Classic Military Science Fiction Books by Veterans

Calling all sci-fi enthusiasts to the bridge!

Military science fiction has been a staple of the genre since the inception of science fiction. Intergalactic wars, space robots, lasers—the whole nine yards. But, sometimes military sci-fi can get a bit fanciful, and feels less science, more fiction.

In this article, we’ll discuss four military science fiction books by veterans, and how their real-life experiences influenced their writing.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon)
The Healer’s War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
The Mercenary by Jerry Eugene Pournelle

The Forever War by Joe Halderman

The Forever War is a science fiction novel written by American writer Joe Haldeman, published in 1974. The book is about a group of human soldiers battling against an alien civilization known as the Taurans.

The book won the Nebula Award in 1975 and the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1976.

Joe Haldeman is well-known for several best-selling science fiction novels, such as The Hemingway Hoax (1990) and Forever Peace (1997), and of course, The Forever War.

He was born in Oklahoma on July 9th, 1943. He is currently married to Gay Haldeman.

Halderman was drafted into the US Army during the Vietnam War. Many of his experiences overseas influenced his writing, and after the war he went on to get an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa.

Halderman has been the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) twice and is currently an adjunct professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon)

Up the Walls of the World is a science fiction novel written by American writer and feminist Alice Sheldon, who goes by the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., published in 1978.

The book explores telepathy and other psychic phenomena in the face of an alien invasion from the planet Tyree.

Up the Walls of the World was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1979. However, the nomination was withdrawn by the author.

Alice Sheldon was born in Chicago in May, 1915, and passed away in May, 1987. She was married to William Davey in 1934, got divorced from him in 1941, and then married Huntington D. Sheldon, with whom she had three children.

In 1942, Alice joined the US Air Force as an intelligence officer, analysing aerial photographs of enemy territory. After WWII, she joined the CIA for a time before furthering her education at American Unioversity and George Washington University.

Over the course of her career, she won a Hugo Award, a Jupiter Award, and a Nebula Award thanks to her eclectic novels and short story collections.

Post of Interest: 5 Sci-Fi Novels from the Asian Diaspora

The Healer’s War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

The Healer’s War is a science fiction novel written by American writer Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, published in 1988.

The book narrates the story of Lieutenant Kitty McCulley, an inexperienced young nurse trying to help horrendously damaged Vietnamese soldiers and civilians while battling on her own against overt racism amongst her colleagues.

Elizabeth Scarborough was born in Kansas in March, 1947. Her best-selling novel The Healer’s War earned her a Nebula Award in 1989.

Elizabeth worked as an RN in the US Army for five years and served in Vietnam during the eponymous war. Many of her experiences during the war are reflected in The Healer’s War.

Today, she is an active novelist, having published over 45 original novels and many more short stories.

She now publishes the bulk of her independent work through Gypsy Shadow Publishers.

The Mercenary by Jerry Eugene Pournelle

The Mercenary is a science fiction novel written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, published in 1972.

The book is a part of a larger series, Falkenberg’s Legion. The series follows John Christain Falkenberg as he assembles force to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. The novel was nominated for the Hugo Award but did not get it.

Jerry Pournelle was born in Louisiana in 1933, and passed away in 2017. Pournelle never won a Hugo Award, stating that “money will get you through times of no Hugos, but Hugos won’t get you through times of no money”.

Pournelle served in the US Army during the Korean War, and later went on to get a Ph.D. in political science. Pournelle married Roberta Jane Isdell and had five children, who have also written science fiction in collaboration with their father.

He wrote numerous publications that later on were used by the US Military and Air Force Academies and the Native and Air War Colleges. He also served a term as SFWA president.

While these classic military science fiction books just scratch the surface of the genre, they are a pretty good starting place. What military sci-fi books do you like? Let us know in the comments below.

Supernatural Sherlock: Connie Willis’ Inside Job

Inside Job by Connie Willis was published in 2006 by Subterranean Press, and won the Hugo for Best Novella in the same year.

The novella focuses on a pair of professional debunkers who produce the magazine The Jaundiced Eye. The main character, Rob, is the editor of the magazine, and Kildy, his partner, is a disillusioned movie star with a penchant for skepticism.

They are working on a case surrounding psychic channeler Aurianna, only to discover that she has been channeling the spirit of H.L. Mencken, perhaps one of the biggest critics of psychics and creationists to have ever lived.

There’s a lot of back and forth about truth, skepticism, and what makes something ‘real’. Overall, the novella was a lot of fun to read, and it really shows how Connie Willis leverages her craft to great effect.

Connie Willis, Rule Breaker

The biggest strength of this novella is the creation of suspense. I am really quite intrigued how much I liked reading this book, considering almost the entire story occurred within the one-room office of The Jaundiced Eye.

In the beginning, Rob and Kildy go to Aurianna’s seminar, and at the very end, they go to another seminar, but for the 75 pages in between, they are firmly rooted in the microcosm of the office.

Now, this goes against what I was taught about writing scenes; parallelism is alright, and is sometimes necessary, like in the instance of the first and last seminar. But repeating scenes is not advised because it lulls the reader into a sense of familiarity, and could become boring or too stagnant.

Willis follows this pattern, where Rob is just ruminating in his office and then Kildy comes in with some new information, and then Aurianna storms in to accuse them of something. This scene happens at least three times.

But it doesn’t become boring, which is surprising. That’s because Willis employs a specific kind of writing style to make each scene different, and her creative dialogue whisks away any sense of repetition or boredom.

Connie Willis, Master of Dialogue

A lot of the book is constructed of dialogue, a back and forth between Rob and Kildy as they puzzle out the mystery or debate how they’ll go about questioning Aurianna.

To make the conversations more interesting, Willis utilizes Rob’s wellspring of psychic knowledge and history as a debunker to compliment the dialogue, and even, the narrative summary.

For example, on page 60, “‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of Randall Mars’s Lincoln and his ‘Four-score and seven….'” which draws on a previous comment from Rob, but just adds another layer of contextuality to the novella, creating an immersive effect.

The variation of the dialogue, interspersed with high context references, makes the story more interesting.

As the tale progresses, there are more references and information that relies on previous conversations.

This, I think, is a critical part of writing a mystery. As the story moves forward, the writer should be able to expect the reader to keep up with the contextuality of the narrative, thus allowing for a more complex ending than a beginning.

Post of Interest: Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

Coming Full Circle

Another subtle thing that I appreciated about Willis’ writing were the little hints she would drop early on that would come to completion in the end, making the reader recall their origin with nostalgia.

For example, within the first few pages, Rob mentions Charles Fred, another hack psychic he is trying to debunk. Then, at one point in the middle of the story, he mentions how he’d much rather be working on the Charles Fred case instead of spending time on a “third-rate channeler” like Aurianna.

Yet, as the story reaches completion, we see how Rob wrong in that little detail. So, there was a mini-completion of separate story arc in addition to the completion of the main story arc, which I appreciated.

In Conclusion

Inside Job was the first story I read by Connie Willis, but it definitely makes me want to keep reading her work. She takes the paranormal investigator genre, which is highly saturated, and creates something that stays within the confines of the genre, but is also wholly original.

I feel like she took a lot of inspiration from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, where Holmes and Watson spend a lot of their time sitting in their armchairs at Baker Street. Those stories were never boring, but they lacked the high-octane action and violence that has become a large part of the paranormal investigator genre.

Overall, I give Inside Job a 9/10. It’s short, to the point, and full of character. I can see why it won a Hugo!

The Importance of Music in Afrofuturist Literature

Continuing our series on science fiction genres, this week we’re talking about Afrofuturism.

What is afrofuturism? Afrofuturist literature spans across numerous genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and alternate history, to name a few. It often pairs technology with cultural elements from the African diaspora. Popular authors within the movement include Colson Whitehead, Nnedi Okorafor, and Samuel R. Delany.

Afrofuturism is one of the few genres that full transcends boundaries of form, working its way into film, music, and other visual arts.

Speaking of music, one of the most prominent themes of Afrofuturist literature is the incorporation of music as a central, binding element. It appears in literature as a callback to a cultural past, and as a glimpse into the future.

Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany

One of Samuel R. Delany’s earlier works of science fiction, Empire Star presents the journey of a young agricultural worker, Jo, as he crosses the galaxy to deliver a message. Along the way, Jo begins to refine his “simplex” mind into what Delany calls a “multiplex being,” which is essentially being able to operate on an intellectual level where one answers the question before it is asked, essentially a heightened form of analytical and literary thought.

Delany experiments with point of view and chronology, ultimately revealing that the whole story was a progression of an ever-expanding timeline. He grapples with the remnants of slavery, both physically and intellectually, and brushes on the harsh powers of colonialism that keep people of color down using economics and education as leverage.

And yet, atop all of this heavy, thematic commentary, Delany still manages to show that music is a critical element in this world.

empire star by samuel r delany — The first edition cover of Empire Star, 1966,
image from Wikipedia

Early on, one of the characters that Jo encounters takes him to see the Lll, which are the slaves of the empire, builders of beautiful buildings. As a shuttle-bum, Jo’s job is to play music and soothe these creatures, who emanate powerful sadness that makes Jo cry.

Jo is told that playing the music will make the Lll happy, but he will not feel any better. And, to elaborate upon his point if he was not clear, Delany shows us later in the story, when another character tells Jo that “singing is the most important thing there is”.

For Delany, it is clear that music plays an important role in the preservation of culture and its ability to uplift spirits holds a special place in his writing. The Lll, the oppressed builders, are analogous to plantation slaves in the American south who sang spirituals and cultural songs to keep their hopes up and help cope with their situation. Even in a multiplex future, music is still used as a powerful cultural tool, and Delany incorporates it to indicate its transcendence through our past, our present, and our future.

The Afrofuturist Music of Jimi Hendrix & Kid Cudi

In 1967, Jimi Hendrix released “Purple Haze,” the song that took him to fame. He was inspired by years of reading science fiction and an UFO that he saw as a kid. The song was originally about the “history of the wars on Neptune” and was well over a thousand words long. For Hendrix, writing songs was his way of contributing to the science-fiction community and recognizing his Afrofuturism, and inspiring future artists.

Since the times of Jimi Hendrix, Mothership Connection, and Planet Rock, Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force, Afrofuturism has persisted in music. In 2014, Kid Cudi released his Satellite Flight album, which is based heavily upon ideas of living on the moon and space travel while also retaining the social activism that Kid Cudi puts in all his music.

Cudi presents the idea that space is a place away from earthly restrictions, saying that he wants to take his “vibe” to a place where “there aren’t any roads” and where the haters “can’t follow.” In this way, space is an escape and a new horizon, a sentiment expressed across numerous Afrofuturist texts.

Rhythm Travel by Amiri Baraka

This story is a good one to conclude with, as it seems to pull together many of the threads that have been developing in this discussion of Afrofuturist literature and music. Written by Amiri Baraka in 1996, “Rhythm Travel” is a conversation between two characters, one of which is describing a method of time traveling based on music.

At one point in the story, the rhythm scientist, we shall call him, materializes in front of the other character, using certain rhythms to become “dis visible”.

Now, the idea of dis visibility is different than invisibility, and the scientist even makes a point of referencing Invisible Man and its author, Ralph Ellison. In this context, dis visibility is the ability to remove oneself from unwanted attention, to disappear and reappear at will, whereas invisibility, as Ellison might describe it, is to be unseen at all points, whether wanted or unwanted.

But what is it that allows the rhythm scientist to be dis visible? Music, of course.

This piece illustrates that intense power that music has for the black community, where it helps them avoid the oppression of the system and skirt the imbalance of power. Music here demonstrates a deep historical connection to survival, and has embodied that in the work of the rhythm scientist.

In Conclusion

From novels to rap, we’ve seen Afrofuturist literature at play with music in various ways. As an expression of desire to be understood and removed from an overly-critical environment, and as a deep-seeded cultural heritage used as a means of protection.

Music’s power as an element of change and vocal expression is a large part of the Afrofuturism movement, and there are hundreds of examples beyond these, so I encourage you to go out and find them, make the connection between literature and music, and find the many-faceted meanings of that connection.

Post of Interest: A Post-Impressionist Look at Classic Sci-Fi Films

5 Habitable Exoplanets That Could Replace Earth

Now, maybe you’ve probably heard, and read, a lot of crazy stories and theories involving aliens, extraterrestrials, and possible life outside planet Earth. But the biggest catch is: it is possible. And we have some exoplanets to prove that!

But what exactly makes an exoplanet habitable? According to NASA, a planet can be considered habitable if it has what it takes to sustain life for a period of time. Like drinkable water sources, atmosphere that allows unaided breathing, and climates that don’t reach extreme temperatures.

The planet usually resides in what’s called the habitable zone; not too close to their host star as to make the planet’s surface unbearably hot, and not too far away from the host star to freeze the planet.

Now that you know the requirements to classify habitable exoplanets, we have gathered a list of some of them that might become the next Earth.

Check them out:

Proxima Centauri b
Ross 128 b
Tau Ceti f
Wolf 1061 c
Teegarden’s Star b

Proxima Centauri b

Proxima Centauri b orbits around the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the Sun and part of a triple star system).

The exoplanet was discovered in August 2016 by using the radial velocity method, where periodic Doppler shifts of the parent star’s spectral lines suggest an orbiting object.

The Proxima Centauri (the habitable zone where it orbits around), with the correct planetary conditions and atmospheric properties, may present the existence of liquid water on the surface of the planet, which makes the Proxima Centauri b exoplanet habitable.

In 1935, Murray Leinster’s short story “Proxima Centauri” puts human travelers into the Proxima Centauri system. The story received mixed reviews, but caught the eye of Isaac Asimov, who talks about it in the anthology Before the Golden Age.

Plus, Stephen Baxter predicted the existence of Proxima b three years before it was actually discovered with his book, Proxima!

Ross 128 b

Ross 128 b is an earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the inner habitable zone of the red dwarf Ross 128.

It was found using a decade’s worth of radial velocity data from the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS spectrograph (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Ross 128 b’s orbital patterns haven’t been completely confirmed, but it tends to stay within its habitable zone. However, if it has an Earth-like atmosphere, the planet could distribute the energy received from the star around the planet to allow more areas to potentially hold liquid water.

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Tau Ceti f

Tau Ceti f is a super-Earth or mini-Neptune orbiting Tau Ceti.

This exoplanet was discovered in 2012 by statistical analyses of the star’s variations in radial velocity, based on data received by HIRES, APPS, and HARPS.

In October 2020, Tau Ceti f was confirmed to be the most potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star.

The exoplanet has an estimated equilibrium temperature of only 190 Kelvin. But with a thicker atmosphere and a larger ocean, the temperature could be similar to Earth’s.

The Tau Ceti system has fascinated science fiction writers for decades, as it has been a part of literature by Arthur Clarke, Dan Simmons, Lois McMaster Bujold, and most recently, Andy Weir with Project Hail Mary.

Wolf 1061 c

Orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Wolf 1061 in the constellation Ophiuchus, Wolf 1061 c is the fifth-closest known potentially habitable zone, classified as a super-Earth.

Since it is so close to its star and possibly tidally locked, the results show that on one side, it is permanently facing the star and the other side permanently facing away.

This could mean the existence of an extreme variations of temperatures, but the terminator line that separates the illuminated side and the dark side could potentially be habitable, as the temperature there could be suitable for liquid water to exist.

A larger portion of the exoplanet could also be habitable if it has a thick enough atmosphere to facilitate heat transfer away from the side facing the star.

wolf 1061 habitable exoplanet — Wolf 1061,
image from Wikipedia

Teegarden’s Star b

An exoplanet discovered in July 2019 by a peer-review article in Astronomy & Astrophysics published by Mathias Zechmeister and more than 150 other scientists.

This peer-review was published as a part of the CARMENES survey, supporting the existence of two candidate exoplanets orbiting Teegarden’s Star.

The radial velocity method detected possible habitable exoplanets due to the Teegarden Star’s alignment and faintness. After three years of observation, two periodic radial velocity signals emerged from Teegarden’s Star b at 4.91 days.

It orbits around the habitable zone of its host star, indicating the possibility of existing stable liquid water on the surface, thanks to its atmospheric composition.

The host star’s composition also bodes well for the exoplanet’s habitability. Most red dwarfs emit powerful flares, which can strip off other planets’ atmospheres and cause them to be uninhabitable. However, Teegarden’s Star is relatively quiet and inactive, making Tegarden’s Star b a good candidate for human life.

New Habitable Exoplanets Everyday!

In July 2020, an article at the Science Daily News reported a study from the University of Arizona that pinpointed the existence of methane in plumes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, measured by the Cassini spacecraft on Saturn’s icy moon.

This could be a sign of possible life on the moon since the information received by Cassini is compatible with the characteristics of a habitable environment.

So there might be a potentially hospitable exoplanet closer than we think!

If you liked this article, I highly suggest you check out Nasa’s Exoplanet Exploration website. It has a lot of cool facts and an expansive exoplanet catalog.

Timequake, Vonnegut’s Classic, Literary, Autobiographical Sci-Fi Drama

Kurt Vonnegut is arguably one of the greatest American writers of our time. He’s been described as the Mark Twain of the 20^th century, and his fiction pairs intense satire with thoughtful philosophic musings.

My first run-in with Kurt Vonnegut was his science-fiction short story Harrison Bergeron, published in 1961. Coincidentally, I read it as part of an assignment for an advanced English class in middle school, which for anyone who has read the story, knows the importance of the education system to the plot.

From that first reading of Vonnegut, my perception of him has been that he was a classic sci-fi writer. Not a harmful assumption, in my opinion.

But, in the eyes of the literary world, Vonnegut’s delving to science fiction was an act that would forever set him apart from the larger American literary scene.

I only learned all this – and that Vonnegut teeters on the edge of the classic sci-fi author cliff—very recently. My roommate gifted me Timequake during the exodus from our college dorms in the midst of the pandemic.

“You’ll like it,” he said, “It had a big influence on my personal philosophy.”

Timequake, Vonnegut, and Science Fiction

Before we delve into the nitty gritty of Timequake, I’d first like to take a moment to think about what makes science fiction, well, science fiction.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you already have a good understanding of the genre, its conventions, tropes, etc. But have you ever thought about what the acceptable level of fiction is to merit calling something science fiction?

For example, The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey very much embodies science fiction. Space fleets, civilization on Mars, wormholes, undiscovered planets—the list goes on. Or Yokohoma Station SF by Yuba Isukari, where a sentient train station consumes Japan.

But what about books where a single element of our world is altered, and in some cases, you can’t distinguish if you’re reading a literary classic or science fiction?

In the case of Timequake, Vonnegut institutes a blip in reality, a “rerun” for the span of ten years where everyone has to relive the past ten years of their life over again, fully conscious.

Sometimes, Vonnegut will go chapters without mentioning the rerun, instead focusing on autobiographical elements or reciting anecdotes about things he found humorous or curious. It’s in these stretches that you realize perhaps the science fiction element isn’t that important.

As a writer, I was taught that if the speculative element of a story can be removed without changing the story, then there’s a problem.

However, in Timequake, the rerun isn’t a pinnacle of the story. Sure, a lot of the anecdotes and stories Vonnegut recounts might lose a bit of their luster without the rerun to act as the foil, but at the end of the day, there’s still meaning in those stories.

I guess the question I’m getting at here is this: What makes something ‘more’ or ‘less’ science fiction than anything else?

Is The Expanse more science fiction than Timequake? And why?

Kurt Vonnegut’s Sci-Fi and Kilgore Trout

While doing some research, I came across an interesting article about Vonnegut’s relationship with science fiction.

And I think it helps us answer the previous question of ‘more’ or ‘less’ sci-fi.

Vonnegut was often considered to be a science fiction writer, and quietly shunned by the literary world for breaking away from the mainstream realism that dominated bestseller lists.

In his essay about science fiction, Vonnegut talks about being classified in the science fiction drawer of the filing cabinet, saying “I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”

In Timequake, Vonnegut voices some of these feelings through Kilgore Trout, his fictitious sci-fi author.

Trout is one of Vonnegut’s pinnacle characters, wrought with wit and tragedy. As a writer, Trout is largely unsuccessful by conventional terms. His stories are often ignored, thrown away, or unfinished.

However, in Timequake, the security guard, Dudley Prince, finds one of Trout’s stories in a trashcan, and think’s it’s a great work of art. So, when the rerun is over, and Trout inspires members of New York City with his “You’ve been sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do” spiel, Prince is one of the first to join his ranks.

Trout seems an awful lot like Vonnegut himself: shunned for science fiction, yet still inspiration enough for at least one person.

Ryan Britt, who has read far more Vonnegut than I have, said in a column for Tor.com that “Vonnegut doesn’t want to do any world-building, or have you marvel at any technology, or really ask you to meditate on a cool science fiction idea for very long. He wants to cut right to the human drama, and if he needs flying saucers to do it, he will.”

And that sentiment put into words the feeling that had been tugging at me since I finished reading Timequake.

I think Vonnegut’s writing is just as much science fiction as The Expanse, or Ray Bradbury, or any other big classic sci-fi author. The intent of Vonnegut’s science fiction is different—he’s using it as a foil, as a means to an end, whereas a hardcore sci-fi writer lives and breathes by the science, the technology.

If reading Timequake taught me anything, it’s that the definition of genre is perhaps more harmful than it is helpful. At the end of the day, who cares whether Timequake was just as much science fiction as any other piece of literature. Does it really matter? Let me know in the comments what you think.

Upcoming Sci-Fi Shows We’re Excited For

During the last COVID-19 lockdown, I spent a lot of time binging Seinfeld. Not everyone’s cup of tea, and I agree by the end of it I was ready for some good, speculative television.

But, as I scrolled through Netflix and Hulu, I really didn’t find anything that piqued my interest.

However, there are a lot of upcoming sci-fi shows (and fantasy ones, too) that have me pretty excited. Let’s check them out:

The Wheel of Time (2021)

The Wheel of Time is an upcoming fantasy TV show from Sony Pictures and Amazon Prime Video, based on the book series by Robert Jordan.

The Wheel of Time is probably going to be the next Game of Thrones, but with more magic. The series follows Rand al’Thor, a young farmboy who discovers he’s the mystical hero from ancient lore, the Dragon. There’s intrigue, danger, magical-objects-that-people-shouldn’t-be-touching, and sassy bards with colorful cloaks.

If you love Lord of the Rings, this show is for you.

The show has already been approved for a second season, and we can expect the premiere on Amazon Prime Video sometime before the end of the year.

The Sandman (TBA)

Neil Gaiman is no stranger to television and movie deals. His work is all over the silver screen, including American Gods, Good Omens, Stardust, and now, Anasi Boys, having found a home at Amazon.

But, talks about producing his Sandman comic book series have largely gone unnoticed until now. Warner Bros. and Netflix signed a deal to start producing The Sandman as a television series, to stream on Netflix.

The show follows along with the comic book series (published from 1989-1996), exploring the world of sleep and dreams. Tom Sturridge has been cast as Dream, the main character, and many other notable names make up the supporting cast, including Stephen Fry, David Thewlis, Patton Oswald, and Gwendoline Christie.

As of now, The Sandman does not have a set air date.

The Book of Boba Fett (December 2021)

The Mandalorian really swept Star Wars fans, new and old, off their feet. It was funny, thrilling, immersive, and everything Star Wars was meant to be.

Plus, it re-introduced Boba Fett, the famous bounty hunter. He’s now getting his own spin-off show, which will premiere on Disney+ in December 2021.

The Book of Boba Fett is a part of a collection of Star Wars shows, including The Mandalorian, Ashoka, and Rangers of the New Republic, which will all be interconnected.

Not much has been released about the show, but it’s clear that Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen will both be reprising their roles as Boba Fett and Fennec Shand.

Image from starwars.com

Foundation (September, 2021)

The Foundation series (published from 1943-1993) by Isaac Asimov were wildly popular and influential to the science fiction genre, and now the series is finally coming to the big screen.

Apple TV acquired the rights to the series in 2018, and production began from there. The showrunner, David Goyer, said that his vision is to show the world o f Foundation in 80 episodes—80 hours of film. Whether his dream will become a reality, it’s too soon to say.

But, if a star cast and an Expanse-esque trailer mean anything, Foundation is likely to be very interesting, in the slightest.

The show is set to premiere in September 2021 on Apple TV.

Cowboy Bepop (2021)

You may be familiar with the popular space-bounty-hunter anime from 1997, Cowboy Bepop. The show has become a cult classic for anime and science fiction fans alike. In the show, a ragtag team of bounty hunters travel the galaxy tracking down criminals.

In 2017, it was announced that Netflix would be producing a live-action version of Cowboy Bepop, and it’s recently been slated for a fall 2021 release.

So far, there hasn’t been a trailer for the show, but the producers have released a behind the scenes teaser featuring one of the main characters, the corgi, Ein.

As new details about these upcoming sci-fi shows become available, we’ll be sure to keep you updated! In the mean time, check out some of our other blog content!

The Cloak & the Fox: The Green Knight Movie Review

I’m a big fan of Arthurian fantasy books and movies. I’ve been fascinated with the genre ever since I was a kid. But now that I’m older, my interest has shifted from the big sword-fights and knights on horseback to the intricacies of storytelling, and how current writers are bending the genre.

Arthurian legend is such a rich bank of subject matter, because a lot of the stories already vary in how they’re told. Some people take Le Mort d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory as gospel, and others are fans of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.

I even took a stab at bending the genre with my story “Esclados the Red,” which follows a little-mentioned knight on his journey of self-discovery and acceptance with his sexuality. It was a fun story to write, and I was exhilarated to be writing in such a large—and loved—genre.

The Green Knight movie doesn’t go quite as far to bend the genre, but it certainly provides a fresh take on the centuries-old story of Sir Gawain.

The Green Knight Movie

The Green Knight film was released in theaters on July 30^th, 2021. The film was written and directed by David Lowery, whose other work includes movies like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and The Old Man & the Gun.

The Green Knight stars Dev Patel as Gawain, and is based on the 14^th-century chivalric romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is by far one of the most popular stories in the Arthurian universe, and Lowery’s film was quite faithful to the source material in terms of plot.

But the movie really shines when it comes to the visual elements.

The Big Orange Cloak

Visually, the movie is stunning. I’ll give it that.

It alternates between very dark scenes inside foggy forests and dim castle halls, to bright yellow and green forests. The contrast is astounding, and the coloring was certainly something Lowery emphasized.

Speaking of color and contrast, the best example of this is Gawain’s big orange-ish cloak. Even when Gawain is trekking across dark landscapes, his orange cloak still sticks out, providing a pop of color to on otherwise drab scene.

Dev Patel as Gawain
Photo from The Los Angeles Times

There’s one scene in particular that really struck me as the pinnacle of cinematography.

Gawain jumps into a pool of water by moonlight, and at first the greenish water slowly fades to darkness. Then, out of nowhere, a flash of crimson light illuminates the pool, with Gawain floating in the water. It’s marvelously executed.

The Fox

Arthurian fantasy books and movies have the potential to get quite grim, but The Green Knight is able to maintain a balance between moments of despair and fun adventure.

For the first part of Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel, he treks alone through the medieval landscape. He crosses bloody fields and haunted forests, giving the film a dark, brooding vibe.

But, at a certain point, a red fox becomes Gawain’s traveling companion. Together, they continue to traverse the grim landscape, but now, the feeling is less of doom and more of adventure.

The cute fox adds an element of mystery to Gawain’s journey, but it also lightens the mood. I’m all for protagonists with animal companions, and this fits the bill.

The Green Knight Movie Review Score

Overall, I really enjoyed The Green Knight. It was fairly faithful to the source material while taking enough liberty to put a new spin on an old story.

Visually, the film was a work of art. The detail that went into color choice and lighting is clearly noticeable.

And the way the film is segmented into titled sections was a really neat idea, and it felt like a visual novel with distinct chapters, moreso than a single film.

I only had two gripes with The Green Knight.

First off, the pacing was a bit slow. The build up for the first hour was almost laborious, but the filmography was able to keep my interest until the story progressed into the really meaty sections.

Second, I was mildly confused at points. Flashforwards melded too-seamlessly with the present timeline, leaving me scratching my head for a few minutes before everything snapped back to reality. This really only matters at the end of the film, and it’s not even that big of a deal, just something that confused me a little.

All said and done, I give The Green Knight an 8/10. A solid rendition of the classic story, and hopefully the first in a new wave of Arthurian fantasy books and movies.

If you liked this review, check out some of our other reviews!

Yokohoma Station SF by Yuba Isukari

Movie Review: Oxygen

The Last Airbender is our Dream, Legend of Korra is our Reality

The time-honored question: Avatar: The Last Airbender vs. Legend of Korra.

Those who instantly shout, “The Last Airbender!” are our stalwart defenders, but the Korra fans are our realists, our breath of fresh air.

The Last Airbender is our childhood, and that’s fine because the show is good. It is witty, fun, it has character. But in some ways, it is unrealistic, and fits into nostalgia almost too well.

Legend of Korra is radically different. We can argue for days about worldbuilding or comedy or animation, but I feel there are three fundamental reasons why LoK was the show we needed.

It uses the Avatar structure to explore:

Relationships
Friend group dynamics
Motivated, realistic villains

(Spoilers for all seasons of The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra).

Love in Avatar Korra’s World

Relationships can be tough, awkward, unbearably cute, or [insert adjective here]. In TLA, Aang and Katara beat back and forth for the entirety of the show, ultimately ending up as each other’s soul mates. That’s a good love story, right? As viewers, it’s nice to have the hero succeed romantically, but is it really satisfying?

Mako and Korra have a rocky relationship from day one, but gradually they grow to love one another, they fight, they break up, it gets sticky, etc. Doesn’t that reflect near perfectly what many of us go through? And isn’t it more emotionally satisfying to watch Korra’s romantic journey, for her to ultimately end up with someone better for her after her hardship?

LoK does what TLA does not, and it broaches friendship after a failed relationship, or even a failed relationship in general (Sokka and Yue are one example, but they didn’t fail because of fundamental character differences, they failed because Yue had to fulfill her duty.)

In this way, LoK is a more vivid representation of the real-world experience, and a valuable teaching tool for young viewers about the expectations for relationships.

Maintaining Friendships Through Hardship

Arguably one of the best things about TLA is the road tripping, the Team Avatar bonding time (my favorite is when they go to the play on Ember Island).

While fun to watch, is the Aang Gang really how most friendships work? Many have argued that one of LoK’s faults is that Team Avatar isn’t as connected as it was in Aang’s time, but I think that this is one of the best things about Korra.

It demonstrates that friendships are work, and that people can drift apart. One of the most sentimental moments occurs in season two when Bolin admits to Asami that he feels like Team Avatar is falling apart, that everyone is doing their own thing.

Even though the characters lead their own lives apart from the team—Bolin the movie star, Asami and her company, and Mako the cop—they ultimately make time for one another in the broad scheme of things and defeat the villains together. It is almost like reassembling a D&D group for another jaunt, and it feels more realistic than the extended sleepover that is the Aang Gang.

Post of Interest: A Post-Impressionist Look at Popular Sci-Fi Films

Motivated, Relatable Villains

Okay, this is the part where everyone yells about how great a villain Azula was, and I will admit, she is a pretty iconic baddie. Her blind ambition and wickedness make her formidable, but what is she fighting for?

She’s obviously attempting to reconcile her childhood and please her father like she wasn’t able to please her mother, but for the most part she follows the Firelord’s desires for world domination.

Ultimately, that is what the series is about, fighting back against a rising imperialist regime. The most interesting villains are interspersed throughout the series, like Hama, the bloodbender seeking revenge, or the sly bureaucrats of Ba Sing Se. But their screen time is limited and when they disappear, the impending doom of annihilation returns.

LoK is a bit more realistic, and the villains are infinitely more relatable. Amon is radical, but he simply wants equal rights for non-benders, the minority in Avatar Land. Taking peoples’ bending away was cruel, but we understood why he did it.

Season two was pretty weak as a whole, and Unalaq lapsed back into the annihilation trope. And Zaheer was a little more radical than Amon, but we could clearly understand his goal, and in all honesty, he just wanted equality too, but approached it from a socio-political angle.

Kuvira is by far the most intriguing villain LoK has to offer, because we saw her start off fighting the Red Lotus and defying anarchy, and we witnessed her grow to want peace and prosperity for her people, even if she had to forcibly unite the Earth Kingdom.

Kuvira’s harsh rhetoric at the beginning of Season 4

She has motives, but she fell prey to power, like many leaders or politicians do. While what Kuvira did in pursuit of her Empire was wrong—the reeducation centers, destroying local cultures, and attacking Republic City—I was saddened to see her get arrested.

Her course for a United Empire echoed the imperialism of Ozai’s Fire Nation, but at least we understood why she was doing it. She was more antihero than villain, and she reminded me of Zuko from the original series, a Zuko who took a more radical stance. Perhaps if Kuvira had an Uncle Iroh she might have been able to join Team Avatar too.

In Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong, I love the The Last Airbender. It was a large part of my childhood; I remember there were days when I was a kid where I’d sit around with my brother watching the show on DVD, playing the Avatar trading card game.

But, as an adult, I find that Legend of Korra makes you think, it’s more complex, and the characters are more developed.

No matter on which side of The Last Airbender vs. Legend of Korra argument you might fall, it’s clear there’s something for everyone to enjoy in both shows, be it the simple nostalgia of Aang’s crew, or the sometimes-awkward dynamic of Korra and her friends.

If you liked this review, check out some of our other reviews on the Signals From the Edge Blog!

Movie Review: Oxygen

Book Review: Yokohama Station SF by Yuba Isukari

Galaxy’s Edge Interviews Seanan McGuire

In the July 2021 issue of Galaxy’s Edge, Jean Marie Ward interviews Seanan McGuire. They discuss all manner of things, including writing, publishing, feminism, and much more!

Check out the full interview below, and if you like this content, consider subscribing to Galaxy’s Edge, where we bring you the best speculative fiction from writers new and old, as well as thoughtful interviews and book reviews.

About Jean Marie Ward

Jean Marie Ward writes fiction, nonfiction and everything in between. Her first novel, With Nine You get Vanyr (written with the late Teri Smith), finaled in both the science fiction/fantasy and humor categories of the 2008 Indie Awards. She has published stories in Asimov’s and many anthologies and provided an in-depth look into an award-wining artist, with her book Illumina: The Art of J.P. Targete. Her second nonfiction title, Fantasy Art Templates, marries the superb illustrations of artist Rafi Adrian Zulkarnain with pithy descriptions of over one hundred fifty creatures and characters from science fiction, fantasy, folklore and myth. A former assistant producer of the local access cable TV program Mystery Readers Corner, Ms. Ward edited the respected webzine Crescent Blues for eight years, and co-edited Unconventional Fantasy, a six-volume collection of fiction, non-fiction and art celebrating the fortieth anniversary of World Fantasy Con. She has also contributed interviews and articles for diverse publications before starting interviewing for Galaxy’s Edge magazine. Her website is JeanMarieWard.com.

FOLKLORE, PLAGUES, AND ANGLERFISH

What are award-winning, SFF writers made of? In the case of Seanan McGuire—author of the October Daye, InCryptid, Wayward Children series and more under her own name, as well as the science fiction horror novels of her alter ego Mira Grant and the children’s fantasy she writes as A. Deborah Baker—the answer encompasses music, art, anglerfish and 3 a.m. fanfiction attacks. Strange as the recipe may seem, you can’t argue with the results. To date, McGuire’s honors include the 2010 John W. Campbell Award (now the Astounding Award) for Best New Writer, the 2013 Nebula Award for Best Novella, five Hugo Awards, a record-breaking five Hugo nominations in a single year, and five consecutive Hugo nominations for Best Series—to say nothing of the seven Pegasus Awards she’s won for her filking. Eager to learn more, Galaxy’s Edge sat down with the California native a few days before the release of her latest novel, Angel of the Overpass, to talk about her earliest days as a writer, her fascination with microbial marvels, and expanding the notion of personhood on the page.

Galaxy’s Edge: When did you first realize you wanted to become a writer?

Seanan McGuire: When I found out it was an option. I was a very weird child. I was credulous in some ways that sound fake to me now, even though I remember the experience, and disbelieving in other odd ways. It made perfect sense to me that lunch boxes would grow on trees, which happens in The Wizard of Oz. And if there are lunchbox trees, why wouldn’t there be book trees? I had never met an author. I had never met anyone who said they were an author. I just figured that books happened. Being a storyteller felt like too much of a responsibility for any one person. It didn’t make sense, given the breadth of stories I could experience if I went looking, that anyone would do that.

At the time, one of my favorite shows was an anthology series on the USA Network called Ray Bradbury Presents. Every episode began with this white-haired dude sitting at a typewriter pounding away. Then there’d be a ding, and he would pull a sheet of paper out of the typewriter and throw it into the air. It fluttered down and formed part of the logo.

One day I asked my grandmother, “Who the heck is that? Why is this old dude taking up like a whole minute of what could be story?”

She said, “That’s Ray Bradbury. He wrote all these stories.”

That was my bolt of lightning moment. Wait, one person made all this up? This is all fake, and one person sat down and thought of it, and that was okay? That was allowed? I pretty much decided on the spot that that’s what I was going to do.

Galaxy’s Edge: How did you get from there to your first published stories?

Seanan McGuire: A lot of fan fiction. So much fan fiction. Shortly after the Ray Bradbury Presents incident, my mother brought me this gigantic manual typewriter from a yard sale. It cost five dollars, and it disrupted her sleep for years. It weighed more than I did. I would sit down, feed my paper in, and pound away for hours. I was seven. Seven-year-olds don’t sleep like humans They’re people, but they aren’t humans yet. The idea that 3 a.m. is not a good time to start working on a giant manual typewriter that sounds like gunfire does not occur to their tiny seven-year-old brains. And since the typewriter was so big compared to how big I was, I couldn’t just type, I had to assault the keyboard. I hunt and peck at approximately two hundred forty words per minute…

Because I was writing for hours at night, I would write stories about my cats or what I did that weekend or—and this is key—about having adventures with my friends, the My Little Ponies in Dream Valley. I had no idea that a self-insert was a bad thing. I was seven. I had no idea that saying I would be good at everything the ponies needed me to be good at was being a Mary Sue. Again, I was seven. I did this for years.

The thing about writing is the more you do it, the better you’ll get. You can get good at some really bad habits. But putting words in a line, forming sentences, building sentences into a paragraph, building enough paragraphs onto a page to have a page? That’s a muscle. That’s something that you learn by doing. I turned out reams and reams and reams of not goodness, but it taught me how to put together a page.

Then I got to high school and discovered real fanfic, where you write in a universe. [Fanfic] had these weird unspoken rules, like the Mary Sue Litmus Test, and what was and was not appropriate to do. One of the first pieces of advice I was given was never write a character who looks like you, even if they’re canonical, because everyone will assume that the blonde girl writing about Veronica Mars or Emma Frost is really writing about herself, and that’s not okay. At some point, every dude I know writes about himself having magical adventures in a magical D&D land and getting all the hot elf babes. But if a blonde woman writes a blonde character or a Black woman writes a Black character or anything superficially similar to their appearance, it doesn’t matter how integral that character is to the story, it’s proof they’re sticking themselves in the story, and that’s bad. I disagree with this, in case you can’t tell.

Galaxy’s Edge: What about the little blonde girl in the InCryptid series?

Seanan McGuire: I ultimately got around the problem by making everything fanfic. Verity is basically Chelsie Hightower from So You Think You Can Dance. The InCryptid series was a response to my PA saying, “Please, write something that gets us invited to go backstage on So You Think You Can Dance.”

But in the beginning I just wrote a lot of fanfic. The more fanfic I wrote, the better I got at things like plot and structure and actually writing a 20,000-word, a 50,000-word, a 100,000-word story that wouldn’t bore my readers. Eventually I started writing original fiction, which pretty much went nowhere. I would write it, I would be happy with it, and then I would revise it, because when no one’s publishing you, masturbatory revision takes 90 percent of your time.

One day, my friend Tara, who knew me from the fanfic community, said an agent friend of hers was branching out and starting her own boutique agency. And because [the agent] was from the fanfic community, she was looking for fanfic authors with an interest in their own original fiction. I sent her a copy of Rosemary and Rue. She sent me back a list of suggested revisions. I did one more revision, and she signed me. Then everything went nuts.

Galaxy’s Edge: Because you had something else in the pipe—something that became the Newsflesh series.

Seanan McGuire: The thing about writing very fast is I write very fast. When we took Rosemary and Rue to DAW, I had already finished [the] first three books in the October Daye series (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night). I also had a rough and not-so-great draft of Book Four, Late Eclipses, but I had time to revise and beat it into a shape. I also had Feed, my biotechnical science-fiction thriller. We took Feed to Orbit.

With DAW, we were very fortunate in that a good friend of mine was also a DAW author and able to give me the nepotism referral to her editor. She wasn’t inappropriate about it. She just said, “This is my friend, Seanan. She wrote a really good book. I think you’ll like it. Let me introduce you.”

At Orbit, we went through a more normal submissions process. We wound up with DongWon Song, who’s now an agent but at the time was an Orbit editor. They were the perfect editor for that series. I miss working with them.

Galaxy’s Edge: You mentioned in another interview that you took the “dragon major” in college: a double major in folklore and herpetology. How did that play into your writing and your day job?

Seanan McGuire: I’ve never had a day job that used either parts of my degree. I think that anything we do or are interested in will play into our writing. We can’t help it. It’s part of why I get kind of angry on a personal level at authors who say that fanfic is bad and you can’t do fanfic ever. Well, okay, I’m gonna go over your work and find every element that you took from Shakespeare. How dare you write fanfic? I’m gonna find every element you took from Austen or from Poe. Or from fairy tales, from the Brothers Grimm, from Disney.

Humans are magpies. We do not thrive on original thought. That’s not how we’re constructed. If you have one truly original thought in your entire lifetime, you’re about average. You’re doing well. We want to think of ourselves as these incredible original innovators of everything, but that’s not how monomyths work. It’s not how human psychology works. Everything’s a remix.

Because I studied both the so-called soft science of folklore and the hard science of herpetology, I have, to a certain degree, the flexibility of thought arising from two very different disciplines. It doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else. It just means that I have been trained to look at things from those multiple angles. There are still ways of thought that are completely alien to me. I have no experience or background in any kind of physical handiwork. I don’t know how to fix a car. If you hand me a hammer and a nail, the odds are good that what I’ll hand you back is a trip to the ER, because I have just broken my hand. There are patterns and ways of thought that I can’t wrap my head around. But having that initial flexibility made it easier for me to switch gears as I got older.

You can see the dichotomy in the two sides of my work. When I write as Seanan, I tend to write very monomythical, very inspired by folklore, very poetic. One of my favorite copy editors says, when you copy edit my work for flow and for tone, you need to remain aware of the fact that I have never written a book in my life. What I write is 300-page poems. That’s not inaccurate. The way I build sentences, the way I phrase things and manage the rising action very much reflects the fact I was a folklore major who studied oral histories for a long time. Within a single book, there will usually be one or two phrases that I hit very often. It’s not because don’t I think my readers are clever; it’s how I assemble a narrative.

When I write as Mira Grant, [the stories] are very biological. I started out wanting her to be a horror author. It turns out she’s not, because I am so much less interested in the screaming than I am in the scalpel. I want my science to make sense, and I want my biology to make sense. That’s what makes me happy.

Galaxy’s Edge: Even when dealing with mermaids?

Seanan McGuire: Even when dealing with mermaids. The mermaids [of Into the Drowning Deep] were actually a direct attack on DongWon. When they were my editor, I would threaten to write them a book about anglerfish mermaids.

The way anglerfish reproduce is the male anglerfish will be attracted by the smell of the female anglerfish’s pheromones. He thinks she’s so sexy that, when he finally finds her, all he wants to do is eat her. So, he chomps onto her skin. This causes a chemical reaction which melts his skin and fuses him with the female. Her body will gradually absorb his until all that’s left is his scrotum.

The female now has a pair of testicles sticking out of her, and she can control when sperm is released. One female anglerfish can have hundreds of sets of testes stuck to her from men that she has effectively eaten. In terms of size, the male anglerfish is about one and a half to two inches long. The female anglerfish is the size of an alligator snapping turtle. It’s one of the biggest cases of sexual dimorphism in the vertebrate world…. The biology of my mermaids was preset by that horror.

Galaxy’s Edge: You didn’t work in herpetology, but I understand your former day job used a lot of your science background, which contributed to Feed and your all-too-plausible zombie apocalypse.

Seanan McGuire: Yep. I am a prophetic genius. The entirety of COVID-19 has been an exciting game of people telling me: “You were right about everything two years ago.” Yes, I was. Thank you. There you go.

Galaxy’s Edge: Are there more such prophecies in our future? Should we be shivering in our boots?

Seanan McGuire: Right now, I am not doing anything super pathological, in part because I lost a lot of optimism in the current pandemic.

People ask me all the time, “What do you feel like you got wrong? What would you do differently?” The answer is I had too much hope. Part of that is Feed was written and published before the real rise of Facebook, before the rise of microblogging, [at a time] when if you wanted a blog, you still had to set up a blog and usually wrote longer-form things. Readers could get an idea of who you were, your likes, your dislikes, your prejudices. You weren’t just delivering speedy sound bites of hatred and vitriol.

I like the flexibility and speed of Facebook and Twitter in terms of things like coordinating disaster response. But what we’ve seen is we’re not doing as much as we could, because we’ve all learned to hate each other in this time of super-fast microblogging, botnets and trolls.

There was a point, early in the current situation, where I posted a thread on Twitter (which is my primary habitat most of the time) about ways to protect yourself from con crud and the seasonal flu. There is a tweet in that thread which can be seen as equating coronavirus with airborne diseases.

At the time, the official position was that the disease we’re dealing with now was not in fact airborne, even though anyone who had ever worked with any coronavirus anywhere was saying, “No, it’s probably airborne. If you don’t think it’s airborne, you’re probably wrong.” The science said, “Probably airborne,” but the official public information said, “Not.”

So, I posted this tweet. It’s in the middle of a relatively innocuous thread. Hey, wash your hands, drink lots of water, sleep. I know that you don’t feel like those last two have anything to do with your health at a convention, but they genuinely do. The more well hydrated you are, the less likely you are to pick up most common crud. That sort of thing. For three days I got barraged by trolls screaming at me for being so irresponsible as to imply that this could be an airborne disease. They weren’t real people. None of them had existed on Twitter prior to a month previous. They weren’t there to engage in conversation. They were there to yell at me. That’s because it’s so easy to set up a word finder, something that triggers off a keyword and unleashes this tide of hating on people who say things you don’t like.

My pandemic response [in Feed] was founded on the idea that the news would lie to us (which we saw will happen), and that in the absence of the news, citizen scientists and citizen reporters would rise as a source of credible information. Instead, what we saw is people will rise to sell you miracle cures made from mercury and tell you that your children have COVID because they were given a vaccination twenty years ago, even though your children are eleven. It’s just bad.

I am not currently working on any diseases because part of what I enjoy about writing pandemic fiction, why it makes me happy to be Mira Grant, is that diseases fascinate me. I find them really interesting—the mechanisms by which they work, the things that we know they can do to us, the things that we’re still finding out they can do to us. They’re amazing. They’re so simple. They’re not living things. They’re basically malware. They’re just these little instruction bundles that plug into your body and go haywire.

It is easier for me not to be afraid of them if I understand them and am writing about them and having a good time. It feels a little mean to have a good time with diseases right now. The way I have always coped with the horrible diseases I created was by going, “No-no. Once enough people started dying, we would care. Once enough people were at risk, we would care.” But what I’ve seen is that far too many of the people in positions of power wouldn’t.

Galaxy’s Edge: There are those who say, if this world fails us, we should write the world we want to live in. What would that world look like for you?

Seanan McGuire: The way I would like the world to be is incredibly overly optimistic. I don’t think we’re going to get there in my lifetime. We have enough food that no one needs to be hungry. We have enough resources that no one needs to be homeless, no one needs to be sick. We have enough of everything that no one actually needs to feel like they don’t have enough. But there is a point at which anything stops being the thing itself and becomes counting coup. There are people with so much money, they could be spending money every minute of every single day of their lives and not come even remotely close to running out of money. And what do they do? Do they rent Disney World for a month? No. Do they set up a zoo full of tigers in their basement? No. They make more money because they have seen how much they are willing to exploit the world, and they want to make sure there’s no one in a position to exploit them.

I want a world where rich people pay their fair share, where everybody gets safe housing, food, clean water, medical care. Where the color of your skin is not treated as any kind of judgment on your personal character. Where the fact that people love who they’re gonna love is not treated as some kind of judgment on their character. It’s so idealistic. Every step forward is amazing, but we have the potential, as a species, to be so much better. Sometimes we aren’t because it would be inconvenient to be better right now. Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to, or it would be hard or “How can I feel like I am better than you if you have as much as me?”

Galaxy’s Edge: As opposed to seeing equality as a valid goal.

Seanan McGuire: We’ve been unequal for so incredibly long that equality really does feel like oppression to a lot of people who have been on the top of the inequality pyramid.

Galaxy’s Edge: Your fiction celebrates diversity and inclusivity. Is this your way of making the world you write shinier, or is it something that just happens?

Seanan McGuire: A little bit of both. But mostly it’s that anything that is 100 percent straight, white, and able-bodied is unrealistic unless you want to set up a bunch of oppressive structures I have no interest in writing.

The world is not a monoculture. Humanity has never been a monoculture. [A lot of stories] treat humanity like a monoculture where any setting you want to use is just pretty stage-dressing and any character you want to design needs a reason to be something other than what we jokingly refer to as the “Six-fecta”: straight, white, vaguely Christian (but not too Christian; you can’t be too religious) able-bodied, cisgender and male. So many books in our genre still hit all six of those attributes with every main character. The only exceptions are some secondary characters who are women because, otherwise, how do we reward the men for being awesome?

But that’s not the world I live in. I have been a queer, disabled, half-Roma woman for my entire life. I knew I liked girls from the time I was eight. Not in a sexual way but in a “If I’m gonna hold hands with somebody and kiss them” way, I would prefer it be a girl. So I can absolutely say that I was queer when I was eight. I’ve been half Roma since my daddy knocked up my mom in the back of a van, and I’ve been female since I popped out. I’ve done the gender interrogation you’re supposed to do as a cis ally and determined that “girl” is pretty much the label that works for me.

I never had a shot at that Six-fecta if I wanted it. Why would I, as someone who deviates from that “norm” on multiple levels, want to write that norm? I know people who fit it, I love people who fit it. I am not saying there’s anything wrong with them wanting to see characters who look like them. But sometimes I want to see a character who looks like me, and that means a character with multiple overlapping identities all of which inform her daily life.

Sometimes, people I know will tell me they want to see a character that looks like them, and they don’t get to do that very often. Then I will make a genuine effort to include a character that looks like them, because I want them to have that experience. We learn how to human from stories. Like I said before, humans are not built for constant original thought. We learn what a person looks like from the stories people tell us. Sometimes that is learning: “Wait, that’s me. I’m a person.” And sometimes it’s learning: “Wait, that’s Jean Marie. Maybe she’s a person too.”

Culturally, we have done ourselves a huge disservice by telling so many stories for such a long time where the only people who got to be at the center of the story were the ones who fit those six attributes, because only those people get fully acknowledged as people by the monomyth we’re living in. That’s not fair and not okay. The only time I tend to manipulate the diversity in a story is if I realize I need to kill somebody. If a group has little representation, you can kill a much larger percentage of that group by killing one character. If I kill a straight white man in science fiction, I have killed one of ninety million straight white men. If I kill a trans woman in science fiction, I’ve killed one of maybe twelve. That’s a very different statement, whether or not I intend to be making it.

So, if someone is in the line of fire and I cannot move them, I will stop, look at what I’m doing, and ask myself: How big a deal is this character to the group they represent? How big a deal would it be if I were reading this book and that character looked like me? Would I have seen me before? That’s not tokenism. I don’t give plot armor to these characters. They can still die. It’s a matter of am I taking away someone’s emotional support character?

Galaxy’s Edge: You have explored just about every subgenre in speculative fiction. Is there any particular kind of story or genre that you would really like to write but haven’t had the chance?

Seanan McGuire: I have an intense, bordering on the ridiculous, fondness for mid-Nineties chick lit, the sub-genre where The Princess Diaries, The Boy Next Door, and Bridget Jones’s Diary live. I’m waiting for the nostalgia wave to whip those back around. I’ve written several. I’m pretty good at it, but there’s no market for them right now. So they sit and occasionally get revised, when I have time, to make sure that they stay up to my current standards. And they go nowhere.

I would also very much like to write a series of cozy mysteries—The Dog Barks at Midnight sort of thing. I have a concept for a fun series of cozy mysteries. But unfortunately, I am told by both my agent and several authors I know who write cozy mysteries, there is no money there. There’s just none.

It’s not that I only write to chase the money, because no one becomes a writer to chase the money. That is the worst decision you could possibly make. Don’t do that, children. Or adults. Or unspeakable cosmic entities. Don’t become a writer because you want to get paid. You will not get paid. But there is a difference between writing something I am truly passionate about, cannot stop myself from writing, that I already know I’m good at, and not getting paid; and writing books in a genre I find charming but not completely compelling, kind-of-wanna-try-my-hand-at but will not get paid. One is a reasonable self-limiting decision. The other is just not bright.

I’d also like to write a truly horrific horror novel that has no science fiction elements. Just horror. I wanna do horror for the sake of horror. I wanna get my Clive Barker on. I wanna get my Kathe Koja on. I can’t. Every time I try, I get distracted by the possibility of science.

Galaxy’s Edge: That’s tragic. Science is death to horror.

Seanan McGuire: Yeah, I love horror so much, and I’m so bad at it.

Galaxy’s Edge: Any closing thoughts?

Seanan McGuire: We are recording this on April 29, 2021. I have a book coming out on May 4 called Angel of the Overpass. It’s the third book in my Ghost Roads series, which is InCryptid-adjacent, published by DAW Books. I won’t say it’s the last, but it is likely to be the final entry in Rose Marshall’s story for a while. So I’m very excited about that.

Over on my Twitter, I just finished a complete review of the October Daye books, because they are nominated for a Best Series Hugo this year. Having grown up in fandom, I tend to be very careful and a little aloof when talking about the Hugos. I remember being told by my foster mother when I was a teenager that it’s gauche to say you want to win. But I really want to win this year.

I feel that the Best Series category was created for urban fantasy. I know it wasn’t created just for urban fantasy, but urban fantasy plays best at series length. It is a story that needs that room to grow and breathe and really be considered as a whole, not just as the sum of its parts. I would desperately like for the first true urban fantasy—just urban fantasy, not urban science fiction, not urban horror, but urban fantasy—Hugo to go to a female or female-identifying author. It’s the only science fiction subgenre that is female-dominated and doesn’t have the word “romance” somewhere in the description. Romance is great. I love romance. I write romance. But female authors get shoved into romance so quickly, whether or not that’s what we want to be doing. Having a subgenre we currently control has always been very very important to me. It feels like a thing we have accomplished as ladies.

So, I would like the first Hugo Award given to a work of pure urban fantasy to be given to a female-identifying author. It doesn’t have to be me. You have many other choices. We are a big and diverse field. But if you’re looking at this year’s ballot, it does have to be me.

Galaxy’s Edge: We’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope the best.

Seanan McGuire: Thank you.

Like our interviews? Read our conversation with qntm, author of There Is No Antimemetics Division!

Check out the interview with qntm!

Building a Dystopian Novel with a Train Station

A few weeks ago, I was at a Barnes & Noble, just looking through their speculative fiction section when I came across Yokohama Station SF by Yuba Isukari. It was a slight, green book with an intriguing cover, and I was surprised I’d never heard of it before.

Naturally, I bought it, and let me tell you, it’s only a bit longer than 200 pages, but it has more depth, tension, and mystery than some books three times its length.

It’s a lighthearted dystopian novel, if you can believe that, and it should definitely be on your 2021 reading list, and here’s why:

Yokohama Station SF is One of the Best Dystopian Novels I’ve Read

The premise for the novel is quite simple. A sentient train station takes advantage of human weakness after Japan is ravaged by the Winter War, and gradually grows to take over the islands of Japan. Life inside the station is regulated by the station’s ‘Internet’-equivalent, SuikaNet, and its robotic enforcers, the turnstiles.

The characters must find a way to stop the ever-growing station from destroying the rest of Japan.

It’s a neat idea, to be honest. The whole conflict is mostly internal for the characters, aside from the occasional row with the turnstiles.

Yuba Isukari pairs a dry narrator voice with a semi-dire plot, and throws in some humor for good measure. All while inside a sprawling, replicating, self-healing, omniscient train station. It’s pretty cool.

However, the structure of the novel is a tad confusing. It jumps a bit back and forth between narratives for long stretches of time, leaving us wondering about the other characters. And the ending only resolves a few of our character’s dilemmas, again leaving us wondering about the other half of the characters, of which there are no mentions.

Perhaps it’s a consequence of translation, or perhaps the story’s meant to jump back and forth. Regardless, I didn’t find the transitions too jarring, and was able to power through a few confusing pages.

dystopian novel cover yokohama station sf

Top-Notch Characters

The main character, Hiroto, is quiet and laid back, resembling an observer more than an active participant in his own life sometimes.

A lot of the things that happen to him throughout the story aren’t of his own doing, and he merely perseveres through everything that’s thrown at him.

He does portray a keen sense of duty, however, which defines him as a character. He ventures into the station to find the leader of the Dodger Alliance, and in the end, to reach Exit 42 and find answers—answers to what, he’s not sure.

The notion that Hiroto just decides to go into the station on a mission he clearly doesn’t understand—or really care about, it seems—just speaks to the kind of character he is. He’s sociable, curious, and compassionate. He’s ‘go with the flow’ until he finds something that piques his interest, then he’s all in.

Hiroto contrasts with another of the main characters, Toshiru, who has an intense dislike for people. Toshiru is Hiroto’s shadow, but with a clearer purpose, and clearer desires. This isn’t to say that Toshiru is a bad person, quite the contrary, he’d just rather spend time with machines than with people.

Plus, there are a couple of quirky AI companions for both Hiroto and Toshiru along the way, and they act as foils for the two character’s most endearing qualities.

Dystopian Setting

The whole sentient train station vibe is pretty cool, and it creates an of air of danger and mystery while reading. Hiroto walks through the halls of the station, literally in the belly of the beast.

However, there are parts in the story where Yuba Isukari’s sparse prose does not lend itself well. I wish there had been more descriptions of the interior of the station, like what the halls looked like, the cities, the people, etc.

A lot of those details are left up to the reader’s imagination, which is fine, I guess, but I’d have liked the author to solidify the world in which we’re immersed.

For all we know, the inside of the station might be clean and white and sterile. Or, it could be dark, dingy, and really embody the dystopian tropes. But I’m not sure what it looks like exactly, aside from a very brief description at the end of the book where the walls are described as “white concrete”.

About the Dystopian Novel

So apparently, Yokohama Station SF was originally a manga published in Japan from 2016 to 2018, called Yokohama-eki Fable, or Yokohama Station Fable. I learned this after researching the book when I’d finished reading it.

The manga started as a popular web comic by the author, who was trying to wind down from work with a creative outlet.

The novel that I read was translated by Stephen Paul, published by Yen Press in March 2021, and marketed to English readers. The manga has yet to be translated into English.

Regardless of the history of the novel, it stands as a great addition to dystopian sci-fi. It’s short, quirky nature makes it stand out from the ranks of grim, brooding dystopian novels double its size.

If you’re looking for a short, fascinating read, I give Yokohama Station SF an 8/10.