“So what do you write?”
All writers hate this question.
I’ve gotten it several times over the past few weeks, each one a smiling opportunity to make a new fan and a new friend. But, just in case I’m not standing in front of you (or on the other side of a Zoom call), I’m putting together this post to explain a little of where I’ve been and where I’m going.
And, who knows, even those of you who’ve been on the journey with me might find this useful!
So this is what I write:
Since my earliest days back in the depths of 1999, my sci-fi and fantasy has always had a philosophical bent, what Amazon.com now calls visionary SF. The first SF story I ever sold was a meditation on karate’s iron body techniques and the power of hope, on Mars. Others have included an exploration of mystical transcendence disguised as hyperspace, an existential jaunt about the meaning of the space program long after the world’s moved on, and a vampire story contrasting Buddhist and Catholic understandings of what a vampire even is. Probably the best exemplar of my visionary SF would be my bestselling “Hull Down,” a milSF first contact that takes a severe left turn halfway through and never looks back.
Even No Time: The First Hour is visionary…albeit cunningly disguised as a murder mystery.
In 2016, of course, I discovered solarpunk, humans solving human-size problems with human gifts after a solid decade of Singularity or Apocalypse. It was a breath of fresh air, fresh green air, and I’ve been inhaling the stuff ever since. Almost all of my traditional sales since have been solarpunk, from turning the sunken city of Surat to new life to defining one’s own gender on Mars. By far the best example of pure solarpunk in my history, though, is “Glâcehouse,” from the moment Mackenzie beholds the dome that holds winter within it and it takes her breath away.
But over the last few years, a certain vigor has been creeping into my fiction. I’m not afraid to draw on the tradition of Lester Dent and Doc Savage, of Jack London’s muscular, Progressive prose, of Indiana Jones and the serials that inspired him. These new stories are drawn to larger-than-life dimensions, with characters who stand for their ideals more than Dostoevsky-certified realism and aren’t afraid to take direct action to act on them. These are the stories I’ve dubbed solarpulp. Doña Ana Lucía…
…springs from this new impulse, in all the novels and stories I’ve written of her to date, but she’s hardly alone. Gooch pulls his gun and uses his fists and some of the heroes of my new Cheminéc cycle, growing out of “Glâcehouse,” are just as red-blooded. But, by far, the best example is “Fire Marengo,” the free story you get when you sign up for my newsletter.
We passed, a shadow inside a shadow, beneath the broad lip of the Sheikh’s isle of Valhalla. Tchang reefed our sail, for we had to maneuver slow in that sliver of darkness. Far above, the sirens sang and men shouted, but us two stories below, our ears were keen on the lapping of the water. The slightest sound different could mean life or death there beneath the Sheikh’s pleasure-grounds. I kept the gaff off our starboard bow, to push Valhalla away from the little Sacramento lest we dash ourselves to pieces on the beautiful, deadly coral.
The sound that broke us was the terrible splash. You’ve all heard it, you’ve the faces for it – the sound of a man hitting the water. Tchang clapped his hand over my mouth to stifle my shout, and in my surprise I let the gaff slide off into the dark waters. Tchang and I looked to each other – the Law of the Sea demands we rescue the poor devil. Even if it might expose us. A rescue within a rescue! But I’d want a good sailor to do the same for me if I hit the drink. Even so…
I craned my neck out to get an eye of the situation. The man was floating there, buoyed by his close-necked shirtsleeves, pale and washed out in the mighty lights.
“Game overboard!”
Game? Man overboard surely.
“Is the game dispatched?”
The man shifted in the water, and here I saw illuminated the red blossom of the hole in the back of his head. It was impossible not to see.
“The game is dispatched! Tally to the Sultan of Valhalla!”
Game…now I got it. He meant hunting game. Not like you or I rustle up the occasional cougar for our supper, but as rich men do. And these weren’t no mountain lions, he was hunting men. He was hunting the entire third watch!
And more of that to come in the future – I’m wrapping up edits on the next No Time novel, No Time for the Killing Floor: The Second Hour, and querying Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …to the Future! to traditional publishers. I’ve a fistful of novelettes featuring her, from heists to heiresses to meditations on sexuality and the Peace Testimony. And, if you’re in a more sedate mood, more visionary solarpunk (with a hint of satire).
Well, there it is – where I’ve been, where I am, and where I am bound, as of 2023. But as Hope Hopkinson says, you can only plot a trajectory from where you are.
Who knows where we’ll be in five years?
I look forward to finding out.
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