Galaxy’s Edge Interviews Martha Wells

Martha Wells has become a household name, especially among the science fiction and fantasy community. Her books have explored fantastical worlds and the far-flung futures of our own world. She’s won multiple awards for her work, particularly the Murderbot Diaries. Books in the Murderbot Diaries have won Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards!

Jean Marie Ward sat down with Martha Wells to talk about her writing process, fandom, and much more!

If you’d like to read this interview in print, check Issue 56 of Galaxy’s Edge Magazine.

Galaxy’s Edge: You said that you were always a reader. When did you realize you wanted to become a writer?

Martha Wells: Really early on. I remember telling my parents when I was in high school that I wanted to be a writer and them not having much reaction to it. At the time, I think I wanted to major in journalism when I went to the university, because that was the only way I could conceive of being a writer at that point. I didn’t know how you went about being a fiction writer. That’s not something I figured out until I went to Texas A&M and took a writing workshop with Steven Gould and started going to conventions and learning about how you actually do become a fiction writer.

Galaxy’s Edge: You just mentioned conventions, which is a great lead into my next question: What role did fandom and fan fiction play in your journey to publication?

Martha Wells: A huge, huge role, because the reason I picked Texas A&M University was they had a student science fiction and fantasy group. I’m not sure I knew at that point that they also ran conventions. I’d actually been to ArmadilloCon in Austin when I was in high school. I somehow convinced my parents to take me and a friend down there to go to this convention—ArmadilloCon—on Saturday. This was back when it was teeny tiny—the dealer’s room was basically the size of a hotel room. And that really made me want to continue to see conventions.

Also, the friendship and the people I met working on the student convention, AggieCon, were hugely important to me. I’d been reading fanfic for a while. I think I discovered it probably around 1983, I think … no, it was 1980 when Empire Strikes Back came out. So, I’d been reading fanfic for a while already and trying to write … I was first starting to write when I was in high school and college. I worked on fanfic and met a lot of people in fandom through that too. It was hugely important for me.

Galaxy’s Edge: And you ran AggieCon at least one year.

Martha Wells: Yeah, I worked on it for the whole four years I was in college and the last year I [chaired it]. I believe it was 1986. It’s been so long.

Galaxy’s Edge: That’s what it said in Wikipedia.

Martha Wells: Yeah, I was running the convention. And it was great. It was a huge learning experience. It was exhausting and incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing. But later on, you’re like, Yeah, that was really great.

Galaxy’s Edge: I would imagine it gave you an interesting perspective on conventions and the business of conventions from a writer’s standpoint.

Martha Wells: I think it did. It also let me meet a lot of writers and hear a lot about publishing and a lot of discussions about the technical and creative aspects of writing and how everything worked. That was really important.

Galaxy’s Edge: What influence did your college major, anthropology, have on your first novel, The Element of Fire, and subsequent works?

Martha Wells: I think it’s had an influence on a lot of my work because of the worldbuilding. Being able to look at how cultures develop over time and the things that go wrong, and looking at the material culture of a city or a civilization and trying to take a holistic approach to worldbuilding and all the things that you have to know—even if you don’t put them on the page—about how your city works, your culture works, all those things, that was hugely helpful to me.

Galaxy’s Edge: I imagine, especially when you’re dealing with non-human characters such as those in The Books of the Raksura, that knowing how the pieces fit, sociologically speaking, would be a great help.

Martha Wells: Yeah, and the kind of things the people would have when you’re dealing with an alien character. What kind of culture would create that character? What does that mean? What’s important to them? What kind of material goods would they have? What does where they live look like? What kind of environment would this be happening in? All that kind of stuff.

Galaxy’s Edge: You have incredible worldbuilding in all your series, whether it be Ile-Rien’s early industrial culture, the worlds of the Raksura, and of course, the Murderbot Diaries. Is anthropology the secret to that, or is there something else?

Martha Wells: I think it’s your character point of view, and really thinking, trying basically to run their software on your hardware, and trying to really see things through their eyes and what is important to them, what do they want to do, how has their world shaped them. I think that’s the key.

Galaxy’s Edge: You’ve mentioned in various interviews that you’re not athletic, yet you create these very complex and brutal fight scenes. In The Murderbot Diaries you literally have multiple points of view in a single character’s head, because Murderbot is pulling in all of these feeds from drones, from artificial intelligences, anything that it can, in real time. So, the reader sees the action from a lot of viewpoints, and they’re all very, very intense. How do you as somebody who has, essentially, one point of view, deal with that? How do you deal with being a relatively peaceable woman who doesn’t go out and commit mayhem, whether in a dojo or in real life? How do you create these battle scenes?

Martha Wells: Well, I watch a lot of TV and movies, and I pay a lot of attention to fight scenes. Actually, when I was younger, I did take tae kwon do, and I did fencing for a little bit. It’s not something I can do anymore, though I try to exercise. When we’re not in a pandemic, I can actually go to the gym and things like that. But again, it’s the character point of view, getting the physicality of the character in your head and what they can and can’t do. Also, the parameters of the fight as you have set them for yourself, like a sword fight or a knife fight. A fistfight is so very different from a fight where the characters are actually armed with some kind of weapon, especially a single-shot weapon or an automatic weapon. Or like Murderbot when it can bring in all these different views of the scene and can use all these different ways to attack whoever is attacking it.

So yeah, just keeping all that straight and, again, really getting into the [character’s] point of view and thinking about that. That’s one of the reasons Murderbot often takes a long time to write. Having to do those multiple viewpoints is really complicated and often takes a long time to put together. Just the logistics of the stories are very different from any other kind of logistics for the other things I’ve written. Even though I mostly write adventure fiction, Murderbot is just so much more complicated in what happens, even though it might not feel that way to the reader. And yeah, watching a lot of TV and movies and watching people … watching fight scenes for years and years, and looking at what people do, and what it’s possible to do. That’s another fun thing about Murderbot: you can have the character do a lot of things that’s not possible for a human to do or even an alien character to do. That’s basically it.

Galaxy’s Edge: And Murderbot can take a lot of damage that an entirely organic being cannot do and remain itself. Speaking of Murderbot and its abilities, you worked in software development for a while. What role did your professional experience in software development play in the creation of The Murderbot Diaries and the development of Murderbot’s personality, abilities, and outlook?

Martha Wells: It played a big role because that was my primary experience with IT when I worked there. A lot of people think that I must know a lot about artificial intelligence. I don’t know anything about real AI. What I know about is the fake AI I invent for my books. But the way Murderbot often solves problems, answers questions, and solves mysteries is usually by manipulating data, which is one of the things I did when I worked for … well, I don’t want to name them. But when I worked in IT. I built databases and wrote programs—in COBOL, that’s how long ago it was—for databases for user interfaces, basically. So Murderbot uses that a lot to solve problems, and that’s the viewpoint I try to look at it from. I think that’s one reason why people think the character feels realistic as a machine intelligence, because it does look at things in terms of: What is the data we have? How can it be manipulated to give us answers?

Galaxy’s Edge: Murderbot and a lot of your characters are outliers and odd persons out. What draws you to characters who are isolated or find themselves in this position?

Martha Wells: I was a really isolated little kid. I probably have some still undiagnosed issues that back then people just didn’t understand or have any concept of. It made me live in my head a lot. I have a sister who’s nine years older than me, so there was usually nobody around my age. Where we lived there were no other kids on our street. There were some nearby, but the way the traffic was and where we lived and everything, it’s not like I could go out and play with kids every day like a lot of people were able to in other neighborhoods. So just feeling very different, always feeling very different and isolated, is just something that I’m still dealing with all my life. I guess you just get it kind of imprinted on your consciousness early, and it’s not something that never leaves you.

Galaxy’s Edge: It’s something we can all relate to. At some point, I don’t care how extroverted you are, you will be alone and say to yourself, What do I do now? Where am I? Who am I? And how do I fit in? How can this square object fit into these round holes that everybody else is fitting in?

Martha Wells: Pretty much so.

Galaxy’s Edge: While we’re still, more or less, on the subject of Murderbot, is there anything that you want people to take away from the series? What do you want them to know about it?

Martha Wells: One of the things I noticed people get wrong a lot—and I think that’s because it gets reprinted in reviews and things—is that Murderbot did not have consciousness before it hacked its governor module somehow. And it’s like no, all the SecUnits are conscious. I was trying to make that clear in Network Effect. They’re all conscious, all the time. It’s just that they’re enslaved. They’re mentally enslaved, and there’s not much they can do that we know without activating the governor module and getting killed, basically. And it is slavery. I’ve also seen reviews try to argue that somehow the humans are nice to them, and it’s not slavery. It’s like no, it absolutely is. It’s intentional. That’s what it is.

Galaxy’s Edge: It’s rather like that line from The Twelve Chairs, My master, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov. He was a Marshal of the nobility. I loved him. He hardly ever beat us.

Martha Wells: Yeah. Also in Thor: Ragnarok, the prisoners with jobs.

Galaxy’s Edge: That notion seems to be really hard for some people to understand for some reason. Personally, I cannot imagine how you can lack consciousness and still hack your governor module. To me, the question was a non-issue. Since the SecUnits were, for want of a better term, conscious entities, it was obvious this was some kind enslavement.

Martha Wells: It’s a mental gymnastics that people do and it’s just … I don’t know why people don’t want to admit that human beings enslave other human beings and would continue to do that if allowed to. I don’t know why they’re willfully blind on that point. Looking at history, or current affairs, or anything would seem to, you know, get [that point] through to them. But no.

Galaxy’s Edge: You just won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Best Series. This is just one little cluster in the many, many awards you’ve been nominated for or won throughout your career in science fiction and fantasy. How important are awards for the career of a writer in science fiction, fantasy, or any genre?

Martha Wells: Actually, before Murderbot, I’d only been nominated for a Nebula Award. That was for The Death of the Necromancer, and you know, I didn’t win.

Galaxy’s Edge: You were nominated for the Compton Crook and Crawford Awards for The Element of Fire.

Martha Wells: Yeah, I guess I should say I’ve only been nominated for one major award. I did get nominations of some other minor ones, but only a few really. Before Murderbot, I was pretty much off the radar as far as awards were concerned, which is fine. I never thought I would even have a chance at being on the Hugo ballot, let alone revel in the Hugo long list, let alone, you know, win them. I think it’s kind of hard to say how much impact they have. They do have, I think, a big impact within the genres in how people see you.

I think the impact of the Hugo Awards has changed a lot in the past ten years or so, since more people started to get supporting memberships so they could nominate, and we started having a more diverse ballot that better reflected what people were actually reading and what people were considering was the cutting edge of science fiction and fantasy. So, I think it’s had more impact since then.

I think there is what’s known—especially for the novels—as a bump in sales from just being on something like the Hugo ballot or the Nebula ballot. For me, the biggest impact was validation of 25 years or however many years of work to get to this point. It was a validation of the fact that I didn’t give up when it would have been really easy and probably smart to, at certain points, just go get a different job. So, it was hugely important to me personally, and I think it’s made a big change in how I’m treated just in fandom and the genre.

There are some exceptions, but usually women my age who are still trying to be working writers are not treated very well, either at conventions or in general in the genre, because we’re fading out and so need to not clutter up the landscape by still existing and still writing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens after this. I haven’t seen much …. Because of the pandemic, of course, everything’s just slowed down. So, we’re not gathering at conventions and events and things like that.

But, yeah, most of the impact has been personal, I would think. You kind of can’t measure other ways. The publisher can probably answer a lot more accurately about [the effect on] sales and things like that.

Galaxy’s Edge: Increased sales are good, and validation and recognition are also good. Speaking of good things, in 2021 you signed a six-book contract with Tor, which will include at least three more entries in The Murderbot Diaries. The first announced title in the contract is a second-world fantasy called Witch King. Can you tell us anything about Witch King, and what’s next for Murderbot?

Martha Wells: It is a completely new secondary world fantasy, kind of epic in scope. It’s my take on epic worldbuilding, and I was trying to do something different with it. Hopefully, people will like it. It’s going to come out in 2023. It was originally intended for this year, but it’s gotten pushed back because of everything that was going on. The book was actually finished late last year, but I’m working on the revision right now. Hopefully, everybody will enjoy it.

Galaxy’s Edge: I’m looking forward to it. Human characters or non-human characters?

Martha Wells: A mix of both. Again, it’s a different world from anything I’ve done before, with a mix of kind of humans and magical humans, like demons and other different types. It should be a lot of fun.

Galaxy’s Edge: Cool! Finally, the soapbox question, is there anything you’d like to add? Anything you want to talk about?

Martha Wells: Probably Murderbot, because I am doing another Murderbot novel. I’m writing one right now. I see a lot of people asking about it. It’s about halfway finished. It’s due in the summer, so I should have it done by then. After this novel, there’ll be at least one more novella and a novel, but I’m not sure what order they’re in. They’re going to take place after Network Effect. And in fact, this novella starts up right not very long after the end of Network Effect.

Galaxy’s Edge: Great! We’re all going to be looking forward to that. Thank you very, very much.

End-Stage Capitalism in Blackfish City

A lot of science fiction novels explore futures where economic and political ideologies reach their breaking point. The speculation is “what comes next?”

Few stories, though, dive as deeply into the intricate workings of the collapse. We’re talking the moment the system no longer works, the turning point.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller, published in 2018, is a perfect example of end-stage capitalism. It follows the progression of dissent among the citizens of Qaanaaq city, and ends with a blowout of a conclusion.

(Spoilers ahead for most of Blackfish City).

The Problems of Qaanaaq

In Blackfish City, the Earth as we know it has severely changed. Most established nations have fallen into chaos, and rising floodwaters have claimed many previously-inhabitable places. The story takes place on Qaanaaq, a floating city in the Artic. The city is powered by a geothermal vent deep under the water, which provides an endless supply of heat, and rotating screens protect the city from harsh winds.

Divided up into eight different Arms, Qaanaaq is a perfect example of class-structure. The poor—refugees, the sick, laborers—are forced to live packed into filthy houseboats or cramped apartments. The rich elite can afford lavish apartments and luxuries like real coffee instead of algae-grown substitutes.

Qaanaaq’s political and municipal systems are a bit murkier. Shareholders and landlords control the vast majority of the city’s workings. They leverage hidden apartments to raise rent and manipulate the poor. Municipal AI systems run the day-to-day of the city, and many consider them impartial governors, but they were built by the shareholders for their own purposes.

Crime syndicates have as much legitimacy as landlords, with some mob bosses being more magnanimous than their “lawful” counterparts.

Overall, Qaanaaq is an example of what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. There aren’t agencies or government officials who oversee landlords or corporations, so profiteering runs rampant, at the expense of the working class.

A Commentary on Capitalism

It’s clear that Miller’s Qaanaaq is a take on capitalist greed, with property politics at the forefront of the conversation. Being a landlord is a very profitable endeavor in our current system, and it’s largely unregulated. Rent rates can rise on a whim, maintenance isn’t overseen by a governing body, and the difference between a roof over your head or homelessness is up to the landlord’s digression.

Soq, one of the main characters in Blackfish City, comes to the realization near the end of the novel that “being a landlord was the biggest racket in town, in every town, in every city, across history.” And that sentiment is the culmination of 300 pages of strife for all the characters, struggling in different capacities against the system.

In the same scene, Soq also pieces together that their mother, a feared crime boss, isn’t that different than the evil shareholder she’s fighting against. While Go—Soq’s mother—might provide stability for wayward refugees and Qaanaaq’s lower class, her drive for more will end up hurting the very people she aims to protect.

Soq poses the question: “How would Go be different from Podlove (the shareholder), from every other rich and powerful player who sucked the blood of the poor, made them pay until they couldn’t pay anymore and then pushed them into the sea to sink? Soq doubted there’d be any difference at all.”

And that is the pinnacle problem that we ourselves are experiencing today. The people we hold in high regard—our government officials, spokespeople, corporate leaders, captains of industry—they’re all easily replaceable, but will their successors be any different?

It’s not a question of morals, personality, or individual willpower, it’s a consequence of money, greed, and power. Money, as Miller tells us, “is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, its programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn’t care if it kills its host.”

Even the most well-intentioned person can turn sour when they get a taste of money and power, and that’s ultimately why Soq kills Go. Not because Go abandoned them at birth and left them to grow up on the streets, but because Soq saw down the line what Go would become. In the critical moment, Soq choose the good of Qaanaaq city over any kind of familial obligation they might have had.

And that violence, as calculated as it was, is not the mark of capitalism. It’s not matricide, or an act for power. It was a move for the benefit of the people.

What Comes Next?

After the final break down of Qaanaaq’s AI infrastructure, Go’s demise, and Podlove’s dethroning, there is a vacuum of power. While Miller doesn’t show us what comes after the end-stage capitalist free-for-all that was Qaanaaq, we get an inkling.

Soq has always dreamed of running things, of being a big shot, and they have a chance now to get a head of the game. They plan on recruiting Go’s people, and positioning themselves in a seat of authority.

I was a bit disappointed in this ending, to be perfectly honest. Soq feels responsible for the outcomes of their actions, sure, but the “play for power” and “claim to the throne” language they use makes it feel like a shadow of Go. Soq killed Go because they saw what she would become, but what will Soq become? How can they be trusted to take control and not become poisoned by the same money and greed that ended Go?

Despite the massive upheaval, it feels like a return to the status quo, which isn’t what I wanted to see at the end of Blackfish City.

But how do you think the story should have ended? Let us know in the comments below!

Signals From The Edge Interview PJ Manney

Our time and place in the cosmos is filled with unprecedented change and technological advancement, that much is for certain. But what else is changing beneath our very eyes?

In this interview with PJ Manney, professional futurist and author of the Philip K. Dick Award nominated Phoenix Horizon trilogy, we discuss the New Mythos and how that seeks to change the way we think about storytelling.

IP: One of the most intriguing things I’ve seen you write and talk about is The New Mythos. Can you explain for our readers what exactly the New Mythos is?

PM: The New Mythos refers to how in various periods throughout human history, we have reassessed our relationship to each other, our community, and whatever governing body we’re in, as well as our relationship with the cosmos. And this often happens at a turn in technology.

So, the first one that I often talk about is the Axial Age, where in the first millennia BCE, there was a huge shift in mythology, religion, and spiritual guidance because we had to learn how to live with each other. We’d been living in nomadic groups, and suddenly we were coming together in cities and we were getting specific jobs.

There were a lot of us that we didn’t know, and we were exceeding what they called Dunbar’s Number. And we had to learn how to live together. The rules that religions gave us were, at that point, quite practical rules of social engagement.

The next period was the Enlightenment, which also included the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Method.

This was a whole new way of how people related to themselves, to each other, to their society, and to how they saw themselves on a planet and in the cosmos. We came up with a bunch of new rules and in the stories we told about them, myths evolved, and those myths are still with us today.

Interestingly, we didn’t necessarily lose the Axial Age myths, they just got laid over with a whole new mythos that applied to the Enlightenment.

What I see in this period is a huge shift of paradigm—a species-changing shift—in our relationship with new technology, chiefly the Internet, who we are, and how we communicate.

I don’t know if people are familiar with the idea of Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere, where we’re creating a global rate of instantaneous communication that has never existed before. And we need new myths for this; we need new stories because the old stories aren’t hacking it.

In fact, the old stories are actually detrimental to our development as individuals, as societies, and as a species.

IP: In what kind of ways are older stories detrimental to our development?

PM: Well, a lot of these stories just aren’t practical anymore or are downright offensive. In old myths, people with power and money were seen as better than everyone else, and that we should just hand over our leadership to them by virtue of their power or money.

That went all the way from religion, through the divine right of kings, through sadly to our present era, with Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

We create our assumptions of who should lead based on things that may not be wisdom. These are not people who are wise; these are just people who have power, and that’s a big difference.

Another example is who gets to speak within a society? In the old societies, it was free white men of adult age.

What we’re discovering is, ironically, some of the greatest information we can get comes from marginalized communities. That’s everybody, from children to elders, from every race, religion, and gender. Inclusivity is an incredibly important value in the future and our old myths never covered that.

IP: How can writers start to think about stories in a new way and apply the idea of the New Mythos to their work?

PM: Well, I’m writing a book on the New Mythos, and I just taught my first class about it the other day at the Rambo Academy. I’ve been working with some really interesting philosophical ideas that can help us to understand the New Mythos. They’re very big and very gnarly, but when you deconstruct them, you start to realize, “well, yeah, that’s actually what our world is really about”.

So instead of thinking of utopias or dystopias–which is an extremely binary and limiting way of considering what kind of society to incorporate into your world building—try to come up with positive futures or a roadmap to what might be a way to live.

I teach about heterotopia, which is Michel Foucault’s idea of society. If utopia means “no place” and dystopia means “bad place,” then heterotopia means “the other place,” or “the different place”. And that’s actually the place where change happens.

Utopia’s induced hope reflects the idea that change is hard, which is why a lot of our dystopias end badly.

In terms of storytelling, a heterotopia is a way to free yourself from that binary thinking of “where I have to put my story” and then put your story someplace else. This allows you the freedom to come up with new ways of thinking.

That’s just one example. I work with everything from Timothy Morton’s ideas of hyperobjects and hyposubjects, to really just helping people deconstruct their assumptions.

That’s the biggest thing. We’re all swimming in the cultures we were raised in, and my goal is to help people deconstruct their assumptions about what a story is.

I also talk about Western story structure and the hero’s journey.

The hero’s journey isn’t really cutting it anymore because it’s all about a circular story that returns to the status quo. The hero might change, but why does society get to stay the same?

Superman goes out and slaps Hitler or stops the asteroid or saves Metropolis. But he comes back and, minus a building or two, has restored Metropolis to its status quo. That’s not cutting it because that’s not reality, and it doesn’t inspire people to make their own change.

I prefer the heroine’s journey. Gail Carriger has a wonderful book and class where she looks at the ancient heroine’s journey, which is really a story of someone being thrown out, gathering their new-found family, working together, and making a better place. This is a far more constructive story to tell and is more applicable in our time.

I encourage people to look at other cultures’ story structures, and learn from them. I don’t want you to appropriate them, but I want you to start breaking down the notion that this three-act structure Hollywood has imposed on us is the way to write a story.

IP: That’s very interesting. As a writer myself, I’ve always kind of struggled with the idea of breaking up the traditional hero’s journey.

So, you mentioned how the Internet and similar technologies are articles of big paradigm shifts. With all of these kinds of things happening in our world right now, like the Metaverse, NFTs, and cryptocurrency that are changing the ideas of finance and art, what’s your broad outlook on the future?

PM: As a futurist I look at multiple scenarios and ask the question “What are the possibilities based on the choices that get made?” Because that’s really what this is all about; it’s about choices. And I think people don’t look far enough down the path of their choices.

It’s very easy to look at something like NFTs and see the good things about them. As a creator myself, I see the desire for creators to get their stuff out there and not have the intermediary of distribution channels. Like, I get that having come from Hollywood and worked in publishing; I get that more than anybody.

There’s also the dark side of NFTs, and we’re already seeing this. It’s really like the Wild West with all the scams, the pump and dump schemes, and all the ways that the naive can be taken advantage of.

Same with the blockchain. The old belief was that the blockchain was immutable, it could not be corrupted. It wouldn’t be worth anyone’s time to try to break the blockchain. And now we know that’s just not true.

I was warning about this in my books and people were like, “you’re so negative,” to which I’d say, “look, here’s the article about it!”

I’m not a techno-pessimist or a techno-optimist; I’m a techno-realist in my science fiction. I see the good and the bad of all of these technologies, where they have very powerful, great ideas behind them, but there are bad actors in the world.

And those bad actors are going to find the loophole, the crack in the façade, and they’re going to exploit it. Exploitation has become something that’s actually being honored in our new society, which I find appalling. There’s a sense that everybody who creates something is the man and everybody who can exploit it, steal it, or hurt other people with it is somehow a good guy.

I think that upside down ethical quandary we found ourselves in is a really good indication of why we needed a New Mythos!

IP: It’s a kind of paradigm shift in itself, isn’t it?

I read somewhere that you actually threw out the draft for your book (CON)SCIENCE after Trump was elected. Can you talk a bit more about your approach to rewriting that book?

PM: I started this series back in the mid-2000s, and it was originally designed as a television series. But it didn’t get any interest from our production company, so I took it back in 2006 or 2007 and said, “you know what? I want to write a novel”, which I’d never done.

The series has always been about the rise of fascism and my fears of authoritarianism in the United States and around the world. I was already seeing signs because I grew up during Reagan and knew what I was looking at. So, none of this was really a surprise to me.

And so, I started writing these books thinking that when I got to (CON)SCIENCE, that I made the same mistake everybody else made: I thought I had four more years. As a futurist, I thought Hillary would get elected, she’d anger a lot of people, and she’d have a one term presidency. Then after that, we’d end up with some kind of authoritarian leader.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.

I was flying on election day and that night when I got home, I opened my phone and saw the news. I just broke down weeping. I was stunned, and I knew I had to throw my out my draft because my book would come out during his term.

This was 2018, and it also coincided with why the New Mythos was created. I was at Northwestcon on a panel called “Science Fiction in the Age of President Trump” with Nisi Shawl, Gordon Van Gelder, and Elsa Sunjenson—just an incredible group of people.

I literally had an actual epiphany while sitting on this panel and I just started speaking in tongues! You know, it just comes through your head and out your mouth. It was this realization that we had to start telling these stories that were fundamentally different than the stories we’ve been telling.

And that’s actually how I rewrote (CON)SCIENCE. I was leading into it with identity and I didn’t even notice that I was destroying the hero’s journey and identity as much as I was. (CON)SCIENCE goes full-on heroine’s journey. So, I have this evolution through the series about the faults or the hero’s journey, and it gets very meta.

Like, they’re talking about narrative in the narrative because it’s also talking about propaganda and how to convince people that what’s going on is bad. I discovered I was going in a whole new direction and realized it wasn’t just me; I was watching this in other writers as well.

The thing about the New Mythos is that I didn’t invent it and I’m not the only one doing it. You’ve got writers like Nisi Shaw, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cat Rambo, and a host of people who are already thinking in these terms and they’re all dancing around the edges of it.

And I just want to bring it together so that it’s not just all of us grappling with it by ourselves in the privacy of our little rooms. We are a group of writers—writing about the future, because that’s what we do—who can grapple with the stories that now need to be told.

IP: That’s awesome. I mean, it’s not awesome that you had to throw out your draft and start over to have this kind of epiphany. But I assume it was like a weight lifted off your shoulders when you had the realization of what you had to do.

PM: Not only was it a weight off my shoulders, it actually spun my goals into a whole new direction.

Because now I don’t only write science fiction, I am professional futurist and consultant, too. I got to talk at the United Nations Association a couple of weeks ago about women in technology, specifically in AI, and I started to bring the New Mythos into that conversation. And they were all like, “yes!”

So, it’s not just about us as writers. It’s about us as human beings in the world, and starting to tell the story of whatever it is we do. But in the context of, again, this diversity, inclusivity, and seeing us in the human story in a new way.

IP: You mentioned that you were teaching a class about the New Mythos. Is there a way that people can enroll for the class?

PM: They can ask Cat Rambo for me to teach it again! Or ask any of the writing groups. I’m friends with the people at Writing the Other, and Clarion West knows who I am. Any place where science fiction and fantasy writers meet, I’m happy to teach there.

If you’re on Facebook, there is a Facebook group about the New Mythos. Because of Facebook’s new rules about groups, you won’t find it by searching for it because it’s private right now. It’s about 350 writers, academics, and other creatives. We’ve got a number of a fine artists, designers and people who work in landscape design. I mean, it’s people in all kinds of fields who are looking at these ideas and thinking, “this really applies to me.”

I’m PJ Manny on Facebook, so if you message me and say, “look, I’m really interest in the New Mythos,” I can add you to the group. It’s a really safe place for a lot of people to discuss stuff that can be very advanced and they’re not excited to make this a public group.

So, if you’re a writer and you really want to learn about this stuff, I’m not the only person teaching it. This entire group has incredible things to say and their own experiences and perspectives. Just ask me.

IP: I’ll definitely shoot you a message because that sounds like a great group!

Well, to wrap it up, is there anything else you’d like the audience at Signals from the Edge to know?

PM: Just keep reading; read my stuff, read everybody’s stuff. I think there’s so much great, new science fiction out there that’s going down a lot of really fresh paths.

With my own work, I kind of played a trick on everybody. In the first book, you think you’re reading a mainstream, political techno-thriller with science fiction elements. But, in fact, I’m taking you by the hand and walking you through to a whole evolution. By the time you get to (CON)SCIENCE, it is so hardcore science fiction, with brains, memory, the death of empires, and politics.

And, I think just be open to new kinds of writing because that’s what’s going to happen with the New Mythos. We’re going to find people taking big chances in their writing, and it would be really nice if the audience was out there to support it.

Thanks to PJ for doing this interview, I learned a lot, and I hope you do too. If you’d like to learn more about PJ’s work in both science fiction and as a futurist, check out her website!

5 SFF Books About Pyromancy

Pyromancy, as it was originally described, is the act of divining the future by looking at flames. Similar to other methods of divination that date back to ancient Greece, like knissomancy (using incense smoke) or osteomancy (using arrangements of bones).

But, in today’s SFF scene, pyromancy often refers to the ability to control fire, and pyromancy appears in countless sword-and-sorcery novels.

We’ve compiled a short list of some of the most prominent books that involve fire magic!

Pyromancer by Don Callander

pyromancer by don callander

While it’s a bit on the nose, Pyromancer is, in fact, about fire magic. As the first book of Callander’s Mancer series, the book follows Douglas Brightglade as he comes to master his abilities over fire. Along his journey, Brightglade makes many friends, animal and human, who help him take on the Ice King.

This story has often been described as simple, with a fairly basic plot of good against evil, but it’s a quick, fun read for anyone that loves old sword and sorcery fiction.

This classic fire vs. ice story was first published in 1992 by Ace, and reprinted again fairly recently. If you’re looking to read this story, I suggest finding an older printing, because the new edition is full of typographical errors.

Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher

beyond redemption micheal r fletcher

While this book sparked some controversy over it’s use of mental health issues as fundaments of magical power, it does feature pyromancy.

In Fletcher’s world, there are two kinds of people: the “normal”, sane people, and the Geisteskranken, which translates to The Insane from German. Within the second group, there are various different people who gain power from their relative insanity. The Hassebrands in particular, are adept at fire magic.

This grimdark SFF book follows a group of murderers as they attempt to capture and kill a young boy Morgen, who they believe will become a new god. This book isn’t for the faint of heart, as Fletcher goes into very dark territory. If you’re looking for some wicked fire magic, this book is for you, but make sure you read something more lighthearted—like Pyromancer—after you finish it.

The Castes and the OutCastes by David Ashura

a warrior's path davis ashura

This trilogy consists of A Warrior’s Path, A Warrior’s Knowledge, and A Warrior’s Penance. The first book won the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award for fantasy, and was a finalist for multiple other awards.

In this series, which is loosely based on Indian mythology, there are the castes, and the outcastes. The main character, Rukh Shektan, is born into the Caste Kumma, and becomes a renowned warrior, skilled with both fire magic and the blade.

The characters are well-developed, and the world presents enough similarities to traditional fantasy books that it feels familiar, but has aspects of political intrigue, deception, and action that make it unique.

This sword-and-sorcery series has been likened to The Wheel of Time, the works of Zelazney, and other big-name fantasy series.

The Fire Mages by Pauline M. Ross

the fire mages pauline m ross

Even thought The Fire Mages is part of the Brightmoon series, it can be read as a standalone book. The story follows Kyra as she navigates a world of magic and deception. Magic in this world requires specific symbology written on magic paper, with very few magicians capable of using their powers without these things.

As such, fire magic is pretty dangerous, seeing as how the mode for power is flammable paper.

The book reminds me of a mix between The Name of the Wind (thinking about Kvothe’s struggle with money and school) and The Armored Saint by Myke Cole.

It’s a fun ride, and the characters are well-thought out and the world is full of rich details. Definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of traditional fantasy magic.

Firestarter by Stephen King

firestarter stephen king

Moving out of the realm of fantastical magic-wielders, Firestarter imagines a world where experimental drug trials leave some individuals with psychic abilities. The main character, Charlie McGee, has a very strong pyrokinetic ability, which she often uses to protect her and her father from secret government agents who are hunting them down.

Firestarter is a sci-fi horror story, typical of King’s style as a writer. The book was first published in 1980, and was adapted as a film in 1984. The reboot of the film comes out later this year, starring Zac Efron as Charlie’s father, Andy, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Charlie.

If you like stories about powered people hunted down by shadow organizations, then Firestarter is a must read.

If you liked this post, consider checking out some of our other Top 5 book lists!

Rick Riordan Presents Widens The Scope Of MG Mythology

Back in the mid-2000s, I was a big fan of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, like most middle-schoolers were.

I had always been interested in mythology, but a lot of the books I was reading weren’t gauged toward a young audience. Riordan’s famous series gave traditional Greek myths a fun twist, and I naturally gobbled up everything he wrote for many years.

By about high school, I had kind of fallen out with Riordan’s work. His Percy Jackson series had been replaced by its Roman counterpart, which I just didn’t find as interesting. His Egyptian mythology series, The Kane Chronicles, was one of the last things I read of his work, and I appreciated it, but wasn’t as impressed as I might have been if I were a few years younger.

As I started to read more about mythology on my own, I started to realize that in some ways, Riordan was starting to tread into dangerous territory. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies are all pretty mainstream at this point, with ideas or deities appearing in film and novels, everything from American Gods to Marvel and DC comics.

But at one point, I remember thinking, “Riordan’s exhausted most of his avenues at this point, he’ll have to start diving into other cultural heritages for inspiration.” And that troubled me a bit, simply because Riordan is a middle-aged white dude, how will he tackle African mythology? Japanese, Korean, Chinese mythology? Really, any mythos outside of the classic four he’d already written about.

That’s when I learned about Rick Riordan Presents, his publishing imprint through Disney-Hyperion, so to speak.

What Is Rick Riordan Presents?

On their website, Riordan states that the Rick Riordan Presents imprint is meant to “help other writers get a wider audience. I also want to help kids have a wider variety of great books to choose from, especially those that deal with world mythology, and for all kinds of young readers to see themselves reflected in the books that they read.”

In this light, it’s important to note that the Rick Riordan Presents books aren’t a part of the Percy Jackson universe, but are instead independent books that Riordan only helped to edit and publish.

The whole point of the imprint is to bring more voices into the middle-grade mythology scene, and I certainly think that Riordan and his team have succeeded in that goal.

Breaking Out Of The Mold

Anyone who has read science fiction and fantasy for any amount of time knows that there’s an incredible amount content out there that’s inspired by mythology, even if only in passing.

Paranormal investigation series written by people like Seanan McGuire or Jim Butcher riff off certain myths and legends, while other stories, recreate classical story structure down to a tee.

After talking with PJ Manney about the New Mythos and how we need to change the way we tell stories, I realized that a lot mythology-inspired fiction draws on the big four (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse). And those stories reflect a mindset that’s already been repeated throughout mainstream media and storytelling practices for hundreds of years.

Greek plays, Roman epics, Norse origin stories—they all work under the shadow of outdated story structures that are clearly linked to the power and politics of the times.

So naturally, there needs to be a revolution, so to speak, where our classical mythologies get sent to the bench for a while and new stories take to the field.

And that’s where Rick Riordan Presents starts to do its work.

Books from Rick Riordan Presents

As it stands, the Rick Riordan Presents imprint has brought many mythologies to middle school libraries outside of the big four. Here’s a list of some of the books the imprint has published, or plans to publish.

The Pandava Quintet – a five book series by Roshani Chokshi. The series kicks off with Aru Shah and the End of Time, and focuses heavily on Hindu mythology.

rick riordan presents aru shah

The Storm Runner Series – this trilogy was written by J. C. Cervantes and brings Aztec and Mayan mythology to the board. A follow-up series, Shadow Bruja, dives into a character from the first trilogy in the same realm of mythology.

rick riordan presents storm runner

The Thousand Worlds Series – So far, there are two books in this series written by Yoon Ha Lee. Where other books in the imprint are grounded on our Earth, Thousand Worlds takes us into space and explores Korean mythology. The first two books are Dragon Pearl and Tiger Honor, with a potential third book in the works.

rick riordan presents dragon pearl

The Tristan Strong Series – this trilogy was written by Kwame Mbalia and explores African-American and West African mythology. The first book, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, tackles dealing with grief, while the other books dive more into cultural heritage. There is a graphic novel adaption in the works, too.  

rick riordan presents tristan strong

Sal & Gabi – This series was written by Carlos Hernandez and dives into Cuban mythology. This sci-fi/fantasy crossover series has two books, Sal and Gabi Break the Universe and Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe.

rick riordan presents sal and gabi

The Paola Santiago Series– This trilogy was written by Tehlor Kay Mejia and takes a new approach to middle-grade mythology, with a supernatural focus on Hispanic myths and legends. The first book, Paola Santiago and River of Tears was rated as one of Amazon’s Best Books in 2020.  

rick riordan presents paola santiago

The Gifted Clans – Graci Kim’s Korean-mythos series started off with The Last Fallen Star and has two more books slated for release.

rick riordan presents last fallen moon

In addition to the series, Rick Riordan Presents has also published two standalone novels, by Rebecca Roanhorse and Sarwat Chadda. Plus, The Cursed Carnival was an anthology edited by Riordan that featured short stories set in the universes of each series.

Upcoming projects feature authors like Daniel José Older, Tracey Baptiste, Stacey Lee, and Roseanne A. Brown.

Conclusion

While this blog post might have rambled on for a bit, I just want to say that I’m glad Rick Riordan put his focus onto bringing more diverse voices into the middle-grade mythology scene. His books are great, but they’re written from a certain point of view that’s been redone multiple times across the board.

Giving all of these authors a cohesive platform to work with is a great opportunity to teach kids about different cultural heritages and turn them onto exploring the legends and beliefs of cultures they might not have been able to explore otherwise.

I wish that these books—or books like these—had been around when I was reading Percy Jackson. Perhaps my sense of storytelling and mythology might be a lot stronger had they been.

Why “Pusher” Is The Best X-Files Episode

The X-Files is filled with great episodes, and after nine seasons (and two reboot seasons), it’s hard to pick-and-choose.

However, one episode stands out above the rest as the best X-Files episode, and that’s “Pusher”, episode 17 of season 3.

Because of its intense cloak-and-dagger plot and the uniqueness of the villain, “Pusher” has to be my favorite episode of X-Files, ranking even higher than this episode.

But there’s a lot more to it than that. Let’s get into it:

The Plot of “Pusher”

The episode kicks off with Robert Patrick Modell shuffling through a grocery store, while being tailed by FBI agents. He eventually blows their cover and is arrested for a series of murders dating back to 1994.

While in the back of the squad car, Modell, known as Pusher, uses his psychic ability to make the officer driving the car pull out in front of a speeding 18-wheeler.

As the episode progresses, Modell uses his abilities to influence a federal judge into ruling in his favor, sneak into the FBI headquarters, and prompt a secretary to assault Assistant Director Skinner. Plus, he urges a SWAT officer to set himself on fire and induces a heart attack in the lead detective on the case.

The whole episode is about Modell trying to find a worthy adversary for his games, which ends up being Fox Mulder. As Mulder and Scully start to unravel Modell’s history, they find that he has a brain tumor that has likely triggered his psychic ability.

At the end of the episode, Modell forces Mulder into a game of Russian Roulette, but when Scully pulls a fire alarm to break Modell’s concentration, Mulder shoots Modell and he’s apprehended.

Reception

“Pusher” is one of the highest rated episodes of X-Files, having made multiple lists of the best episodes. IGN ranked it the third best standalone episode, and Den of Geek puts it at number seven.

When it aired, the episode received rave reviews, and raked in over 16.2 million viewers.

It’s understandable why so many people like “Pusher”, as it certainly stands as one of the best Monster-of-the-Week episodes, even after the famous Eugene Toomes episode in season 1.

But there’s more going on in “Pusher” than a lot of people realize.

What Makes “Pusher” The Best X-Files Episode?

Up to this point in X-Files, we’ve seen monsters like Eugene Toomes, who is driven purely by his physical need to feast on the human body. Other monsters are driven by similar urges, few of which exhibit the inherently sinister nature of Patrick Modell.

By the end of the show, Mulder and Scully discover that Modell’s brain tumor developed in 1994, and remained operable for two years. However, Modell refused surgery, instead using his newfound psychic powers to wreak havoc on his community.

This dynamic solidifies a theme that Chris Carter and other writers of the show played with throughout the first few seasons, and that’s the mundane nature of evil.

Modell wasn’t a bad guy before the tumor. He was ordinary in every sense, and never managed to excel past a minimum wage job. He failed to pass the psych evaluation to become an FBI agent, and was deemed to be a narcissist in the same evaluation.

The only thing that set him apart from every other lower-class worker was his haunting ability to influence other people into hurting themselves, and he decided that instead of live out the rest of his life deep in medical debt, he’d rather, as Mulder puts it, “go out in a blaze of glory”.

In many ways, Pusher felt that he rose above the societal and class restrictions that kept him as a supermarket employee with his new powers. He described himself as a ronin, a masterless samurai. A lone ranger, or more aptly, a wolf without a pack. He carves out a new life, one of shadows and blood, as a contract killer.

This is why “Pusher” is the pinnacle of X-Files‘ societal commentary.

For many people, the corporate, governmental, and medical powers that be are the prime culprits of their misfortune. Low wages, bad housing, expensive medical treatments, and lack of mental health assistance make it difficult to rise out of the lower class of American society. Even today, we still see the same problems.

And for these people struggling to get by, sometimes their only option is to turn to darker channels: drugs, theft, fraud, and for Modell, mercenary work.

In the end, Mulder and Scully claim that Modell is just a little man who wants to feel big. I feel like their conclusion is true, but far from the whole truth. I think there were multiple factors that lead Modell to his ultimate breaking point, and the eventual murder of authority figures—police officers, doctors, security guards, and detectives.

Perhaps the conclusion should not have been “he wants to feel big”, but rather, “he’s the evil we made.” Sure, Modell made his own choices, but the tumor that brought him his abilities was perhaps one of the best things to happen to him in his life, which is sad. Could Pusher have been avoided if Modell had access to mental health treatment? Affordable healthcare? Opportunities to climb the social ladder?

Sci Fi Comic Book Review: Star Wars: Doctor Aphra Vol. 1

Personally, the most interesting Star Wars content doesn’t come in the form of a movie, TV show, or video game.

Peak Star Wars is the comic books. That’s right, the comics.

Specifically, Doctor Aphra. She’s such a neat character, and one that really can’t be captured fully on the big screen. If you’ve never read a Star Wars comic book before, then you’re in for a treat with Doctor Aphra vol. 1!

Some Background

Chelli Lona Aphra is an archaeologist/treasure-thief with a shoot-first, ask questions later mentality. Doctor Aphra’s first appearance was in the third issue of the Darth Vader comic book series in 2015. In that story, she worked for Vader as a rogue recruiter until he attempts to kill her. Aphra manages to escape, but has to remain undercover because the Empire thinks she is dead.

She appeared throughout various Star Wars comics until she got her own series in 2016, the Doctor Aphra series we’re looking at today.

Doctor Aphra vol. 1 was written by the character’s creator, Kieron Gillen, and was illustrated by Salvador Larroca. Gillen is well-known for his work in the video game community, as well as for working on Uncanny X-Men, and Young Avengers.

Larroca is kind of a veteran when it comes to comic book art. He’s worked on Ghost Rider, Iron Man, Ultimate Elektra, and a number of different X-Men comic books. His detailed style along with Gillen’s character-driven storytelling make Doctor Aphra a perfect fit for the Star Wars universe.

Under Gillen and Larroca, Doctor Aphra ran for three volumes, and was picked up by writer Simon Spurrier and various artists for another four volumes. The series ended in 2019, but was picked up again in 2020 under Alyssa Wong and Marika Cresta for another 5 volumes, the tail-end of which has yet to be released.

About the Characters

One of the best parts about Star Wars has to be their characters. While they tend to lean toward certain character archetypes—the rogue, the stout Imperial, the idealist, etc. –they make up for it with giving the characters unique quirks and memorable traits.

Doctor Aphra, for example, has the grit and guile of Han Solo, but she’s far less noble. Her interests are always centered around personal gain, and her morals are much more pliable than those of the classic Star Wars heroes.

Aphra’s often accompanied by her two assassin droids –000 (also known as Trip or Triple Zero) and BT-1—as well as the gladiator Wookie, Black Krrsantan, who also appears in The Book of Boba Fett TV show.

These four, along with a Aphra’s father, Korin, and a few other recurring characters, make up the crew of the Ark Angel II.

As usual, the combination of characters revolves around a human—Aphra—but the story isn’t hindered by the focus on human characters. While Krrsantan doesn’t get as much recognition in the first volume as I think he should, generally the whole thing is very balanced.

Doctor Aphra Vol. 1 – The Story

If you’re a fan of pre-Republic Jedi history and an intense race against Imperial forces, then Doctor Aphra is the comic book for you.

The story starts off directly after Vader attempts to murder Doctor Aphra, and she’s laying low from Imperial Stormtroopers. After a brief encounter with a loan-shark, Aphra attempts to sell the newest relic she’s stolen for enough money to pay back her debts.

Little does she know; her doctorate has been revoked and her credibility as an archaeologist is ruined. At that moment, her estranged father shows up and asks Aphra and her crew to go on a quest of the Ordu Aspectu, a faction of the Jedi order that died out long before the Galactic Civil War.

Doctor Aphra begrudgingly agrees to help her father, but little does she know that there are life-changing things in store for her and her crew.

The Verdict

As far as Star Wars stories go, I felt this one was simple, but with enough complex elements and emotional encounters to make it worthwhile.

Not everyone reads comic books hoping to get life advice or timely wisdom, but Doctor Aphra vol. 1 is a powerful lesson of duty, forgiveness, and loyalty.

Overall, I give the first volume an 8/10. The characters are fun and quirky, and the story is neat and fast-paced. There were times when I felt I was being bombarded with irrelevant lore about the old Jedi and the Ordu Aspectu, but it wasn’t terrible.

I look forward to seeing how Gillen’s Doctor Aphra different from the later version written by Spurrier and Wong.

If you like this comic book review, check out some of our others below!

NFTs That Exchange Novelty for Utility

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren’t a new invention. They’ve been around in one capacity or another for a couple of years now. But they’re really getting popular now because of mainstream news outlets and investors on social media.

We’ve talked about some of the problems of NFTs before, but recently, there’s kind of been a shift in the way we think about NFTs.

A lot of the popular collections that have made press in mainstream media are purely artistic collectibles. They have no inherent value or purpose other than being a digital asset with a prescribed value.

When compared with cryptocurrency in general, these collectible NFTs serve far less function than a lot of people realize.

With Ethereum, you can purchase goods and services from online vendors (and some in-person places, too), hold onto it as an investment, or stake your ETH for interest.

With a collectible NFT, like a Bored Ape, you’re pretty much just holding onto it as a clout item or trying to flip it for profit. There’s not much else you can do with it.

That’s where many creators and crypto enthusiasts get caught up. Outside of the hype for these projects, what do they have to offer? And that’s where utility NFTs come into play.

Understanding NFT Utility

Where collectible NFTs have real no function other than being a novelty used by flippers to make a profit, utility NFTs come with some kind of inherent value or use outside of simply turning it around for a quick buck.

As a hypothetical explanation, let’s say you have a video game that relies heavily on weapon selection over real skill. The better gear you have, the better you are at the game.

We talked about how Counterstrike skins are like NFTs in the last blog, but they fall into the collectible NFT section. Other than adding cosmetic value, they don’t do anything else.

A utility NFT for a video game would be something you buy that has a use in-game that’s non-cosmetic. It could be a sword with reduced weight for faster swings, or a gun that has a higher rate of fire and more accuracy. These elements are what make the NFT useful, and that’s why people will buy them. Not only can they still look cool as a collectible item, there’s a functional purpose for owning them.

Additionally, some utility NFTs today provide more than just a digital asset. Some of them, like Jigen, provide an article of digital clothing for the Metaverse, as well as a physical edition of the clothing. You’re buying the NFT, but receiving both a digital and physical asset.

Why Adding Utility Solves Some NFT Problems

A lot of people that are serious about the NFT community always complain about the pump-and-dump schemes. Creators will hype up a project, profit off sales, and disappear, leaving buyers questioning the whole purpose of the project in the first place. The same goes for crypto tokens that started popping up after Dogecoin and Shiba Inu took the Internet by storm.

Utility NFTs solve this problem by providing users with a value other than an investment opportunity. With collectible NFTs, your use for them is controlled solely by market factors, much like a stock or other investment.

But with Utility NFTs, chances are you bought it for its functional purpose, and aren’t as concerned with the monetary potential in flipping it. This, overall, levels out the concerns a lot of people have with the NFT market.

Are we in a bubble right now? Will NFTs faze out in a few years when the novelty wears off? Maybe, but with an inherent use that gives value to users, NFTs will be a lot harder to rule out as a viable method of transferring goods and services.

Applications for Utility NFTs (In a Sci Fi Sense)

You might be wondering how many NFT projects actually have applications for the sci fi enthusiast, and it’s a reasonable question.

In a world that’s looking wackier and more dystopian every day, some utility NFTs can seem like they’re breaching privacy, weakening economic structures, and pulling the wool over the eyes of buyers.

Here are some examples of how utility NFTs are changing the digital landscape for good:

Nebula Genomics – This company is using blockchain technology to provide complete genome sequencing for people across the world. Where their counterparts collect and store DNA data—doing who knows what with it—Nebula Genomics makes their process 100% anonymous with a “blockchain-enabled multiparty access control system”. And, they’ve even shown they have the capability to turn complete genome sequences into NFTs, with their auction of Professor George Church’s genome data as an NFT.

Molcule.to – Where Nebula Genomics provides a service to the general public, Molecule is dedicated to provide top-tier research to medical and scientific professionals. On their website, Molecule states that it specializes in “funding, collaborating and transacting early-stage biopharma research projects”. Molecule allows researchers to connect with investors who will receive NFT data, and it facilitates the transfer of research between professionals in a decentralized marketplace.

Snapshot Snapshot provides a secure, tested location for blockchain project owners to engage with their communities. Snapshot employs a gasless, blockchain-backed voting system, where members in the community have clear access to poll statistics about the future of their backed projects. This service assures full transparency for community-driven projects.

The Future of Utility NFTs is Bright

While there the market is still rampant with collections and projects that don’t have a clear end goal in mind, the NFT world is starting to develop a coherent purpose.

While not all NFT art collections are bad—like this street-art preservation project—utility NFTs are opening up the community for more scientific and purposeful projects.

Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll see NFTs change digital reading, online subscriptions, and other high-traffic industries.

For now, it’s safe to say that projects that exchange collectability for utility are bound to see more success than those purely invested in the novelty of the format.

Galaxy’s Edge Book Review Roundup: April 2022

In the March/April 2022 issue of Galaxy’s Edge Magazine (which you can read or buy here), there are stories by Harry Turtledove, Mike Resnick, Tai Yi, Torion Oey, Katharine Kerr, and more. Plus, Jean Marie Ward finishes up Part 2 of her interview with John Scalzi, talking about his new book, The Kaiju Preservation Society.

And as always, we have a selection of insightful science fiction and fantasy book reviews from Robert Chwedyk.

In this issue, he takes a look at:

  • Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus
  • Star Eater by Kerstin Hall
  • Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett
  • The Reinvented Heart edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek

Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus

I’ve been waiting for this book for a while. I’m familiar with some of Broaddus’s other writings and was excited to see what he would do with a now-familiar form like a science fiction epic trilogy. I am not disappointed.

The beginning has the now-common lists of characters and time line that you’re going to skip back to later but you have no time for now. You want to see how the novel opens and if it will compel you to keep reading until you reach the final page:

Your name is Leah Adisa. For now.

Choosing a name for yourself is not something to be entered into lightly. It is a promise you make to the universe. Or it to you. A name is the story of yourself you present to the world, a label to define you. That is the entire point of the Naming Ceremony: you are finally of age to interpret yourself and into the Muungano community as a full free member.

The paragraphs that follow continue to orient you to a world you’ve not encountered in a novel before: the African-based hegemony (of sorts) of the Muungano people, which extends from Earth to Titan, and a little further to a mining colony named Oyigiyigi. We may be familiar with spacefaring empires extending to the outer planets, but we’ve usually seen them from a Western perspective, a sort of continuation of “American” middle-class culture, or how Octavia Butler once put it, “The same as now, only more so.” In this novel, we’re not just discovering new worlds but old worlds seen in new ways, from a new perspective. We’re discovering what, for we readers, is a whole new culture.

It’s not as if this hasn’t been attempted before, but Broaddus seems to have found the right angle or point of view from which to address we readers that neither frustrates us with opaque “strangeness” or presumes we are simpletons who need every little detail explained. The result is a clarity of narrative that is truly splendid.

sweep of stars

And that narrative is…complex. To say the least. You expect that in a trilogy. But that same angle or point of view, or better still, that voice, never leaves you confused as it shifts from setting to setting and person to person.

And I was intensely impressed with Broaddus’s focus upon his people. He has great insight into human concerns, their desires and needs, how they express them and how they attempt to conceal them. Some authors of this sort of work become so overwhelmed by their own world building, they can only manage to “populate” their novels. With Sweep of Stars, one gets the feeling this story began with the people. The world came later, or simultaneously, so the human scale is never lost.

Sweep of Stars exercises the best traditions of science fiction while providing new perspectives and redefining the expectations we place upon such works. Some readers may find it rough going, but I encourage them to stay with it. On rare occasions, even for science fiction readers, one encounters a book that truly changes the way one sees the world, yesterday, today and most certainly tomorrow. I believe this is one of them.

Star Eater by Kerstin Hall

Fantasy readers, I can guarantee you have never read a novel like this. I can extend that guarantee to everyone else who may be curious. The borders between fantasy, science fiction, and horror are here either discarded or ignored. And to you aspiring writers out there: remember all those things your esteemed writing teachers said you can never get away with? Well, Kerstin Hall gets away with most of them. Honestly, I don’t know how. I suspect she does it through a modicum of chutzpah and a great deal of skill.

Something about this novel reminded me of one of those profound pronouncements Marlow makes in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”: about “The fascination of the abomination.” But not in a bad way. I will add, though, that some other reviewers have added trigger warnings to their comments, and they can be justified. There are some really rough scenes in here. Be warned.

star eater

But…what can be expected from a novel where, if someone were to ask you what it was about, you’d say something like, “Well, it takes place in a city that’s elevated over the world, because on the surface all the men have become zombies. In the city, there’s a sisterhood that acquires magic through cannibalism, and once they have it the magic is manifested in lace. Literally, lace. And that’s just the background for some really Machiavellian intrigue.”

And if this someone asks you further, “Well, who are the good guys?” you will most likely answer, “Well, I’m still trying to figure that out.”

The thing is, you’re still fascinated by these people, either because they have real human facets that accompany these atrocious activities, or because you keep turning pages, muttering to yourself, “They can’t possibly get away with that! Can they?”

They can, with Kerstin Hall telling the tale, and doing so with masterful precision.

Destroyer of Light by Jennifer Marie Brissett

As with Kerstin Hall’s novel, readers should take note that there’s some strong stuff here.

Aspects of this story will strike you as familiar, and I’m not referring to its reimagining of the Persephone myth. Aliens boot us off our planet, genetically modify us and relocate us to a world called Eleusis, where things go “not as planned” from the get-go. There are three habitable areas of the planet, named Day, Dusk and Night. Resources, material and intellectual, and some things more, are not equally distributed. And often, this situation, rather than encouraging cooperation, spawns greed and violence.

destroyer of light

We may have read versions of this kind of thing before (suddenly, I’m remembering a Bradbury story called “Frost and Fire”), but not in this way. The central character, Cora, is sympathetic enough, as you might expect, but also enigmatic, but not in any bad way. She is, after all, Persephone, and everything we encounter on Eleusis is a little bent, a little twisted, like what we might encounter through Lewis Carroll’s looking glass if it were being held by James Tiptree Jr. I’m not saying Brissett writes like Tiptree, but her vision shares that same uncompromising intensity.

When you’re dealing with myths, it’s difficult to be otherwise. To paraphrase R. A. Lafferty, the myths aren’t inside us; we are inside them, struggling to get out.

You won’t “get” this book on a first read. It will haunt you, though. And that’s likely one of the things in Destroyer of Light that goes exactly as planned, by Brissett.

The Reinvented Heart edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek

Last November, when I went to Windycon, my first “in person” convention in what seemed like ages, I very often heard a word that I really hadn’t encountered much at conventions heretofore: “Romance.”

And that word being used in the denotation of a literary category: those books in the store with the label “Romance” on the spine. Many of us in fandom made fun of those books. We believed them all to have been built on a steadfast, indestructible narrative skeleton: young woman of modest means falls in love with a handsome young man of higher social status, or some other condition which seems to doom their relationship, though the young man reciprocates her feelings. Whatever, their hardships are overcome by the last page and the beautiful couple prepare for a lifetime of happiness. Thousands of novels were built on that skeleton, and billions of copies of those novels were sold. They were reliable. And predictable. And we made fun of them. Their fungible structure seemed a polar opposite of what science fiction was all about. They were allegedly more predictable than Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, or Tom Swift.

the reinvented heart

But the picture was never quite that simple. At least a couple of new generations of readers have grown up since we callow old fogies sniffed at the romance market. Many new science fiction readers began by reading romance novels, then switched over to several of the many “cross-genre” variations, like romances set in fantasy worlds or science-fictional universes. Not to mention the explosion of romances catering to a number of diverse, non-traditional audiences. And many of the newer writers in our field not only got their start in the romance market, but they maintain a presence in that genre while doing other work in ours.

All of that is to say that we should no longer be surprised at having romance fiction discussed at SF cons. It’s here. Get used to it.

And frankly, I’m not really sure if the preceding tangent of mine has any relevance to the brilliant anthology edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek, The Reinvented Heart, but I started there, so be it.

The marvelous thing about this anthology is that it left me far removed from the simple definitions of what we’re talking about when we talk about “relationships,” romantic or otherwise.

In her foreword, Rambo quotes the call to authors she made for this book:

Science fiction often thinks about the technology without considering the ways social structures will change as tech changes—or not. What will relationships look like in the future when we have complications like clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What happens when emotions like love and friendship span vast distances—in space, in time, and in the heart? And as we acknowledge differences in gender in a way we never have before, what stories are finally given the space in which to emerge?

Any sort of devoted reader of science fiction will no doubt immediately recall any number of stories—by Octavia Butler, or Sturgeon, or Delany, or Sheckley, or Le Guin, or Tiptree, to name just a few—that already address what Rambo and Brozek were looking for, but you’ll have to admit that those gems are rare—exquisite, but rare.

The marvelous thing about this anthology is how successful the editors were in their search to increase this number. This is all fine work, written with great skill, great intelligence, great wit and, perhaps most of all, a discerning and sympathetic eye for the way change can seem at once surprising and inevitable in this world (and any other world you choose to imagine). My favorites, not necessarily the best, works are by Rosemary Claire Smith, Lyda Morehouse, Naomi Kritzer, Fran Wilde, Lauren Ring, Sam Fleming, Xander Odell and Devin Miller. The three sections: “Hearts,” “Hands” and “Minds” are prefaced with poems by Jane Yolen. One need say no more.

Full disclosure: yes, it’s published by Caezik, but I would have grabbed up this anthology no matter who published it. Dozens of themed anthologies come out every year. This one is significantly a keeper.

If you’d like to read more of the great content that’s gone into the March/April issue of Galaxy’s Edge, you can find an issue at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

What Can We Expect From Russian Doll Season 2?

I just finished watching the first season of Russian Doll, and I have to say, it was a wild ride. Natasha Lyonne’s performance was spectacular, and the slow burn style of the series left me with questions all the way up to the last episode.

But we have Russian Doll season 2 coming out today, so here’s a break down of what happened in the first season and what to expect with the second season.

The Road So Far…

If you haven’t seen the first season of Russian Doll, there will be some spoilers in this article, so you can skip to the section “Russian Doll Season 2 Preview”.

In the first season of Russian doll, we ‘re thrust into a weird, mind-bending, time-altering jaunt that gives a new take on the Groundhog Day repetition sequence. Natasha Lyonne’s character, Nadia, attends a birthday party thrown for her, and at one point dies, only to wake up in the bathroom back at the party. This scene, no matter how many times it’s shown, never gets old.

For a few episodes, Nadia navigates through repeated deaths, each time getting farther from the bathroom at the party, venturing out to look for her cat, get a haircut from a homeless man, and visit the deli around the block.

There, she meets Alan, another person stuck in the death loop. The two team up and start to puzzle out what’s happening to them. Their relationship has a great dynamic, with Nadia’s brusque, offhand pessimism, and Alan’s quiet, demeanor.

Eventually, they realize that to get out of their constant loop, they have to right a series of wrongs they committed in the past. For Nadia, it’s meeting her ex-husband’s daughter, and for Alan, it’s being honest with his girlfriend about their relationship.

Despite the repetitious nature of the dying-waking up-and-dying-again sequences, the show never gets stale. Unlike some other shows that play with time, Russian Doll is hard to predict. Even moments away from the end credits, it’s hard to discern what will happen next, and that’s what I like about the show.

Nadia’s gradual descent into frustration is parallel with the overarching themes of past wrongs, both personal and global. The intense symbolism and dramatic elements highlight societal struggles while also maintaining their place as visual aspects of the series.

If I had to rate Russian Doll, I’d give it a 10, hands down, so that gives me high hopes for the second season.

Russian Doll Season 2 Preview.

A while ago there was a teaser for Russian Doll season 2, but only recently did we get to see a full trailer. And as you can see for yourself, it’s even more trippy than its predecessor.

While looking deeper into the second season of Russian Doll, I learned that Natasha Lyonne not only plays Nadia, but is also the showrunner. Working on the series has been, as Lyonne describes, “the happiest I’ve been in my life,” in an interview with Indie Wire.

In the same interview, Lyonne sheds some light on the focus of Russian Doll’s second season. She says that the show becomes about Nadia reckoning with her European heritage. In real life, like in the show, Lyonne’s grandparents were Hungarian Holocaust survivors, and she’s wrestling with questions of history and trauma.

She says, “How is historical, familial, epigenetic trauma present with us in the room even when you’re…you know, whatever, like, telling some guy you’re not ready for a relationship.” We’ve already seen some of this reflected in Nadia’s character in the first season, but Lyonne has made it a primary focus of the second season.

From the trailer, we see that the characters embark on yet another time-warping journey, this time on a train. Trains have long been a staple of mystery and time-travel fiction, and it’s another trope that Lyonne is playing on here, much like her Groundhog Day inspirations in the first series.

I’m certainly looking forward to see what Lyonne has in store for Nadia and Alan as they traverse the blowback of their traumatic first season.

The first episode of Russian Doll season 2 premieres today, April 20th on Netflix.

If you liked this article, consider checking out some of our other content on SFF TV shows, movies, and books. And if you’re a science fiction fan, consider subscribing to the Galaxy’s Edge magazine, which brings you short fiction from new and established authors alike, as well as poignant interviews and book reviews.