Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Alina Boyden’s gorgeous, transportive debut novel, Stealing Thunder, synthesizes Mughal Indian history and her own anthropological work with the transgender communities of South Asia to create a richly detailed fantasy world. Here, Boyden shares how she developed the fabulous clothing of Daryastani society, why she developed an “anti-dragon” and more.

This is your debut novel, and it’s haunting, gorgeous and amusing at all the right moments. What places and times would you like to travel to in your fiction going forward?
First of all, thank you so much for that lovely compliment. I am definitely continuing the story of Razia and Arjun with a sequel. I’ve written that one, and it broadens the horizons of the world of Stealing Thunder quite considerably. I’m also working on some non-Razia related projects. Currently that is taking me to the south of France and to Spain in the 13th century, though it won’t be a historical fiction piece, so that’s just the inspiration. It brings me back to my undergraduate years as a medieval studies major. But there are so many other places in the world and so many other cultures that I find deeply inspiring that I think if I’m lucky enough to have the sales figures to keep my career going, I will have no shortage of places and times to visit.

“. . . to see communities of (largely) transgender women, which have existed for thousands of years, was awe-inspiring to me.”

Readers may not know that the hijras in Stealing Thunder are inspired by the real-life communities of the same name in Pakistan, which you’ve studied during your work as a cultural anthropologist. When did you first learn about these communities, and why do they fascinate and inspire you?
Well, for starters, the communities in Pakistan are properly referred to as “khwaja sira” communities. In Pakistan, “hijra” is often considered to be a slur. In India, “hijra” has greater currency as an autonym and is not nearly so often considered to be negative in its connotation. I chose to use “hijra” as a term because it has so much wider currency in American discourse than “khwaja sira” does, and because the word “transgender” in English is such a recent innovation that I felt it might distract readers from the fantasy world I had created.

I first learned about hijras when I was 12 or 13; I suppose I was, like a lot of trans women, searching the world to see if there are others out there like her. You see, when I was growing up, I was taught that being transgender was a modern phenomenon, that trans people didn’t exist in other countries, that we were a particular pathology rooted in the modern West. So to see communities of (largely) transgender women that have existed for thousands of years was awe-inspiring to me. Most trans women I know in America grew up believing they were alone. Each of us had to learn for herself what being transgender even was, because there was so little cultural understanding of transness as a phenomenon.

So to see a culture where not only is transness broadly known and acknowledged, but these trans women live together in their own communities—that was really shocking to me the first time I came across it. It made me realize that things didn’t have to be the way that they were for me growing up in America. There are many other ways that transness can operate in the world, and one of them is this radically visible and community-oriented form that we see in the hijra and khwaja sira communities of South Asia.

Your description of Razia and her hijra sisters’ transitions is eloquent and beautiful, normalizing the process to readers even when the other members of Daryastani society may not feel the same way. As a trans rights activist, was this a stance that you knew you wanted in the book from the beginning, rather than the oft popularized stories of only hardship and pain?
Absolutely. If there is one pernicious myth that needs to be addressed in our own society, it is the idea that transition-related treatments are as painful or more painful than gender dysphoria, or that they are imperfect facsimiles of cis experiences. Those ideas permeated my own upbringing and my own early understanding of transition, and they are myths that I only banished within myself somewhat recently, because they are so virulent.

I’m not really sure why cis people are so taken with the idea that transition-related procedures are painful or damaging or imperfect. Maybe it’s because cis people don’t have gender dysphoria, by definition, and therefore they imagine what it would be like to undergo those procedures themselves and come away horrified. Maybe it’s something else. I don’t know what being cis is like. But for trans people, it’s actually the reverse. The procedures are not horrific, damaging things; they are profoundly mundane medical interventions which result in bodies that largely feel normal—often for the first time in our lives.

Now that’s not to say that every trans person needs or wants the same (or any) medical interventions in their lives. However, for those trans people who do medically transition as a result of the dysphoria they experience, the decision to begin transition or to have surgical intervention can be fraught with fear and doubt because of the salacious misinformation that they have been exposed to. The truth (as I have experienced it as one trans woman) is that the medical interventions in my life were not only greatly beneficial in terms of my mental well-being but also have given me a far greater sense of normalcy than I ever expected they would.

I wanted to include that sense of normalcy in Stealing Thunder. I wanted to normalize the physical experience of being transgender without centering the narrative around medical interventions or physical changes. I did this quite consciously, because cis people seem to focus far more on our hormones and our surgeries than we do in our daily lives. Yes, for many of us, those interventions are a part of our lived experiences. Yes, I do wake up every morning and take estrogen, and take it again before going to bed, and have since I was 18 years old. But I don’t really spend a lot of time dwelling on it. I don’t view it as particularly central to my daily lived experience, and it’s certainly not something that, if I were writing the novel of my life, I would spend a whole lot of time on. So, when writing the novel of Razia’s life, I didn’t spend a lot of time on it either.

When did you first become fascinated with the Mughal Empire, and why do you think that era of history is so resonant for you?
I’ve been fascinated by the so-called “Gunpowder Empires” of the 16th and 17th centuries for as long as I can remember. This was a period when the military dominance of European powers was something still on the horizon. It was a time when Ottoman armies besieged Vienna, and when India was the wealthiest country in the world. These empires represented a substantial fraction of the world’s population, a substantial fraction of the world’s GDP and produced some of the finest art and architecture ever to be found anywhere on the planet. If I had not experienced the incredibly Eurocentric public history education that we have in the United States firsthand, I would be genuinely baffled as to why anyone looking at the 16th and 17th centuries would be so focused on the activities of a tiny, dreary island in the North Atlantic when they could focus on the Red Fort of Agra instead.

Were there any real-life muses who inspired the individual characters of Razia Khan and Prince Arjun?
Razia’s namesake is obviously Razia Sultana, the only female ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. I visited her tomb in Delhi, which was an amazing experience, as it’s quite hard to find and very poorly marked, having no major structures associated with it. However, aside from the name, which I really liked, there isn’t a great deal of similarity between Razia the sultana and Razia the character.

Arjun is kind of a sly reference to the character of Arjun(a) the Archer, from the Mahabharata. In the story, Arjuna spends a year cursed to live as a hijra, so I threw in a slight reference to that in Stealing Thunder as well, though I don’t know if anybody noticed. I thought it was kind of fun to have the male lead be named for a well-known character who spent a year living as a trans woman himself. I don’t know if that necessarily explains why Arjun is such an empathetic character when it comes to Razia, but maybe that informed my thinking a little bit.

Your characters are resplendently dressed and described, to the point where the reader can truly visualize Razia, her comrades and her foes. What was your favorite part of crafting the garb for this book?
The garb was so hard! Fashion changes so much over time, and to make a decision about what people are wearing when you have to consider changes over time and region, and then also practicality, took a ton of work. But I think my favorite part was just looking at all the gorgeous examples that exist both from South Asia in the past and South Asia today. It was an awesome excuse to watch some really fun Bollywood movies, to delve into 16th and 17th century miniature paintings and to go sari shopping with friends. Honestly, research is probably my favorite part about writing, and I love historical costume research, so as tough as it was to feel like I’d done it justice, the whole thing was just a joy.

“I actually have to confess that I’ve always hated dragons in fantasy . . .”

Every time one of the zahhaks stole a scene, I became more curious about your inspiration for these glorious creatures. What’s their backstory? And is their name an intentional homage to the villainous Zahhak of Persian mythology?
Yes, zahhaks, what’s going on with that? Well, honestly it comes down to the fact that there really is no one good translation of the concept of dragon into South Asian culture—or at least, I couldn’t find one that satisfied me. Obviously, dragon could be translated into Urdu as “azhdaha” (which is a Persian loanword). And Zahhak is a villainous character of Persian mythology whose name is sometimes translated as “dragon.” So when I was trying to find a good word to get across the concept of dragon, I really was torn between those two words, and I settled on zahhak as being easier for non-Persian and non-Urdu speakers to read without being distracted by questions of pronunciation.

But their backstory is entirely my own invention. I actually have to confess that I’ve always hated dragons in fantasy, because they’re not aerodynamic, and they don’t behave in ways that make sense in terms of how they’re used militarily in fantasy books. I’ve studied military aviation my whole life, and I love birds—I used to train birds of prey for a living, and I’m familiar with ancient treatises on falconry, including ones from South Asia. So I have long had this knowledge about falconry and this obsession with flight, and I fly airplanes too, so I brought those things together to create a kind of dragon-like creature, but one governed by the actual laws of aerodynamics as much as possible. I researched extinct giant birds and pterosaurs, and I mixed them together with living birds of prey and with my way-too-vast knowledge of military aviation, and I essentially created these biological fighter planes which look like resplendent peacocks. I was so sure that nobody else would like them, but people have really responded positively to them, even though they’re my anti-dragon in a way.

What do you hope readers will discover about the world or themselves after reading your book?
Well, I don’t know that I have enough faith in my own writing to believe that people will discover something life-altering about themselves from reading one of my books. My hope is a bit simpler than that. I just want trans women, especially young trans girls, to read this book and feel seen and represented. I want them to realize that they can be anybody they want to, that they can dream as big as anyone else, that the world is as much their oyster as anyone else’s.

And I realize my readership is largely not going to be trans women, young or old. That’s just a demographic reality. So for the bulk of my readers, especially for my cis readers, I just hope that they come away from this book having our existences demystified a little bit. I think the truth of being a trans girl is profoundly boring and normal. I think if I’ve properly explained what it’s like to be trans to a cis reader, their response is probably going to be something along the lines of, “Oh, is that all there is to it?” And that’s fine with me. Because I think that sense of normalcy, that sense of “Oh you’re just like me,” that’s where acceptance begins.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Stealing Thunder.

What’s next for you and your writing? I’m sure readers would love to know what’s in the pipeline for you, Razia and her chosen family and friends (and zahhaks!).
Well, the sequel draft is done and sitting with my editor right now, who is working on it through this pandemic we’re currently dealing with. I think it’s a really exciting book. It’s got tons more action, tons more drama, and you get to learn about a totally new species of zahhak, as well as to see the ice zahhaks from Stealing Thunder “on camera” for the first time. So that’s going to be super cool, I hope. And, of course, I’m plugging away on another project I can’t really talk about yet, but I can’t wait to share that one with the world too. Other than that, I’m surviving this social isolation as best I can, and I hope everyone reading this are healthy and as happy as can be expected given the circumstances.

Author photo by Spencer Micka.

Alina Boyden shares how she created an “anti-dragon” and how her fascination with the Mughal Empire inspired her dazzling fantasy debut.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Kate Elliott

Interview by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Kate Elliott begins an epic new science fiction series with Unconquerable Sun, a complex and addicting tale of political intrigue that takes inspiration from ancient history—specifically, Alexander the Great. We talked to Elliott about drawing from the distant past to create a tale set in the far future, which of the book’s perspectives was the hardest to crack and why “queen” is a gender-neutral term in this fictional universe.

You’re the author of more than 10 science fiction series and numerous stories. After traveling to so many places and times in your writing, what excited you about Chaonia?
At the beginning of my career I wrote seven science fiction novels, so I might even say I started as an SF writer. Since then I’ve written 17 fantasy novels. This new book represents a return to my science fiction origins, which is quite exciting to me. I love writing fantasy with its magical worlds. And while I consider science fiction and fantasy to rest comfortably together under the umbrella of speculative fiction or the spacious tent that encompasses the literature of the fantastic, I can’t deny that it is relaxing and fun to return to writing space opera as a change of pace. Space opera can offer strong ties to the modern world, which can be evoked on the page. Its operatic sense of bombast, bold colors and vivid settings allow it to create a big, theater-filling spectacle. Sometimes theater-filling spectacle is exactly what I want to write, and to read.

“Sometimes theater-filling spectacle is exactly what I want to write, and to read.”

This book has been characterized as a gender-swapped retelling of the life of Alexander the Great. What led you to pull from the stories of mighty empires and conquerors, and was Alexander indeed your primary inspiration?
Yes, this is in fact exactly what it says on the label: a gender-swapped version of the life of Alexander the Great, set in space in the far, far future.

As a fantasy writer, I’ve long been interested in what empire is and how it functions; I’m not sure why but maybe because I grew up in an empire (the USA), so it would be natural for me to analyze and think about empire through the stories I tell.

Why Alexander? I don’t know. I’ve just always been fascinated by his story.

“I would call it a society where gender is a secondary consideration.”

The hierarchical structure here is reminiscent of ancient times, with its royals, Companions and cee-cees (Companions’ companions). What was your favorite part of crafting the relationships, alliances and tension between the different classes and peoples in Unconquerable Sun?
While the story is set in a far, far future tenuously tied to Earth, I used real history as the basic template. Part of my work was deciding which aspects of the history of Alexander the Great I would create analogs for, and what things I would make up specifically for this story. That means some of the tensions and alliances were built into the history. For example, I knew from the beginning that the Phene Empire was the enemy of the Republic of Chaonia, and that both empire and republic had a contentious history with the Yele League. In historical terms that translates roughly to the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire, the Kingdom of Macedon and the Greek city-states under the general leadership of Athens.

To make a space opera work, however, I did not want to simply turn every part of the story into a direct analog. The actual history and those governments and nations wouldn’t work “as is” in a space setting, for one thing. Also, half the fun of writing a space opera adaptation is to bend history and events and characters to make something new from it.

As for all the different classes and peoples, my foundational assumption is that people living on far distant worlds would not share exactly the same cultural landscape. Creating unique-to-their-place cultural landscapes is one of the things I most enjoy about writing science fiction and fantasy, and this project has been no different.

Chaonia is a gender-equal society, as well as a society that embraces same-sex unions. Did you base aspects of Chaonia on any real civilizations?
I would call it a society where gender is a secondary consideration. In Chaonia the term “queen” is gender neutral, like the word marshal. The leader of the republic is the highest ranking marshal (a military designation). In Chaonia, that highest rank is called “queen”—thus the ruler is the queen-marshal of the republic. The ruler doesn’t have to be a woman. For example, the current queen-marshal, Eirene, was preceded as ruler by her older brothers, who died in battle before she came to the throne.

In that same way, Chaonian marriage is about political alliances, bloodlines and business relationships, as marriage has usually been in the past and as it certainly was in the time of Alexander and his father Philip. I also made the presumption that reproductive technology will have advanced enough that any two individuals, regardless of gender, can have a child together who shares their genetic material.

I should note here that I didn’t sit down and say to myself, “I’m going to write a queer space opera.” The history is already queer. King Philip was what we would today call bisexual. So was Alexander. To be sure, sexuality wasn’t seen in the same way then. The terms homosexual and heterosexual were only coined in the mid 19th-century, and they don’t represent a universal understanding of gender across time or in other cultures. But the point stands. History is already queer.

“The real world I am living in always creeps into my writing.”

What was the origin of the insanely fun and often witty chapter titles such as “Introducing the Wily Persephone and the Loyal Solomon with the Predictable Result of Their Foray into Battle”? Did they come to you while drafting, or do you wait until the book is closer to be finished to come up with them?
I love chapter titles. You can do so much with them. They can give a signal to the reader. They can tell a little story in themselves. They can hint at things to come. And so on.

In the first few drafts mostly I wanted to identify literal phrases from the chapter text that I thought would work well to highlight in the chapter titles. Then when the reader reaches that phrase in the chapter, it hits them harder because they’ve seen it before. They’re primed for it. That’s my theory, anyway.

Later, in the final revision, I made the decision to include the words “the Wily Persephone” in all the chapter titles that are from Perse’s point of view. Given her narrative voice and who she is, it made sense to me to have those chapter titles to be more pointed and even poke fun at her because it’s the kind of thing she would do when speaking of herself. The rest, as they say, is history.

What is your favorite genre outside of SFF to read?
History. I go through phases where I struggle to read fiction, but I can always read history. I’m just so fascinated by windows into the past.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Unconquerable Sun.

When writing what is, in many ways, a political thriller in space, do you try to address or find yourself referencing current political events? Or do any parallels only become apparent to you once the book is closer to completion?
The real world I am living in always creeps into my writing. The influence might be overt, a connection I intended to make, or it might be hidden in layers of the story without me realizing it. But after I finish a book I always see one or more elements that feel drawn from current events, even if I didn’t consciously intend them.

Unconquerable Sun mainly toggles through the points-of-view of three very different characters: Sun, Perse and Apama. Did you always know that you wanted to tell this story from all three perspectives, and did any one of them come easier to you?
Persephone was the first point of view in the story. It started with her. Zizou came next, although he remains a minor point of view in the novel.

Eventually, I realized I had to include Sun’s point of view because this is her history, after all. She is by far the most difficult character to write. Her intensity and focus can feel hard to capture. Because she is who she is—unapologetically ambitious and capable—she does not display many of the usual character traits that we think of as making women “sympathetic.” That was also a challenge for me as a writer, one I knew I had to tackle because one of my goals with the story has been to write depictions of women leaders in societies where no one ever questions their right (as women) to lead.

I added Apama last, partly because I needed a point of view from within the Phene Empire and also because I needed Apama’s point of view specifically once I realized the larger outlines of the story I am telling.

Perse, Apama and Zizou were all fairly easy to write because they aren’t Sun. I “get” them.

What’s next for you and your writing? I’m sure readers would love to know what’s in the pipeline for you, Sun, Perse and Apama.
I’m currently writing book two, Furious Heaven. Saying more than that would be a spoiler.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Everina Maxwell

Interview by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

by Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Everina Maxwell’s debut novel, Winter’s Orbit, takes the marriage of convenience trope and flings it into an intergalactic web of intrigue. Hedonistic Prince Kiem of the Iskan Empire and his new husband Jainan, the devoted ruler of one of the empire’s vassal planets, forge a tentative partnership while investigating the somewhat mysterious death of Jainan’s first husband. We talked to Maxwell about how the forbidding and wintry environment of the planet Iskat functioned as a symbol and the freedom of a "queernorm" speculative world.

Do you prefer one genre (romance or science fiction) over the other, as a reader or writer? If you had to name your fusion of romance and science fiction, what would you call it?
The genres of my heart are sci-fi and fantasy; they were what I read growing up and what I borrowed piles of from the library. But I also read fanfiction, which prizes character and relationships above all else. Published romance was a later—delightful!—discovery that hit many of the same beats, and I loved its commitment to happy endings. I call Winter’s Orbit a “queer romantic space opera,” but in fact it’s just the type of book I wanted to read: an imaginary second world, with that sense of wonder and discovering new things, but a story centered on two characters overcoming their past and finding happiness.

The birds of Iskat are mysterious—and frightening—omens that complement the planet’s frigid and frozen exterior. What inspired you to add this element?
Part of it is character-based: Iskat is strange and hostile because Jainan, a foreign diplomat, has always found it that way. But it’s also beautiful, and to Prince Kiem, this landscape is his home. A minor arc of the story shows Jainan’s feelings about the landscape and wildlife gradually changing. Also, to be honest, I found the marital argument over “what is a bear” funny, and I firmly believe SF is improved by adding jokes wherever possible.

"[M]y goal was to write the joy in healing, even when it’s been so hard, and even when there’s so far to go."

Kiem and Jainan’s experiences with the Iskat government, the media and more allow you to explore corruption and greed, from blackmailing reporters to the suppression of the vassal planets. Did you see this as commentary on the state of the world today, or was there a more fantastical inspiration for the setting and characters?
This is a tricky question to answer. Winter’s Orbit isn’t about a specific political event, and I wouldn’t class it actively as commentary. But of course speculative fiction is directly influenced by the real world, and any attempt to write galactic politics is necessarily drawn from, or in conversation with, the recent history of our own planet. After all, it’s the only model we have for systems affecting billions of people with access to technology. I tried to keep this in mind while writing.

Relationships in Winter’s Orbit range from monogamous to polyamorous, and the choosing of certain tokens in Iskat culture represent binary or non-binary gender expression. And obviously, same-sex marriage and love is displayed positively throughout the narrative. What do you hope readers will discover about the world or themselves after reading your book?
The planet of Iskat is a “queernorm” world, which just means it’s a world where the acceptance of queer identities is background radiation, not a plot point, and no more remarkable than the existence of buildings or drinking water. As a queer person myself this was just a pure joy to write. Many people, both queer and straight, have family or friend groups where they already experience this, so all this book says is, what if that was everywhere in the future? What if you never needed to worry about defending who you are? What if you could use that brain space for something else?

Winter’s Orbit doesn’t stand alone here. You can find queernorm worlds in a growing body of recent(ish) SFF. It’s thanks to the people who came before us that we’re in this place: Queer authors wrote coming-out stories and academic essays and polemics for decades so we could be here, claiming a space where queer identities can just exist. And although at the moment we have to imagine that space, imagining it gets us one step closer to realizing it.

Jainan’s journey to becoming an open, communicative partner while also dealing with grief was a wonderful, healing element of this book. How did that aspect of the book evolve for you while writing?
Jainan’s arc is very much at the core of the story. He’s had some difficult experiences in his past which now lead him to second-guess both other people’s actions and his own worth as a person. My aim with his arc was to show the slow, bumpy healing process, while avoiding “magical” transformations where everything is suddenly okay because he’s fallen in love. Jainan still has a lot to work through by the end of the book, but my goal was to write the joy in healing, even when it’s been so hard, and even when there’s so far to go.

Were there any real-life muses who served as inspiration for Kiem and Jainan? How about the delightfully no-nonsense character of Kiem’s secretary, Bel?
Kiem and Jainan feel like they just turned up in my brain one day, but in fact, like the other characters, they’re almost certainly snippets of various real people and literary influences. A large part of Bel is defined by how she does her job, since we mainly see her at work—I’ve done Bel’s job myself, so she’s fairly close to my heart!

What other intergalactic places and times—or types of planets—would you like to travel to in your fiction going forward?
I’m fascinated by far-future science fiction where it’s not totally clear how humanity spread across the stars from Earth. It provides an infinite sandbox and an almost fantasy-like air of discovery: One book deals with a solar system over here, and the next deals with a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Space is infinite! I love that.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Winter's Orbit.

What’s next for you and your writing?
I’m working on a sort-of-sequel-but-not-really, which is set outside the Iskat Empire but in the same universe. It stars two queer characters who are even bigger disasters than Kiem and Jainan and includes more about the Remnants, the quasi-magical alien artifacts that briefly turned up in Winter’s Orbit. I’m very excited for this one.

We talked to Winter’s Orbit author Everina Maxwell about the freedom of a "queernorm" speculative world.