Six Books with Alex Shvartsman

Alex Shvartsman (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of The Best of All Possible Planets (2026), Kakistocracy (2023), The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani’s Crown (2019). Over 150 of his stories and translations from Russian have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Nature, Reactor, Strange Horizons, and several Year’s Best volumes. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction, was a three-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction, and was a two-time finalist for the BSFA Award. Read his work at alexshvartsman.com.

Today he tells us about his Six Books.

1. What book are you currently reading?

I tend to read or listen to a couple of books at a time: one in English and one in Russian. I’m finishing up Operation Bounce House, a standalone sci-fi adventure by Matt Dinniman (of Dungeon Crawler Carl fame), where a colony is invaded by remotely operated drones and mechs controlled by gamers from Earth. Although set in the far future, it has plenty to say about current gamer culture, politics, and AI.

I’m also reading Tunnel by Yana Vagner, the author whose novel The Epidemic was adapted into the To the Lake series which aired on Netflix. Tunnel is a thriller where hundreds of people are trapped in a tunnel underneath Moscow, the entry points shut due to an unknown catastrophe on the surface.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky, coming out later this month. Children of Time is one of my favorite SF books of the past decade or so and I’m excited to see where he takes the series next.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to reread?

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, which is my favorite Russian-language book. I reread it every decade or so and it always feels fresh, benefiting from added perspective.

4. A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written?

Birthright by Mike Resnick; it’s not one of his better-known books, but it’s fantastic and quite ambitious in its scope. It tells the story of the human species from the moment we reached the stars and until humanity’s demise, spanning tens of thousands of years, and he does it through interconnected short stories that set up the universe he’s written many novels in.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that holds a special place in your heart?

The Snow Queen and Summer Queen duology by Joan Vinge. I love those books dearly and really enjoy her other novels as well. That’s another set of books I need to reread!

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

The Best of All Possible Planets is a space opera comedy. This book is inspired by Candide and structured as a series of Futurama episodes. It is full-on absurd and funny, and the sort of thing I love writing the most. The audiobook is narrated by Eli Schiff (Succession, The White Lotus) and Lewis Black (The Daily Show, Inside Out)! Plus there are corgis.

This book is presently on Kickstarter, and you can snag unique rewards as well as copies of the book itself in four different formats.



Thank you, Alex!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.