve taken on some interesting issues in these stories, from ageism and dementia in “The Hind,” to the importance of the intellectually disabled and the denialism of the truth by some factions in “The Death of the Hind.” Are these things that matter to you both?
KJA&RW: Sure. First of all, we want to write entertaining and informative story. But it’s true that science fiction often offers a fresh perspective on contemporary social issues, and these stories have certainly done some of that. In “The Hind” it was Sudio, an elderly woman suffering from dementia, who recalled the singular key that unlocked the computer to save the day for everyone. In “The Death of the Hind,” we see some of the generation ship’s struggles through the eyes of a young boy named Lonnie who has Down syndrome. It’s Lonnie who ultimately provides a certain moral clarity in the story. Rick is the parent of an adult son with Down syndrome and often includes characters with Down syndrome in his stories. We felt that Lonnie, the son of our hero Dothan, had an important role to play in the story.

AE: What’s next for these characters and their outpost on a distant planet?
KJA&RW: We’re at work now on the third story, which has to do with issues of colonialism and survival and aliens and innocence, revolving around our Down syndrome character Lonnie and his contact with beings who’ve come to this planet to recover their own lost colony, only to discover that Earth colonists have arrived there, too. We think it’s a lot of fun and has some important things to say.

AE: And is there more to come after that?
KJA&RW: Who knows? We’re having fun with it and there’ll be a low-residency stay next summer, too, so we’ll see what happens!

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of numerous SF and fantasy novels including the Saga of Seven Suns, the Wake the Dragon trilogy, his humorous detective series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., his steampunk Clockwork Angels trilogy (co-written with legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart), and over twenty novels set in the Dune universe with Brian Herbert. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Bram Stoker, Shamus, and many other awards. Rick Wilber, an Asimov’s regular, is an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor with a half-dozen novels and short-story collections, more than seventy short stories (many of them first published in Asimov’s) as well as two-dozen poems, five anthologies, and five college textbooks on writing and the mass media. He is co-founder with Sheila Williams of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in SF and Fantasy Writing, which is now accepting submissions for its thirtieth-year celebration at http://www.dellaward.com.

Return to Mars

by Paul McAuley

Paul McAuley returns to the pages of Asimov’s with “Blade and Bone,” featured in our [November/December issue, on sale now!] In this essay, he discusses how the desolate landscapes of Mars and the American West have inspired his fiction.

Where do writers get their ideas?

Four years ago, I re-visited one of my favourite places in America: the high Californian desert, and what is now Joshua Tree National Park. The location for some of Hollywood’s classic Westerns, it’s unlike any European landscape. “An aridity that drives out the artificial scruples of culture, a silence that exists nowhere else,” as Jean Baudrillard observed in America. Almost Martian, in its inhuman sublime.

I’ve visited Mars before, too, in novels and stories. First, in the science fantasy mode, in Red Dust, and some years later, closer to realism, in middle part of The Secret of Life, where characters follow actual waypoints on maps got up from orbital images. “Blade and Bone” combines the two modes. Several of the places mentioned are actual Martian locations, as in The Secret of Life, although the terrain has been altered by the impact of spent cores of comets used to aid the terraforming of the red planet. And just as cowboys ride herd on yaks across ancient Martian sea beds in Red Dust, “Blade and Bone” references the kind of Westerns, like Bud Boetticher’s Comanche Station and Scott Cooper’s Hostiles, in which a hard-bitten, flawed hero guides people through landscapes haunted by hostile inhabitants or, as Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, by their own delusions. The story’s landscapes are similarly hostile, haunted by old wars and unspent grudges of a thousand years of contested history that are dwarfed by the vast uncaring Martian sublime.

“Blade and Bone” is also a Quiet War story, sharing the same future time line as four novels and a fistful of stories. The series ranges across much of the solar system, but apart from a couple of pieces of flash fiction, this is the first long-form Quiet War story I’ve set Mars. It features one of the series’ signature tropes, artificial vacuum organisms which somewhat resemble giant lichens, and like lichens can grow and utilise native resources in hostile habitats, and also enlarges an idea raised in Evening’s Empires, the fourth and last novel: if current or near future billionaires can extend their lives by downloading simulations of their minds, what role might they play in the further reaches of the future? Finally, it borrows from one of the pieces of flash fiction the Samurai-like Knights of Cydonia: the bone and blade which are the story’s contested prize have been stolen from one of their tombs. The roots of its story, as its protagonists discover, go way back.

Paul McAuley’s latest novel, Beyond the Burn Line, which is an exploration of our legacy in a post-human, post-Anthropocene Earth, was one of the Guardian’s books of the year, and shortlisted for the Kitschies’ Red Tentacle Award. Of “Blade and Bone” he says, “This isn’t my first trip to Mars. One of my early novels, Red Dust, was set on a version of Mars under Chinese hegemony and Gollancz recently reissued my near future bio-thriller about the contamination of life on Earth by life on Mars.” This new novella is a deep-future outcrop of his

Quiet War series of novels and shorter fictions: a story about lives shaped by stories that trace an unexpected journey across the battle-scarred face of the Red Planet.

Q&A With Dean Whitlock

After a 34-year absence, we’re thrilled to welcome back Dean Whitlock to the pages of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Get to know him in our latest author Q&A, where we discuss his favorite themes, his advice to new writers, and how an old blueberry garden helped inspire “Deep Blue Jump,” his latest novella, which appears in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Dean Whitlock: Thirty-three years ago, we bought a house that came with four large blueberry bushes out back, bushes that turned out to yield a huge harvest of large, wonderfully flavorful berries. Every summer from mid July into August, we would pick blueberries almost every day, enough to put on cereal and ice cream, to make muffins, pies, cakes, and pancakes, to make several jars of jelly and blueberry sauce, and to freeze a dozen or two quarts for wintertime eating.
Picking the berries turned into a meditative experience. I could let my mind roam, and it often roamed over the act of picking (when was a berry perfectly ripe, how could you tell?) and the microecology of the blueberry bushes (the tiny flies, bees, and white spiders, the birds looking for ways in, the chipmunks that sometimes burrowed around the roots).
After a few years, it was only natural to start coming up with various what-ifs that might be used in a story, and the fauna were certainly in there early (usually as boogey beasts that only came out at night), but the pickers were always first and foremost—who were they, why were they picking, who was in charge? Still, nothing coalesced for a long, long time. Finally, current events related to my day job wormed their way into the what-ifs. One of my clients was a substance abuse prevention coalition, so the opiate epidemic and the movement to legalize cannabis were impossible to ignore. Coincidentally, one of my work acquaintances was a lobbyist working on the issue of human trafficking (yes, even in li’l old Vermont). It is a sad truth that addiction and human trafficking are deeply connected in several ways. These were the pieces that gave life and structure to my daydreaming and led to “Deep Blue Jump.”

AE: Do current events feature in all of your writing?
DW: No, though they are certainly present in many of my stories and some of my novels. Ironically, the recent revelations about child labor in the U.S. came out at least a year after I began writing “Deep Blue Jump” and weren’t a part of its creation, but they certainly add a dark resonance when reading it now. “Roadkill” (Asimov’s SF, Nov. 1987) took a fantastical look at dead fur-bearing animals on the sides of our local roads in the context of the green movement and PETA. On the other hand, “Iridescence” (Asimov’s SF, Jan. 1989) was inspired by a fantastic but real bubble act I saw at Circus Smirkus (the best youth circus in the country, if not the world). The burned out human cop and the two aliens are what made the bubble what-if work, not any current events of the time.

AE: What is your history with Asimovs?
DW: If you ignore the early rejections, my history with Asmiov’s began in 1987, when then editor Gardner Dozois selected my very first published story to include in his fifth annual best-of-the-year collection. That story (“The Million-Dollar Wound”) had appeared in the January issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, but my story “Roadkill” was published in Asimov’s that November. Two other stories appeared in Asimov’s in the next two years, but most of my short works have been published elsewhere (mostly due to matters of timing or topic or rejection, plain and simple). In the ’90s, I began to work on novel-length projects, so there weren’t any short works to submit anywhere. Last year, I brought out Iridescent Dreams, a collection of my 20 best stories, which includes the three that were published in the Asimov’s (andis most of my published short oeuvre anyway). I blush to admit that “Deep Blue Jump” is the first of my stories to appear in Asimov’s since 1989, and finally came to fruition a year too late to be in the collection.

AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations?
DW: I have admired the work of many authors over the years, but I can point to only a few as “greatest influences.” Very early on there was Dr. Seuss, particularly On Beyond Zebra, a book that is not only creative but about being creative. Books like this made me an avid reader for life. In the realm of “almost science fiction,” there was Kurt Vonnegut, whose wry, cynical outlook was perfect for my teen years, but SF&F has always been my favorite genre, and there I would name Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, JRR Tolkien, Harlan Ellison, Sherri Tepper, and Connie Willis.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
DW: Themes of friendship, family, loyalty, expectation versus will, duty versus dedication. Relationships are the core of most of my stories, long or short, serious or funny, though the type of relationship and its effects are not always inherent in the inspirational ideas or themes. We humans are gregarious animals, as are most of the alien and fantastical species we imagine for our stories. Companionship is essential to a full life. Conflict, or at least tension, is essential to a good story. Love can bring delight or tragedy and often something complex, enlivened with elements of both. Whatever the theme, it’s the people who get across the point.

AE: What inspired you to start writing?
DW: I have always read voraciously. My penmanship has only gotten worse, but I grasped the ways of grammar early and easily and have always been good at producing prose. I talk a lot, too, and enjoy acting a great deal, so I had all the necessary skills built in. I don’t remember the precise reason why, but I started my first storybook when I was about 10. It never made it past chapter one. What I lacked was discipline; there were so many other interesting things to do. I didn’t complete a story until I was 17 (got an A+), didn’t sell one until my late 20s (to a semipro zine that folded the month before my story would have appeared), and didn’t see one published until I was 36. During that time, I’d been a lab technician, a shipping clerk,  carpenter, a journalist, and finally a technical writer who wrote marketing copy too, and was starting to develop the discipline that writing fiction requires.

Companionship is essential to a full life. Conflict, or at least tension, is essential to a good story.

AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
DW: I not normally disposed to writing sequels (new world always beckon!), but I’m collecting thoughts for a sequel to my latest novel, The Bell Cannon Affair. The Steampunk tropes, ocean liner setting, and broad cast of characters are simply too fun to set aside. I’m also working on expanding a space-opera-based-on-fairy-tale idea I had back in the 1990s but have never been able to develop and am helping a close friend self publish a Space Opera series of his own. That and the occasional article for a local magazine publisher are more than enough to keep me very busy. (Indie author/publisher is one heck of a lot of work!)

AE: If you could choose one SFnal universe to live in, what universe would it be, and why?
DW: I don’t do “choose only one” questions well, if only because I’m not the same person every year, or even every day. When I was 13, I would have said Barsoom, the Mars of John Carter. At 18, I would have said Middle Earth: the Shire, the ridings of Rohan, the glory of Gondor—wow! Now I’m more inclined to say Discworld, for its insanely comical cosmological illogic, or (to satisfy the SFnal requirement and be more likely to survive) the intriguing worlds of Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series. It seems like a place where you could live an interesting life with interesting people (human and alien) that wasn’t constantly on the brink of doom.

AE: What are you reading right now?
DW: The latest Neal Stephenson novel, with the latest Martha Welles Murderbot installment on order at our local library. And I just finished an interesting non-fiction book titled Hedy’s Folly, about movie star Hedy Lamarr and her alto ego of inventor during WWII. “Tortilla Flat” by day and non-jammable remote radio control systems for torpedos by night? Who’d have imagined?

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
DW: There are countless books and blogs full of advice, but here’s one aspect of authoring that I think is too often overlooked: the sound of good prose.
Read your work out loud as you write and listen to it carefully. If you stumble over a word or phrase, rewrite so no other reader will stumble. If it sounds flat, rewrite more life into it. If you have to stop and reread in order to understand what you meant, rewrite to make it clear. If all your characters sound like Han Solo, create new voices. If you keep hearing the same words or rhythm over and over, rewrite from a broader dictionary with a more varied grammatical structure. If you don’t get what I mean, read one of your favorite award-winning books out loud. Then read your own prose. Rewrite so your spoken text sounds just as smooth, interesting, and lively.

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL . . .)
DW: I generally keep my website up to date with news, and occasionally put up one of my short works to provide an entertaining break to the day. You can find links to my books on the major online book vendors too. (www.deanwhitlock.com) I have a personal page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/dean.whitlock.58) and always post book news there, though I’m an infrequent poster otherwise. (No FB author page yet, but I’d consider setting one up if I detect a lot of interest.) I sell my books in person at the annual Vermont SF&F Expo (usually the final weekend in April), the annual Vermont Renaissance Faire (always the next to last weekend in June), and the hopefully annual Vermont Steampunk Festival (November 11 & 12 this year). And you can feel free to contact me at boatman@deanwhitlock.com.

Dean Whitlock’s first professional sale, “The Million-Dollar Wound,” was included in Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Fifth Annual Collection. His last appearance in this magazine, “Iridescence” (January 1989), was a finalist for our Readers’ Award. Since then, Dean has published six novels (Finn’s Clock won First Place in the young adult category for the 7th Annual Writers Digest Self-Published Ebook Awards), along with several other well-received short works released here and abroad. His latest book is Iridescent Dreams, 20 tales of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It includes, he says, “every worthwhile story I had written.”

Q&A With Ali Trotta

Ali Trotta is a poet, editor, and hater of bad coffee who believes in the power of knowing yourself. Learn more about Trotta in this Q&A, and read her latest poem, “When the Mirror Shows Frankenstein’s Monster,” in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Ali Trotta: We are all a patchwork of those we loved before, in myriad ways. Sometimes, we are the monster in one way or another. But there is also something about love that’s transformative, renewing.

AE: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
AT: This was a poem I wrote very fast. It doesn’t always happen that way. But this one had a mind of its own, as the best ones often do.

AE: How did the title for this piece come to you?
AT: It’s about recognition—seeing who we are and seeing what someone has made us into, real or imagined. (None of us are without scars, after all.) That imperfect or messy, we’re still worth loving in the end.

AE: Who or what are your greatest influences and inspirations?
AT: Ted Hughes poetry changed my life—especially his later works. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a masterclass. Maria Dahvana Headley is one of the most incredible creatives out there. Neil Gaiman’s writing always leaves me in awe, but I’ll always have a soft spot for his poem, “Instructions.” And although not literary, my mother (for her love of reading and her infectious laughter, which I miss) and my dad (for his unfailing support and for being the smartest person I know).

We are all a patchwork of those we loved before, in myriad ways. Sometimes, we are the monster in one way or another. But there is also something about love that’s transformative, renewing.

AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
AT: Often! It’s impossible to live in the world and not be affected by it. One of my poems previously published in Uncanny is called “The Persecution of Witches,” and it’s absolutely about how society treats/punished women, which is not unlike what happened during the Salem Witch Trials.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
AT: The power in believing in yourself, in knowing yourself. The way love can be an unstoppable force, for better or worse. The idea that we sometimes haunt each other in some way. And as for why, well, I think these are truths and things others can relate to.

AE: What is your process?
AT: It depends! Sometimes, I’ll draft a poem in one sitting. Sometimes, I’ll rewrite and poke at the same piece for days. I often start in the wrong place and delete opening lines. Once, right before sending a piece out of submission—literally while drafting the email—I had an idea on how to change the ending. I did it, sent it in a few minutes later, and it was accepted for publication.

AE: What are you reading right now?
AT: Kat Howard’s A Sleight of Shadows, which is stellar.

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
AT: Write and read widely. Give yourself time to refill the well, too. It is hard to create when you’re burnt out, and the world is a mess. So, it’s even more important these days to replenish. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. But learn. Follow other writers on social media, and you’ll learn a lot. Trust me.

AE: What is something we should know about you that we haven’t thought to ask?
AT: My favorite visual artist, right now, is Shannon Stamey. He’s a traditional illustrator, and I am absolutely gobsmacked by his work at every turn. Oh and never give me weak coffee. It’s just burnt water with sadness, and I will assume you don’t like me.

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL)
AT: Bluesky is where I am primarily these days (alwayscoffee.bsky.social), but I’m also on Twitter (the website formerly known as Twitter?) as alwayscoffee and Instagram as alwayscoffee7. (Are you sensing a theme?) I have a TinyLetter that goes out weekly (tinyletter.com/alwayscoffee) and a blog that I really should update (wordpress.com/alwayscoffee). And if you’re looking for more of my writing, here is a handy link: linktr.ee/alwayscoffee.

Ali Trotta is a poet, editor, word-nerd, and unapologetic coffee addict. Her poetry has been published in Uncanny, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Small Wonders, Fireside, Strange Horizons, Cicada, Nightmare, Mermaids Monthly, The Best of Uncanny Magazine (Subterranean Press), and several of the Rhysling Anthology compilations. Four of her poems were Rhysling Award nominees. Her short fiction has appeared in Curtains, a flash fiction anthology. When she’s not writing, she’s usually cooking, baking, or hugging an animal. She has a German Shepherd named Cash and a rescue cat named Thor, who is part Maine Coon and part Gremlin.

Q&A With David Erik Nelson

David Erik Nelson discusses his latest story while answering questions about his inspirations, his history with our magazine, and the science fictional predictions he’d like to see stop coming true. Read “The Dead Letter Office” in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
David Erik Nelson: I tend to think of new story ideas while on vacation with my wife and kids, often while driving. On one particular winter break I came up with two. One was about a woman who, upon meeting her fiancée’s family (avid deer hunters, like her own single father), abruptly realizes that the thing she thought was “venison” all her life most definitely was not.
The other story was this one, which was really no more than the working title: “Children’s Letters to Satan.”  I asked my wife and kids (a grade-schooler and high-schooler) which I should write first, and they chose “Children’s Letters to Satan.”

AE: Is this story part of a larger universe?
DEN: Sort of. It’s probably more accurate to say it’s anchored in a sort of “private mythology” based on Jewish theology, folktales, Kabbalah, topology, and n-dimensional physics. Other stories in this same mythos include “This Place is Best Shunned” (available from Tor.com) and my short novel There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House.

AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
DEN: Yeah. I particularly identify with both the protagonist (Patrice) and her friend (LeCharles). That might seem odd, as they are very different—in race, gender, attitude, where they are in their lives—but they’ve both survived similar trauma, and arrived at very different places. I think that’s sort of reflective of how I personally struggle with what the appropriate moral response is to people who do Very Bad Things™.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
DEN: My first major sale was to Asimov’s, a short steampunk story titled “The Bold Explorer in the Place Beyond.” This was back in the days of paper submissions, and I recently found the acceptance letter from Sheila Williams, which I love.  It only runs about three sentences, and two of them read as follows:

“There is much that I absolutely love about this story, but I can’t get myself past Dickie drinking the alcohol off the mud and turds etc. I wouldn’t mind looking at slightly toned down version, but, whatever you decide to do, I am very much looking forward to seeing your next story.”

I kinda feel like that’s my writing career in a nutshell.

AE: What inspired you to start writing?
DEN: I don’t know about what inspired me to start, but I know two things that made me keep with it, even though it’s often hard:
One was that, when I was a kid, working on a story was extremely soothing. The activity of typing on my old off-brand IBM “clicky” keyboard was by itself hypnotic, and that helped. But more importantly, after I was done writing for the day, my head would feel clear and orderly. Writing was the first form of self-medication I ever discovered.  
Second was in high school, after I finally submitted a story to my high school’s literary magazine. They published it, and I discovered a fundamental truth: if I wrote stories and published them, then girls I didn’t even know would want to talk to me. I wasn’t a cool kid, and I was an increasingly anxious and troubled one by that time. Meanwhile, the kind of girls who wanted to talk to you because they read a story like this one, those were definitely the kind of people I wanted to be around.
And so here we are.

Writing was the first form of self-medication I ever discovered.  

AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
DEN: An awful lot, frankly. I think that’s sorta obvious in this particular story (which is pretty clearly set around 2020, and namechecks pandemic measures, civil unrest, and the whole rest of the American mess of that period). But even when they aren’t right on the surface, current events are usually exerting a powerful gravitational pull on my work. A lot of what is happening in the world is scary, and a lot of how I come to grips with scary things is through scary stories.

AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
DEN: I’m currently in the midst of revising a cosmic horror novel titled The Giftschrank. Although it’s not directly connected to this story, they do share thematic elements and that same “private mythology” (let’s call it “The Cantorian Judeo-Cthuloid Mythos”).

AE: What SFnal prediction would you like to see come true?
DEN: I have no clue. At this point, I’d sorta love it if William Gibson’s predictions stopped coming true. No offense, because I love Gibson as a human and adore his writing, but why did he have to be the guy who was spot on? Why couldn’t we get a fun future with Mr. Fusion-powered cars, ‘80s nostalgia restaurants, and everyone wearing double-neckties?

AE: What are you reading right now?
DEN: I just finished The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight, which is a fun nonfiction book about the intersection of psychology/psychiatry and ESP in the 1960s and the brief life of the British Premonitions Bureau.
On the fiction side, I’m in the middle of Victor LaValle’s latest horror novel, Lone Women (a historical set in the American West about a lone Black farmer and her Mysteriously Heavy Trunk leaving her predominantly Black farming community in California to homestead in Montana). I absolutely love LaValle (first got hooked by his Ballad of Black Tom), and this is shaping up to be his best book yet. 

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
DEN: It’s trite, but seriously: write every day, read every day. Every successful writer I know writes every day, and every writer I’ve ever known or heard of who’s tried to buck this advice eventually comes around to doing it. (Incidentally, that includes me: I didn’t think I need to read everyday and write everyday, either—you know, because I’m so damn special and different and artistically unique. *sighs* 🤦‍♀️)
Buck up: it’s the 21st Century. Everyone you see every day has immediate access to all the best writing in human history. If they’re going to read your story, it has to be because they have reason to think doing so will be a better experience then re-reading whatever it is they already know and love. You’ve got to give them something that Atwood, Austin, Butler, Dickenson, Hughes, King, Shakespeare, Yeats—whoever—doesn’t.
Elite athletes train every day. Ballet dancers—even the “nobodies” in the chorus—practice every day. If you wanna be in the show, you’d better do likewise.

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL . . .)
DEN: I can be found online at www.dave0.com (where you can read more of my work in the Free Fiction section: https://www.dave0.com/FreeFiction/ ). If you sign up for my newsletter ( http://eepurl.com/IZckf ), you’ll gets a heads up about new work, as well as some exclusive stories. I get my social media fix on Mastodon (https://a2mi.social/@dave0), and am always happy to kibbitz with new folks there.

David Erik Nelson is an award-winning Jewish author from the Rustbelt Midwest. Over the past 20 years his stories have appeared in Tor.com, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The New Voices of Science Fiction, Best Horror Of The Year, and elsewhere. He’s written two DIY books, several hundred reference articles, almost a dozen textbooks, at least a million words of technical and commercial copy, and the short novels There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House and There Was No Sound of Thunder (available in Autumn 2023). Find him online at dave0.com

Q&A With Kofi Nyameye

Kofi Nyameye is a writer and evangelist from Accra, Ghana, and his writing often explores different aspects of human nature. His latest work for Asimov’s presents a unique twist to an old Bible story. Read “The Pit of Babel” in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
Kofi Nyameye: “The Pit of Babel” started out as an idea I wrote down in one of my journals around seven or eight years ago. The working title at the time was “Dig,” and it was originally going to follow the last remnants of humanity digging a giant pit to the center of the earth for some reason or other. I thought it’d be cool to jump from character to character and chronicle the infighting and sabotage that would inevitably happen.
So I wrote the idea down and then completely forgot about it for several years, but then . . .

AE: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
KN: . . . one day I was reading the Bible and I came across the story of the Tower of Babel, and I remembered the idea I’d had several years before. I asked myself what would happen if instead of building a tower to Heaven, mankind built a tunnel into Hell? What would happen if I completely turned that story on its head? And it just built itself from there.

AE: Do you particularly relate to any of the characters in this story?
KN: I don’t know if I’d say I relate to him, but I absolutely love the character of Lucifer. (And okay, maybe I relate to him just a little bit.)
I’m a Christian and an evangelist, so you wouldn’t think I’d say that about the devil, but this is one of the few times that a character has shown up in a story and just absolutely taken over the whole thing. I particularly loved exploring his pride. Look, the Bible’s been written, right? From a Christian point of view, you’d think the devil would know by now that he loses in the end. So why does he continue to do it? That was interesting to dive into.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
KN: My answer to this question changes, depending on where I am in my life and my creativity. Right now if you pushed me for an answer, I’d say “human nature.” A lot of the stories I’m writing right now are in a way trying to answer the question “Why are we the way we are? Why do we do what we do in spite of overwhelming evidence that it is a bad idea?”

AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
KN: Almost never. I’ve tried. It comes out sounding false and forced. Most of those stories, I never finish.

AE: What is your process?
KN: I always start with a first draft that’s overlong and quite meandering. I sit down with an idea, and the first draft is me discovering for myself what kind of story fits the idea. Mind you, that doesn’t mean the draft I’ve written is that story. It’s just how I discover what the story should be.
In the second draft, I rewrite the whole thing and come out with a story that makes sense and has all its logic, character arcs, etc. in order.
Then I do like four to five drafts after that where I edit and tweak till the story flows as smoothly as I can get it to. Then at that point I just have to let it go.

I feel like as a species we would be wise to slow down a little, instead of speeding up even more.

AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
KN: Ha! I’m still working on it. I’m trying to learn to keep showing up anyway.
Talking through the block with a couple (trusted) storyteller friends also helps.

AE: If you could choose one SFnal universe to live in, what universe would it be, and why?
KN: I only just read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky earlier this year, and I feel like Kern’s World would be fun to live on for a bit. Not sure about staying permanently, though.

AE: What SFnal prediction would you like to see come true?
KN: Almost none of them. Maybe space travel. Aside from that, almost none of them. I feel like as a species we would be wise to slow down a little, instead of speeding up even more.

AE: What are you reading right now?
KN: Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I know, I know: took me long enough. But here’s the thing: I’ve been dealing with a deep depression for the past couple of years, and it really slowed down my writing to the point of pretty much stopping it entirely. This book’s helping me get back into the consistency of writing and just showing up for my life in general.
Honestly, it feels really good. And isn’t that just a great place to end this?

Kofi Nyameye is a writer, evangelist, and unrepentant digital hermit. His work has appeared in Asimov’s, The Manchester Review, Science Fiction World, and the Best of World SF: Volume 1 anthology, edited by Lavie Tidhar. He lives in Accra, Ghana.

Q&A With Lisa Goldstein

We spoke to Lisa Goldstein about her lengthy writing background and delved into a number of other topics along the way, including her love of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea universe, and why she enjoys writing about magic in the real world. Read her latest Asimov’s story,”In the Fox’s House,” in our [September/October issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
Lisa Goldstein: The story started when a friend of mine told me about videos online that showed foxes jumping on trampolines in people’s backyards.  Foxes can be tricky or untrustworthy in the old tales, so I wondered what those foxes were up to.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
LG: I’ve sold stories to Asimov’s nearly from the beginning, to Shawna McCarthy, Gardner Dozois, and now to Sheila Williams. All of them knew a lot about editing and gave me great feedback. If any of them rejected a story I was pretty sure there was something wrong with it, and I’d continue working on it or, sometimes, put it away to look at later.

AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
LG: I like to write stories about magic in the real world, where there’s a possibility of something astonishing or mysterious just around the corner, in a place you’ve passed a hundred times before. And I like showing what happens when the borders between the two worlds become blurred, and what that does to the main character, if it frightens them or changes them or makes them understand something important.

AE: How do you deal with writer’s block?
LG: Not easily. I once read a piece of advice to writers that helps every so often: Pretend you are writing a letter to an author you admire, explaining your problem and asking for solutions. Of course you will never send this letter; instead it’s a way of putting yourself into the mindset of someone who has solved the kind of difficulty you find yourself in. Once I was having trouble with the plot of a novel and I addressed a letter to Nancy Kress, someone who I think is brilliant at plotting. A long time later I told her what I’d done and she said, “Well, you owe me a letter now!” The letter was long gone, though, and it was so filled with despairing cries for help that I could never show it to anyone.

AE: How did you break into writing?
LG: I wrote a short story, and a friend of mine told me I should turn it into a novel.  So I wrote the novel, which became my first book, The Red Magician.  I sold it to the second editor I sent it to, Ellen Kushner, who was at Pocket Books at the time. 
Beginning writers usually hate this story because it seemed so easy for me.  I want to assure them that my career was just as rocky as most people’s.  For example, after writing a novel I couldn’t figure out how to write a short story for a long time.

I like to write stories about magic in the real world, where there’s a possibility of something astonishing or mysterious just around the corner, in a place you’ve passed a hundred times before.

AE: What inspired you to start writing?
LG: I can’t remember when I started wanting to be a writer.  Maybe it was when I read my first book.  Creating an entire world out of your head seemed the coolest thing anyone could possibly do.  It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought, though.  When I was in college I took a summer between classes to do nothing but write, and I went stir-crazy.  Did people really lock themselves in their rooms with only a piece of paper for company?  (This was before computers.)  But after a while I started to like it.

AE: If you could choose one SFnal universe to live in, what universe would it be, and why?
LG: Two choices, at opposite ends of the spectrum: I’d like to live on one of the islands in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea. Not only would there be the possibility of seeing dragons and wizards and magic, there’s also daily life, which in Tehanu seemed slow but fulfilling: herding goats and spinning their fleece, planting and growing crops, visiting your neighbors, telling stories by the fire, and every so often consulting with the local witch about the weather or an illness. My other choice is about as far away as you can get from that, Iain Banks’s Culture, a technological utopia where AIs fulfill most of your needs, there are amazing scientific breakthroughs, and you’re free to do whatever you want, including exploring other planets and societies.

AE: What are you reading right now?
LG: I’m amazed by the number of terrific women writers working today: Tamsyn Muir, Arkady Martine, Ann Leckie, Rebecca Roanhorse, R. F. Kuang, T. Kingfisher.  There’s a lot more of them than when I started reading sf, so I’m spoiled for choice.  I’ve also been reading Adrian Tchaikovsky.  It took me a while to pick up one of his books because of two words—“giant spiders”—but I like what I’ve read so far.

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
LG: To start with, there are no shortcuts.  You have to sit down every weekday to write, even if you’re blocked.  Read pretty much everything and study how an author pulls off something particularly brilliant or, conversely, figure out why the story you just read is particularly terrible.  Imitate the good ones until you understand more about style, then stop imitating.  Write about things that excite you or anger you or scare you instead of just following a trend or writing for a market.  Write the stories you feel need to be told, the stories only you can tell.  Have fun—if you’re bored, the reader can tell.  Oh, and get an agent.

AE: What other careers have you had, and how have they affected your writing?
LG: I’ve worked in bookstores a lot.  It hasn’t helped my writing that much, except for allowing me to get books at a discount, which let me read widely in a lot of genres and research topics I was interested in.  Also, people who work in bookstores are usually quirky and idiosyncratic, and know an impressive amount about weird subjects.
I’ve also taught at Clarion and other places.  It sounds like a cliche, but I learned about as much from the students as I taught them.

AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing? (IE: Social media handles, website URL . . .)
LG: Website: brazenhussies.net/goldstein
Blog: lisa_goldstein.dreamwidth.org

Lisa Goldstein’s latest novel is Ivory Apples, from Tachyon Press. Her other novels include The Red Magician, which won the American Book Award for Best Paperback, and The Uncertain Places, which won the Mythopoeic Award. She has also won the Sidewise Award for her short story “Paradise Is a Walled Garden.” Her stories have appeared in Ms., Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and The Year’s Best Fantasy, among other places, and her novels and short stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.

Q&A With Robert Reed

Check our interview with Robert Reed, an author who is no stranger to our pages. Here we discuss his writing history, his relationship with Asimov’s, and how he came up with the title of his latest story, “What>We>Will>Never>Be,” which you can read in our [July/August issue, on sale now!]

Asimov’s Editor: How did the title for this piece come to you?
Robert Reed: “Excavations” was my working title. The story existed for years as an empty folder on my Google Docs cloud—one of those maybe-projects that the author wants to get to eventually, but not today. The general idea was that an alien gentleman lived alone inside an unusual apartment. I didn’t know why he was alone or what made his home valuable, but one of the Great Ship’s rulers wanted to acquire that property for themself. And that ruler happened to be an !eech, which is why this could be a compelling tale.
The Great Ship is the linchpin of my professional life. Marrow and The Well of Stars are two novels about the world-sized starship, written more than two decades ago and both still in print. The Well ends with the !eech taking control of the mangled Ship, and “Excavations” was to occur hundreds or thousands of years later. I didn’t yet know how much later, and for that matter, I had no idea what an !eech was or what they might want with a harum-scarum’s abode.
Infinite sagas are exactly that. Boundless. The Great Ship will never be fully explored, and the multitudes living onboard will largely remain unnamed and unappreciated. But I did eventually figure out the !eech, at least well enough to write about them. In early 2022, I began three Great Ship novellas, each attempting to cover events just before and a little while after the !eech takeover. “Excavations” was the title for the first two drafts, and while a lot of work remained—most of the plot and action sequences weren’t obvious to me—the two habitats had very respectable names. “What>We>Will>Never>Be” was a typographical nightmare to produce on command. But it so perfectly fits the mood that I was trying for, familiar words bracketed what might be greater-than signs. Though I suspect that a more thorough translation would be more elaborate and beautiful than what weak little English can manage.

Twenty thousand word stories are probably my strong suit. Which helps and hurts. It helps because I can solve my writing problems without having to pound together a string of 100,000 word books. But it hurts because there were never many novella markets when I was starting in this business, and the situation has only gotten more dire. I’ve sold two of the novellas that I wrote last year. One way or another, the third story will be published, if in a slightly smaller form. But I’m well aware that when I do make a sale, a younger author loses their place in the table of contents.

AE: What is your history with Asimov’s?
RR: I have a long, enjoyable relationship with the magazine. More than thirty years, which includes several Hugo nominations and one Hugo win—for a novella, of course. “A Billion Eves.”

AE: What other projects are you currently working on?
RR: I consider myself semi-retired. Yet most mornings are spent working on something. For instance, last week and next week, and maybe until the end June, 2023, I’m building a series of collections to put up on Kindle. The first volume will be called The Esteemed and Strange Love. “The Esteemed” is another Reed novella first published in Asimov’s. It’s wrapped around a Ted Talk that I’ll never give, the 15 minutes where I name and define the five grave threats to civilization on the Earth, and perhaps to intelligence across the universe. The Strange Love portion will contain R. Reed stories about nukes running amok and other civilization-ending wars. Winter Dies is global warming. Polishing the Seed are my gene-engineering tales. Uncannies refers to the “uncanny valley” phrase that I keep seeing on the Web. You know, about AIs. And finally, two volumes about ETs that are with us and removed from us. About Us and On the Brink of That Bright New World.
By my count, I’ll republish around 700,000 words in five epub editions.
Which is probably not even one-fifth of my lifetime output.

“What>We>Will>Never>Be” was a typographical nightmare to produce on command. But it so perfectly fits the mood that I was trying for, familiar words bracketed what might be greater-than signs. Though I suspect that a more thorough translation would be more elaborate and beautiful than what weak little English can manage.

AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming authors?”
RR: First: “Up-and-coming” is a cliche, and it’s also a warning. All these years, and I feel like an “up-and-coming” writer. I’m always trying to prove myself, if only to myself. When I can’t do this anymore, I will retire, and the world will likely be a better place for my refusal to string words together.
Second, on the topic of stringing words together. Let’s mention large language models. Which aren’t AIs, but that doesn’t keep them from being profound and unsettling. Their sudden appearance in the public mind is one more proof that we live inside a science fiction universe. But this is a shared universe populated with many up-and-coming authors, each genius wanting to raise the stakes with every new work. Nukes. Climate change. Pandemics and UABs. Who knows what comes next? I sure don’t. But I have strong doubts that writing will survive long in its current form. I halfway expect Amazon to eventually fire all of its human authors, including me, employing large language models that have read and mastered the millions of works already available on the Kindle platform. This won’t happen tomorrow. Probably not. But eventually, there will be meetings with coffee and doughnuts, and teams will be assembled to plan this kind of apocalypse.
And my third attempt at advice: I was a youngster in my twenties, and I hadn’t sold shit. Writing meant a typewriter and ribbons, and in the earliest days, carbon paper to make your only copy. My brother came to visit, and I showed him what I was doing with my evenings. On a board covered with hexagons, I was the Wehrmacht invading the Soviet Union, and I was the Siberian reinforcements defending Moscow from the Nazis. Both at once, and it was great fun.
My brother, who was never shy about offering advice, suggested that I stop playing games and spend more time writing. But that’s a deeply mistaken attitude common to nonwriters. I was in the throes of something huge, imagining two great forces clashing on an epic landscape. In that case, it was the Germans and the Russians. How do they move, how do they survive? And my main goal? I wanted to find the best possible outcome, which was both sides being exhausted and useless, allowing room for something a little better to come into the world.

Robert Reed is a prolific, Hugo Award-winning science fiction author whose work appears regularly in Asimov’s and F&SF. He is from Nebraska and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology.