Simon Jimenez brings emotional intelligence and a contemporary fear of lost time to his spellbinding debut novel.

From an early age, Simon Jimenez devoured genre fiction. “I loved everything that wasn’t reality,” he says. He spent much of his childhood researching which books won the major science fiction prizes each year, then seeking those titles out. But even as those iconic works were beginning to mold him as a young writer, Jimenez couldn’t escape the sense that something was missing from them: people like himself, a gay person of mixed-race heritage. 

“A lot of the science fiction I grew up reading, all the characters were straight, and most of them were white, and that wasn’t something that really represented my own experience,” says Jimenez, who is half-Filipino. “I just wanted to add whatever little I could to what feels like a growing wave of new genre.”

Jimenez’s debut, The Vanished Birds, is his attempt to better represent his own experience within a sci-fi framework, but it’s no “little” addition to the genre landscape. Diverse in both its cast of characters and the scope of its ideas, it combines satisfyingly complex science fiction concepts—interstellar travel via folding time, humanity’s future in the stars and more—with an emotional core that feels at once intimate and grand. It evokes the fate of a universe while also focusing with deft intensity on the bonds that form between lost people. 

Diverse in both its cast of characters and the scope of its ideas, ‘The Vanished Birds’ combines satisfyingly complex science fiction concepts with an emotional core that feels at once intimate and grand.

Jimenez began working on the novel when he was studying for his MFA at Emerson College. In an effort to draw his classmates into his story without burying them under piles of science fiction lore, he started in a somewhat self-contained way, composing the opening chapter of the book almost like a piece of short fiction.

“I felt like I had to prove that I could write genre with some level of emotional intelligence, and that meant writing this fleshed-out short story of this person’s life,” he says. “So it’s very grounded but in a heightened reality.”

This early approach helped to shape The Vanished Birds as a series of individual narratives that merge into a satisfying whole. At the heart of it all is Nia Imani, a woman who exists outside of time due to frequent travel through “folding” space. When she is entrusted with the care of a mysterious boy who fell from the sky, a boy whose only communication is the haunting flute music he plays, Nia finds an anchor point for her life, and the two forge an almost familial bond. As it becomes apparent that the boy’s gifts are much more than musical, the unlikely duo find themselves caught in a struggle with universe-altering stakes.

As those stakes become clear, Jimenez covers sci-fi concepts ranging from the corporate future of space settlement to the interpersonal dynamics of a starship crew. But above all these themes is the question of lost time, something Jimenez is deeply invested in as our technology-driven world rushes forward.

“I’m very much concerned with lost time, mostly just with my own life and wondering if I’m making the right choices,” he says, “if writing a book is the right decision for me right now, and if I’ll be happy by the end of my life. If I was like, ‘Well, I wrote three books and then I died,’ is that enough to call a satisfying life? With each passing year, time seems to be going quicker and quicker, and that seems to be the trend for everyone throughout the arc of their own lives, whether it’s a brain chemistry thing or just perception of time as we experience more of it. You lose more of it faster the more you experience it, and it’s a very frightening thing. And whatever you’re frightened of is very useful material for writing an entire book about.”

“If I was like, ‘Well, I wrote three books and then I died,’ is that enough to call a satisfying life?”

Certainly, The Vanished Birds reflects Jimenez’s anxieties, but great works of genre fiction cast light upon the hopes of their authors’ eras as well as the concerns, and he’s accomplished that as well. There’s a great thread of light running through this spellbinding book, rooted in the joy that comes from the family we find on our journeys, the people we choose to accept as our own.

“I’ve found the most fulfilling years of my life have been when I had agency over who I was with and who I laughed with and who I ate with,” Jimenez says. “The stories that I fell in love with were always about characters who were lost but who found love and safety in the arms of people who were at first strangers but then became so much closer, because they had active agency over the love they shared.” 

It’s this joy, the sense that we can make our own families, that makes The Vanished Birds soar.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a review of The Vanished Birds.

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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.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest idiosyncratic novel leaps easily from the micro to the macro, beginning with two cryptid-hunting friends and expanding to encompass an entire alternate history of the development of life itself. Through it all, Tchaikovsky’s irrepressible wit and effervescent intelligence serve as lifelines for the reader as The Doors of Eden take them on a truly unique and fantastical ride. We talked to Tchaikovsky about crafting his latest awe-inspiring trip through space and time.

You excel at creating a tone that bounces between humor and horror. How do you strike that balance as a writer?
That’s kind of you to say. I suspect the rather appalling truth is that while I’m aware of various things that horrify others, they don’t necessarily horrify me in the same way. The human-spider interactions in the middle of Children of Time, say, or certain adventurous scenes in its sequel, aren’t written as horror, because they’re written from the point of view of the thing that horrifies, rather than the beneficiaries of that emotion. That discontinuity also tends to produce the horror, and the incongruity of the horror makes the humor, and the humor makes the horror that much worse.

You dreamed up a menagerie of beasts both small and large for this book. Did you scrap any concepts for other life-forms from the great beyond? Care to share any?
There’s the whole of evolutionary creation to plunder. I’d have liked to do more with anomalocarids and other Cambrian explosion fauna, because a real seed for this book was Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, which includes a detailed description of the mainstays of that fossil biota. And I leave large gaps—there’s about a hundred million years of dinosaurs I never touched, mostly because dinosaur speculative evolution is one of the more common areas of thought. And it might have been fun to depart further from current evolution—have some wild card rise to dominance in a later era, such as a tertiary invertebrate, or late birds or fish. Most vertebrates are teleost fish after all and there’s no reason why they couldn’t have a resurgence. However, having a narrative that follows each “new” group from when it made its grand mark in the fossil record is probably easier for the reader.

“. . . to expand the mind with grand ideas is a great thing.”

The relationship between Lee and Mal anchors the book. What characters or people did you draw from, even informally, when shaping their relationship?
I think I drew a little from a lot of people to construct the pair of them. Mal is very much based on an old live-action role-playing friend of mine, plus a few other people. Overall, they are each about 50% made up and 50% stitched together from many, many friends and acquaintances.

Julian’s character shows the potential effects of understanding more than we ever wanted to. Do you think most of us are unready or unwilling to have our worldviews totally turned upside down?
I think most of us would be just as lost as poor Julian is, but you can never know until it should happen. A lot of portal-fantasy/science-fiction characters, having gone through the mirror, display a sang-froid about the whole business that I know I wouldn’t. I can certainly think of a few people of my acquaintance who I feel would be absolutely in their element if they woke up in another world.

A phrase that kept playing in my mind while reading was the phrase "a sense of wonder." Does that phrase ring true to you when thinking about this book?
Absolutely, yes. The whole book is kind of a background hymn to the wonders, not of any particular imaginary world, but the actual real world, past and present, which we so often take for granted. Life (back me up, Sir David Attenborough) is so varied and so intricate and so beautiful, and we waste a great deal of it. And beyond that, yes, I think a sense of wonder is an integral part of a certain kind of science fiction—to expand the mind with grand ideas is a great thing.

I found myself completely riveted by the interludes from the fictional book within this book, Other Edens. How did these fit into your plan for the story? Did you want to use such a structure from the beginning?
Honestly, I had to practice a great deal of discipline to bring them down to just what’s in the book! The interludes and their thought experiments are absolutely the inspiration for the book, without which it wouldn’t exist. And of course, many of them provide the useful background on what is going on, which would be cumbersome to try and insert in the actual text, but many others are just there for the hell of it, to show the myriad variety of the worlds I’m presenting.

In a lot of ways, The Doors of Eden challenges us to think about what we don't know or see in the world around us. What frontiers in science do you think hold the most promise for opening our eyes to something important that was there all along?
If we achieve anything like a real artificial intelligence (not just a complex algorithm that can learn how to fake being people) then that should show us a great deal about how we ourselves think, and might also find a lot of priceless but unintuitive solutions to other problems we have, in that way that computers sometimes can. Similarly, if the recent discoveries on Venus lead to the discovery of actual extraterrestrial life, that would teach us so much about the possibilities of evolution and biology in very non-Earthlike conditions (or in the buried oceans of Europa, say, or some other place within the solar system—or even an exoplanet, although that has its own raft of practical issues).

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Doors of Eden.

When you think back to writing this book, are there passages that you remember writing more vividly than others?
The museum sequence, frankly, was an absolute bear. I rewrote it several times over, and ended up breaking it up a lot between the characters to try and tame it. So, I remember that vividly enough, for all the wrong reasons. Beyond that, my chain of evolutionary logic that led to immortal giant trilobites is something I’m pretty damn proud of. . .

If you could dream up another Earth, a unique paradise just for you, what would it look like?
I wanted to make some cheap joke about having lots of legs and a warning that it contains spiders, but honestly I think what my perfect paradise would have would be variety—multiple viewpoints, multiple minds, complexity built of diversity. And not in danger of being extinguished by monstrous short-sighted greed, for preference.

Fantasy author Stina Leicht makes her science fiction debut with the rollicking Persephone Station, which follows a crime lord with a heart of gold and a mercenary who team up to protect a pacificist alien species from a ruthless corporation. We talked to Leicht about making the shift between genres, how she devised the unique characters that populate her world and more.

Persephone Station is your first science fiction novel. What inspired you to switch from writing fantasy and what did you enjoy about sci-fi? Was there anything from fantasy that you missed?
My editor asked me if I had any ideas for a science fiction novel. No, really. That’s the whole story. I’ve been into SF since I discovered Star Trek at age 4. Now, ask me why I didn’t start with science fiction.

The Boys Club.

After decades of hearing that women can’t write science fiction and all the snide comments about “hard” versus “soft” SF . . . *eyeroll* well . . . the prospect was unappealing. I might even use the word intimidating. So, I wrote fantasy first. Of course, when I think back on it now, I don’t know why I thought SF would be more terrifying than writing about the troubles in Northern Ireland. Fear doesn’t have to make sense, I guess.

What I enjoy most about SF is the optimism—the thought that humanity will still be kicking in 300 years or whatever. I love thinking that we’ll come up with some way to stop killing the planet and, thus, ourselves. I want to believe that we’ll solve hunger and the problem of unequal opportunity and provide education for everyone. If everyone gets a shot at living up to their potential, we all benefit. And I guess you know why Star Trek is my favorite. Mind you, I enjoy the action/thriller stuff too. Clearly.

"I didn’t want the aliens to be perfect victims—no one is a perfect anything."

Anyway, writing SF versus writing fantasy isn’t that different. Technically, they both fall under surrealism. You have to focus on getting different details right, of course. For that reason, there’s nothing to miss. It’s not like I can’t go back to writing fantasy. I even indulge in horror sometimes. Having range as a writer is a good thing.

Do you plan to write a sequel, or more science fiction in general?
In my experience, sequels depend upon the publisher and how many copies are sold. I’d love to write more novels and stories set in this world, but I have to wait and see how Persephone Station does. Mind you, I’m already working on a new science fiction novel. I think I’ll be hanging out in this end of the genre pool for a while.

How did you come up with the idea of the Emissaries?
When I sat down to write Persephone Station, I wanted to write something feminist. The setting, the characters, the aliens—I wanted them all to mean something. I like building layers into stories. I’m a rereader, and it’s fun to find something new in a story that I like. That’s why I prefer to craft the surface parts (action, characters, dialogue) that make the story fun and, then provide the more cerebral bits that a reader can get into. But you don’t have to pay attention to the thinky parts to enjoy the story.

So I gave the aliens stereotypically feminine qualities. Their purpose for existing is to serve as mediators and peacemakers. They’re strongly discouraged from aggression. (If you don’t think these are feminine qualities, I invite you to observe a women’s martial arts class. Instructors often struggle to get the average woman comfortable with hitting another person.) A majority of women’s labor is unseen, unappreciated and unpaid, including house cleaning, care work, cooking, laundry and so on. Historically, men have taken credit for women’s creations, too. Finally, as a teen girl, I felt all this pressure to transform myself into whatever it was the male in my life desired. Boyfriend is into country music? Listen to country music. Boyfriend is into tabletop games? Be into tabletop games. I didn’t give much thought to what I wanted for the longest time. The young men I was with weren’t interested in what I wanted either.

I didn’t want the aliens to be perfect victims—no one is a perfect anything. So I made the Emissaries powerfully passive-aggressive. Because I live in the South and passive-aggressive is peak femme.

Your characters have such a jovial sense of fellowship to them, and the pacing of the story feels like a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons. Was this intentional? Do you play tabletop roleplaying games?
Ha! I learned from the Sir Terry Pratchett school of character and dialog. So I didn’t have RPGs in mind at all. I do play and have for decades, but the pacing should be standard action/adventure pacing because that’s what the plot is based on. But that’s just me.

The following contains spoilers! Click to show.

What do you do to find inspiration? Do any of your characters have a fun story behind their inception?
I’m a big fan of observing and experiencing life. Long walks with my husband are great—he’s extremely funny. Travel is inspiring too. Listening to ordinary people chat with one another. That kind of thing. I love wandering through junk shops and thinking about what the people who owned the things there were like. I also study how other writers write characters. I like people. I suspect you have to if you’re going to write about people. Sometimes I borrow qualities from people I know—no character is 100% anyone I know in real life. That wouldn’t be right. And I only use names and qualities from people I like. I don’t believe it’s ethical to put anyone you dislike into a story. It feels creepy, you know? Comedy is another influence. My favorite films contain snappy dialogue. Have you seen The Thin Man? Good stuff.

The way my imagination works is I start with a person and then I follow them around in my mind. It’s the same thing as daydreaming. Usually, they’re happy to tell me all about themselves. That’s great until you end up with a tight-lipped character or a character that behaves a certain way and refuses to explain why. For example, when I wrote Of Blood and Honey, Mary Kate kept apologizing about the baby. It made no sense. None of what happened was her fault, but she wouldn’t stop apologizing. So I paused the scene in my mind and asked. And that was when I found out that she’d been pregnant before. That was amazing.

Do you typically write in long, protracted sessions or in quick bursts? Or another way altogether?
Each story or novel is a bit different. I’ve written shorter works all in one go. Last Drink Bird Head was like that. Usually it happens in chunks. Five hundred words here. Two thousand words there. Writing requires persistence.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Persephone Station.

How have you been holding up in the pandemic? Has it affected your writing process?
Like everyone, it’s affected how much bandwidth I have for creativity. In spite of the mythology around the creative arts—people who are in insecure situations with tons of drama do not do their best work. Creativity requires safety and security. It has to be OK to make mistakes. If you’re worried about whether or not you’re going to eat or be homeless, you’re not going to be very creative because you’ll be under too much pressure. (And that’s why turning a hobby into a profession can sometimes kill your love of it.) I’m super lucky. I’ve a stable home life. My husband rocks. We’ve been married for 19 years and we get along great. That said, anxiety takes up a lot of headspace, and I’m an Olympic-class worrier, but you have to push on.

What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Honestly? The vaccine. I can’t wait until everyone gets the vaccine. Being able to write in a coffee shop again would be amazing. I miss bookstores and movie theaters more than just about anything. Traveling would be lovely too. But above all else—I’m looking forward to there not being hundreds of thousands of deaths in the news. I want everyone to be safe, healthy and happy.

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.

Author photo © Richard Wilson Photography.