Review: The Diviners Quartet by Libba Bray

A lively, flapperish adventure through 1920s America in all its diversity, plus ghosts

There’s something terribly satisfying about finding a long, engaging series. Not silly-long, like Wheel of Time, but long enough that things can get really gnarly. Kate Elliott knows what I’m talking about, as does Robin Hobb. On these very pages I’ve praised Chris Wooding’s Tales of the Ketty Jay, and now I’m pleased to be back again to tell you about Libba Bray’s Diviners quartet.

Do you like flappers? Do you like ghosts? Do you like thoughtful meditations on 1920s America, balancing gracefully on the knife edge between admiration for the optimistic spirit of a young nation and clear-sighted acknowledgment of the dark past on which that nation was founded, and continues to perpetuate as it looks towards the future? Sure you do, or else you wouldn't have got past the tagline at the top!

This quartet opens with 17-year-old girl, Evie O’Neill, a good Christian white girl raised in the heartland of Zenith, Ohio—the only surviving child of a respectable family who never really got over the death of their golden boy in World War I. Evie has a knack—a party trick, really—by which she can read objects, and uncover secrets from them. When she uncovers an awkward secret at a party, her family ships her off to live with her uncle, who runs a museum of the occult in New York. The plan is to keep her tucked out of sight just until things blow over in Zenith, but Evie, a party girl through and through, is thrilled at this opportunity to live a glamorous big-city life. In short order she is having a grand old time, cultivating friendships with philosophy-reading museum assistants, muckraking reporters, Harlem poets, showgirls, street thieves and union agitators alike. When the cops come to her uncle’s museum to consult with him on an occult-flavoured murder, she even manages to get herself invited to come along to the scene of the murder, and just like that our flapperish ghostly whodunnit is off to the races in Book 1, The Diviners.

The second book, Lair of Dreams, also opens with mysterious deaths, but in this case they are not obviously murders, but instead are related to a mysterious sleeping sickness. People go to sleep, and are enticed by some entity to dream something that starts out sweetly and turns into horrors. They do not wake up.

Although both The Diviners and Lair of Dreams tell self-contained stories, they are united by two threads: one occult and one mundane. The first is a repeated image a man in a stovepipe hat, lurking in the background of these deadly occurrences, who seems to be connected with the release of these supernatural horrors upon the mundane world. Yet the mundane world is itself up to no good, because a government agency, Project Buffalo, seems to be also involved in everything: from the death of Evie’s brother during the war, to mysterious disappearances in immigrant communities; to, oddly, other knacks that her friends turn out to possess. Some have the ability to walk in dreams, or to turn unnoticeable, or to heal, to see the future. These knacks are what define the titual Diviners of this series, in fact—so actually the occult and the mundane are intertwined in sinister ways. These twisty interweavings define the structure of the last two books of the series—Before the Devil Breaks You and The King of Crows.

What makes this series work so well is the way Bray never loses track of the larger plot structure even as each book-sized story plays out. Thus, we get hints of Project Buffalo and the man in the stovepipe hat from the very beginning, and we meet side characters that in the early stages seem to have no other role in the main storyline than to round out a rather sprawling dramatis personnae.  In some cases those appearances are only the briefest flash on the page before they come into their own in later books. For example, Ling Chan, a half-Irish half-Chinese girl who can walk in dreams, appears only momentarily in The Diviners, but becomes a central character in Lair of Dreams, where the mystery of the sleeping sickness makes dream-walking a valuable skill. Bill Johnson appears only as a blind beggar with a gambling problem at the start, but his character arc in later books is rich and important.

In other cases, the characters are fully introduced in The Diviners, but their contributions to the first book’s plot are secondary. In this way, we meet Memphis Campbell, a black poet in Harlem, and his little brother Isaiah. Theta Knight is a dancer with the Zigfield follies, living with her dearest friend Henry DuBois in the same building as Evie and her uncle. Downstairs from them is Mabel Rose, the daughter of a society lady and a Jewish progressive agitator. (I suppose I should mention  Jericho Jones, the mightily forgettable Jericho Jones, who is so dull that Bray literally drops him in a hole in the ground for the climax of The Diviners to get him out of the way. He’s very strong and broody and is kind of a cyborg.) All of their stories have a chance to shine because this series uses its ensemble cast so effectively across the entire stretch of narrative. Nothing feels rushed. Everyone gets their moment in the sun, even if that moment doesn’t come until Book 4.

In addition to the long-form pacing, this series excels at characterization and effortless diversity. We’ve got white people, Black people (both big-city northern and rural southern), Chinese immigrants (both newly arrived and nth-generation), Russian immigrants, native Americans, Irish, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, gay, straight, lesbian, ace. You name it, it’s there, unforced and natural because America in the 1920s was a diverse place, no matter what conservative critics might try to claim in their evocations of artificial nostalgia. And beyond diversity of people, we have a dizzying diversity of settings too, again taking advantage of every flavour of 1920s America. Not just the wealthy white flappers in New York, but the Harlem Renaissance, Chinatown, queer nightlife, glitzy showgirls, eugenics movements, Vaudeville. Outside New York, too, we have Midwestern small towns, the Deep South, hell, we even get a travelling jazz band and a circus. There are acrobats! Lions!

This book is a cornucopia of peoples and places and cultures and attitudes, richly researched, skillfully plotted and paced, sensitively told, and full of wit and humor and a joyful revelry of 1920s slang. Sure, at times the prose can get a bit purple; at times the sweeping meditations on ~*America!*~ can be a bit overblown; and as I’ve mentioned before Jericho Jones is a bit of a snore. But I can’t hold that against these books. They have so much to offer, and work so well, on so many levels, that the occasional clunker is a mere drop in an ocean of otherwise chewy, deep, captivating period fantasy.

(Oh, and I can’t end without mentioning that January LaVoy does a fabulous job on the audiobook narration.)

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Highlights

• Flappers and ghosts • Thoughtful meditations on the cultural foundations of America, both good and bad
• Balanced ensemble cast • A slightly purplish tinge in some meditative bits

Nerd coefficient: 8, well worth your time and attention

References

Bray, Libba. The Diviners. [Little, Brown, and Company, 2012]
Bray, Libba. Lair of Dreams. [Little, Brown, and Company, 2015]
Bray, Libba. Before the Devil Breaks you. [Atom, 2017]
Bray, Libba. The King of Crows. [Atom, 2020] 

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative

Interview with comic book author Henry Barajas

In the U.S., the period from September 15 to October 15 is officially designated as National Hispanic Heritage Month. So today we're showcasing the work of one of the many creatives of Latin heritage making awesome things these days: Henry Barajas, who wrote the graphic novel La Voz de M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo, about his great-grandfather Ramon Jaurigue's role in the struggle for the rights of the Yaqui tribe in Arizona, and is now writing the four-issue comic Helm Greycastle, an epic fantasy set in an alternate Mexico. He has generously taken some of his time to talk to Nerds of a Feather about his career and his creative process.

NOAF: To begin, tell us a bit about yourself and your life story.

HB: I'm a fourth-generation Tucsonan. Currently, I live in Los Angeles. I can't believe it has been six years already.

My life story is a lot like other millennials who were born on the cusp of the 80s and raised by children of the 70s. Comics raised me. I got a lot more out of Batman stories from the pages and the animated series than what weekend Bible school tried to drill into me.

I've been a lot of things: banker, bill collector, journalist, marketing manager, jazz festival co-organizer, pizza delivery guy, and radio deejay. But I've always wanted to be a writer―and that's what the world sees me as now.

NOAF: How did you become a comic book creator?

HB: I started publishing my own stories when I was 18. My first one was called El Loco. I co-created that character with political cartoonist Arnie Bermudez in response to Governor Jan Brewer's attempt to implement Senate Bill 1070. That was a dark, embarrassing time for Arizona. It was an assault on migrants and Latinx education. I wanted to use the power of comics to talk about these injustices committed against brown people.

So it was great to do something like La Voz de M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo with J. Gonzo, Bernardo Brice, and Claire Napier. It was like I was giving back to that 18-year-old kid who knew he wanted to make a difference but hadn't lived enough life yet.

NOAF: Which authors and artists inspire you?

HB: I was inspired by Arizona Daily Star political cartoonist David Fitzsimmons. I got to watch him grow and respond to the world in real time. I always wanted to think I was interesting and smart enough to do what he did, but without being able to draw. When I actually got to work for the Star, it was a dream come true to be in the same newsroom as him.

Eventually, I got my hands on a copy of Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. I knew I wanted to be a poor man's version of Joe. His words resonated with me in a visceral way.

But I can go on and on about who in comics inspired me. Just to name a few names: the Hernandez Bros, Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marc Silvestri, David Lapham, and Mike and Laura Allard.

NOAF: What obstacles have you seen in the comic book industry for people of diverse backgrounds?

HB: The comic book industry is comprised of nepotism. Since the start of the business, it was curated and designed not by people of color. Systemic racism and sexism have dominated the medium. There's a preconceived notion that "Latinx comics don't sell" and "there aren't any women artists or writers." The people who call the shots are myopic. Hopefully, we have more people who can see the value in BIPOC, with an emphasis on non-binary creators.

Personally, I've had to raise money using Kickstarter to pay my collaborators upfront, because the archaic system solicits months in advance, with little or no confidence that there will be royalties to cover the production costs. So the main obstacle is getting access to money. People need to eat and make their art.

NOAF: La Voz de M.A.Y.O.: Tata Rambo (Image Comics, 2019) weaves together a piece of your family history with an episode of U.S. history. What was it like to write this book?

HB: It was not what I expected. My family's history was buried for so long. It caused a lot of anger and resentment with the powers that be that concealed Ramon's involvement in getting Interstate 10 moved to avoid displacing thousands of families while helping a Native American tribe that was one of the last to gain federal recognition.

Thankfully, I was able to hear directly from the Yaqui people about La Voz de M.A.Y.O.'s involvement―and talking to some folks who were directly involved was something special. Once you dive into the rabbit hole of all the times this country has wronged, it's hard to keep your head from spinning. It was a five-year journey that took a lot of time, youth, money, and gumption. I definitely will not do that again. But I say that and I've got plans to do something similar.

NOAF: What unique properties of the comic book format helped you in building the narrative of this book?

HB: There is something about the stillness of a comic book. I think it has a beautiful ability to hold your attention without a time limit like prose, but with artistic beauty. It's one thing to describe a Tucson sunset, but Gonzo made it the whole book's color palette. You can't hear the chants of the Native people making demands of the city of Tucson from the comic, but it can be as loud as you want in your own head.

NOAF: What has been the response from the public and from the Yaqui tribe?

HB: The general public's response has been what I thought it was going to be: shocked. Educators in Tucson have been very instrumental in showing this to their students. Librarians from all over the country have really done a great job with making sure this is displayed during Latino and Native heritage months. It was also seen for sale at the Smithsonian.

From the Yaqui tribe, it has been radio silence. Not surprising, since the group has been omitted from the history books.

NOAF: Is there any part of Tata Rambo's story that didn't fit in the book and you wish you could have included?

HB: Rambo worked with the local film and television productions to make sure there were actual Native people on set or in front of the camera. Due to time and funds, I wasn't able to logically add it to the graphic novel.

NOAF: More recently, you've been working on the fantasy series Helm Greycastle (Image Comics, 2021). What excites you about writing fantasy inspired by your own culture?

HB: It's refreshing. I wanted to show some range. I have been writing non-fiction, journalism stuff, for a while. It was important to me to prove to myself and to the comic book industry that I'm more than a Latinx writer. I have ideas and things to say that live outside of reality.

NOAF: What elements of Mesoamerican fantasy distinguish it from European fantasy?

HB: The setting is the big one. It's weird that Game of Thrones is in its own universe that excludes every kind of person that isn't white. I have a feeling that readers are going to pick this up and see the Tolkien influences. My mini-pitch for the series is "what if Mordor had a southside."

NOAF: White authors have often tried their hand at including Mesoamerican culture in their fantasy. What have they gotten wrong and what do you wish you could tell them?

HB: The best example is the hedonistic, mindless sacrificing from films like Apocalypto. Mesoamerican history isn't as widely popular as Greek mythology. There's a lot of educating when you try to tell a story like this. The suspension of disbelief is clouded by trying to understand the source material. Even the word "Aztec" is not the proper term to describe the people of Mexica. I felt like I needed a doctrine to even attempt to tell this story, but you have to move past that fear. Your reader is always smarter than you, and they will let you know when you screw something up.

NOAF: So far, Helm Greycastle has been announced as having four issues. Are there plans for a continuation?

HB: It's show business, so it lives and dies on sales. I need to sell the book and prove that there's an audience for it. If it gets picked up as a movie or television show, it makes it easier to tell more stories.

NOAF: Apart from La Voz de M.A.Y.O. and Helm Greycastle, where else have you published your creations?

HB: My favorite thing I've ever written was when I spent a morning drinking at The Buffet Bar. That was me doing a bad Joe Mitchell impression, but it's honestly my favorite thing on the internet.

NOAF: How does a comic book author make their work stand out in a market overstuffed with big franchises?

HB: I think it's important to cultivate a following in any way you can. I started it by telling a story only I can tell. La Voz de M.A.Y.O. opened doors for me. Trying to achieve a level of celebrity is futile, but it's somewhat necessary. I'm still trying to figure that out.

NOAF: Can you give us any details abour your future projects?

HB: I've got a true crime story in the chamber.

NOAF: Besides yourself, what other Latinx comic book creators should we be paying attention to?

HB: There are so many Latinx authors and artists out there. Again, just to name a few: Vita Ayala, Isabel Quintero, J. Gonzo, Jarred Luján, Nicky Rodriguez, Breena Nuñez, Professor Latinx, and Dr. Theresa Rojas.

NOAF: Any advice for young Latinx nerds who dream of one day publishing their stories?

HB: Don't listen to anyone who tries to limit you and your potential. If you need to tell a story, do everything you can to make it possible. Just tell the story. We need to hear, listen, and know it.

You can follow Henry Barajas on Twitter here: @henrybarajas

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Interview: Corey J. White author of Repo Virtual

At what point does an AI reach personhood? Once you've defined personhood, and what it takes to get there, what now?  If you suddenly found yourself in possession of a sentient AI, what would you do? Or I guess, the more interesting question is, what wouldn't you do?

If that sounds interesting,  Corey J White's Repo Virtual may be right up your alley.  Online,  Julius Dax is a repoman. But IRL,  he's a thief.   While nearly everyone plays in the online intergalactic war in the stars,  in real life, people are starving and hustling just to make it through another day.   Think Neuromancer meets Ready Player One, but crank the capitalism up to even worse, and bring in a ton more diversity.

Something that caught my eye, when the earliest reviews started coming out,  was the possibilities of being someone else in a Virtual world.  Julius has a physical disability.  Can he leave that behind in the virtual world?  Every time I make an avatar in an online game, I feel like it's my opportunity to  be a more attractive/interesting version of myself - taller, thinner, fewer zits. Now I know Repo Virtual isn't about any of those things, but still, it got my attention and made me want to learn more about the novel and about the author.   A lot of times I get something completely different out of a piece of fiction than what was intended.

Corey J. White was kind enough to answer all my ridiculous questions while offering a view behind the scenes of how this intriguing novel came to be. Other topics we discuss include AI Personhood, what might a teenage AI think about,  sci-fi body-horror novel, Creeper Magazine, and more! And I've got to say, now I'm even more interested in reading the book!  Repo Virtual is making a number of recommended and "best of the month" lists. It could be exactly the escapism we all need right now.

Corey J White is also the author of the space opera Voidwitch Saga series of novellas - Killing Gravity, Void Black Shadow, and Static Ruin.  He lives in Melbourne, Australia. You can learn more about Corey by checking out his website or following him on twitter at @cjwhite.

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF: I've read some early reviews on GoodReads, and what stood out to me first is how much your readers love the characters in Repo Virtual. Introduce us to Julius Dax (JD), Soo-hyun, Troy, and Enda. Who are these folks and what are they all about?

Corey J. White: JD is our window into the world - a precarious worker, online repo man, and real-life thief with scruples. Soo-hyun is JD's step-sibling. He loves them immensely, but is never really sure he can trust them. They've gotten caught up in a streaming cult living in the dilapidated flood ruins on the edge of Songdo, and the cult leader is the one that puts the entire plot into motion: tasking Soo-hyun with recruiting JD to steal a virus she claims to have a hand in creating.
Troy is JD's ex. They both still love each other, but they've been too hurt to admit it. He's also a philosophy professor, which comes in handy when you're trying to talk about the personhood of AI. Enda is the retired operative turned private eye that's blackmailed into retrieving the stolen virus... but she's also not the type of women you should ever even consider blackmailing.

NOAF:  Repo Virtual is being compared to Neuromancer, Ready Player One, and other novels that involve cyberpunk and people working in virtual worlds. What were your inspirations for Repo Virtual? How does it feel to be compared to William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk?

Corey J. White: Neuromancer was less of an inspiration and more of a touchstone for Repo Virtual. I almost didn't want to write an "AI heist" plot because I knew it would be compared to Neuromancer, and any cyberpunk book is going to suffer in comparison to the formative text, but the more I thought about the story and the themes I wanted to address, the more I realised that the heist was the best way to go (for me, at that point in time). Then once I'd made that choice, I couldn't not recognise Neuromancer with the book, but it's more something I reference, rather than anything I was inspired by.

The real inspiration came largely from the way Damien Williams talks about the personhood of non-biological intelligences, and searching for a way to talk about that in a story. All the disparate ideas I had for the story only really started to come together when I realised what I wanted to write about.

Other inspirations include Nexus War, the first MMORPG I ever really lost myself in, and one that I made friends from that I still talk to today; articles and stories about EvE Online (but not the game itself); reportage on some contemporary Silicon Valley adjacent cults; the increasing cyberpunk-ification of our lives; and I took some inspiration for the structure of the story from Nick Harkaway's Gnomon. I don't think I would have written one of the POVs the way I have if I hadn't read his novel.

NOAF:  Something I love about the idea of virtual reality is that I can be anyone I want there. I can be 8 inches taller, I can have my ideal beach body. JD has a physical disability that hampers in him the real world. Do your characters take advantage of virtual reality to present a different version of themselves? Does virtual reality give them other benefits (or disadvantages)?

Corey J. White: For a book with "Virtual" in the title, the Virtual Reality stuff in the book is admittedly pretty slim. If I'd gone too far down that route I would have been stepping on Neal Stephenson's toes too with Snow Crash.

That said, in the book, Augmented and Virtual realities are just another facet of a hyper-connected, digitised life, a deception that sometimes scrapes at JD's psyche like pop-up ads in your browser window. In a virtual world, JD can walk without a limp and without pain, but that just tells him he can't trust it. At least if it hurts, he knows it's real.

NOAF:  I'm a sucker for anything AI related. HAL, Data, the three laws, how does sentience work, hook me up with that positronic thinks-it-understands-people goodness! How did you develop the AI in Repo Virtual?

Corey J. White: Because I'm specifically looking at the personhood of AI, I ended up looking at it in the terms of relationships, both the relationship this AI forges as the story unfolds, and relationships between ideas, concepts, people, history, etc, allowing the AI to gain context and understanding beyond the level of a simple data analysis tool. So it's AI as an agent of connection, in more than one way.

One thought I had early on in the development of the book was that if we created a race of strong AI that could travel out into the universe longer after humankind has gone extinct, they might look back on us the way kids look back at dinosaurs. That when the AI are in their developmental stages, they'd all have a favourite human, whether that's a great figures from history, or just one particular teenager from Osaka in 2019 who created their all-time favourite meme.

So I guess I was thinking of AI as our future children, and what we might owe them, rather than thinking of them as powerful tools of corporate control.

NOAF: What was your writing process like for this novel? Are you a plotter, or a pantser?

Corey J. White: The strangest thing about the process with Repo Virtual was that I signed the contract with just an outline and an introduction, which was a first for me. So every time I was faced with self-doubt or doubts about the book I was writing, I had to push that aside and keep going, because I'd already signed the paperwork and taken the money . . .

But, yes, I'm a plotter. Of course, the plot as planned may not survive contact with the blank page, and that's alright. I think some people push back against the idea of plotting because they think they'll be too constricted by it. The secret though is that it's your plot, and you can change, destroy, or ignore it as you see fit, as and when the story starts to take you to other places. It's not a plan, it's a map, and sometimes you want to set the map aside and let yourself get lost.

NOAF:  What's next for you? Do you see yourself writing more stories about JD and his adventures in Neo Songdo?

Corey J. White: Next for me (because I've almost finished the first draft already) is a sci-fi body-horror novel about our culpability and responsibilities in the face of mass extinction caused by anthropocentric climate change. After that I already have a loose idea of the sequel, but I'm also putting aside notes on a Repo Virtual follow-up. It wouldn't be a proper sequel, because I've told the story of all those characters (well, Mirae could reappear, who knows), but something that uses the world I've set up to delve into some more themes concerning this online reality we've constructed for ourselves. I'd particularly be looking at some of the questions you were asking about virtual reality before, but in regards to augmented reality.

NOAF:  What are some favorite books, comics, movies, TV shows, and other entertainment that you've enjoyed lately?

Corey J. White: This could easily get out of hand, but, recently I've read and enjoyed Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Octavia Butler's Clay's Ark, Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue Deconnick, Emma Rios, and others, and Stranger Than We Can Imagine by John Higgs.

TV-wise, I recently started on Castlevania Season 3, which has more great additions to an already stellar cast, and the dialogue tells me that Warren Ellis was really enjoying himself when he was writing it. I've also been rewatching Schitt's Creek in the lead up to the final season. Catherine O'Hara is a treasure. And I finally saw First Reformed. I should have watched it on release as it definitely shares some DNA with the book I'm currently writing.

NOAF:  On your website, you mention your involvement with Oh Nothing Press, and something about "Weird Cultural Errata". Those being three of my favorite words, what is Oh Nothing Press all about? Where can we learn more?

Corey J. White: I guess the whole point of Oh Nothing Press is that it can be about whatever we want it to be about. So far we've released two capsules - the first was MechaDeath, a story of cosmic black metal mecha warfare told with a meticulously designed zine and some fantastic t-shirt designs.

The second capsule was Creeper Magazine issue 1, and our third capsule will be Creeper issue 2. I sometimes say that Creeper is about the horror of The Now, but that doesn't really say much about the content, so, to quote: Weird crime, conspiracies, paranoia, folklore, the occult, modern myth, bizarre philosophy, fringe tech and genre-exploding fiction. CREEPER is the sort of magazine that could never exist in the mainstream, so we had to make it ourselves!

It's really interesting watching themes and through-lines come through as we're putting together Creeper 2, so I'm keen to see it out in the world later this year.

After that, we've always got ideas for new projects, it just comes down to which of those ideas keep us inspired, and how much time we can spare after day jobs and other creative projects.

NOAF: Thank you so much Corey!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery.

Interview: Gideon Marcus, Kitra and Galactic Journey

You very likely know Gideon Marcus from his Hugo nominated fanzine Galactic Journey, his work as a space historian, and his educational lectures, but did you know he also writes fiction?  His short fiction appears in the anthology Tales of Alternate Earths 2, and his debut YA novel, Kitra, is available now.

Nineteen-year-old Kitra dreams of traveling to the stars like her mother, and she jumps at the chance to fly into space on her own ship.  A diverse crew of nerdy young adults on an old junked Navy ship,  what could possibly go wrong? Well. . .  everything.  Before they know it,  they are stranded. No fuel, no way home, and no one coming to rescue them.  Did I mention Kitra's ex-girlfriend is among the crew?  Talk about awkward!

Kitra is a story of perseverance in the face of fear and uncertainty, and that we only get through times like these by helping each other.   Uplifting and positive,  this novel speaks to all ages.

Galactic Journey is Gideon's Serling award winning and Hugo nominated web-project. Going back in time 55 years to bring today's readers news from the past, the site features reviews of published short stories and novels, and tons of articles on movies, tv shows, "current" events such as the Space Race, and other interesting things. The neat thing is that everything on the site is written as if it is happening right now. You can also follow Galactic Journey on twitter, @journeygalactic.

Gideon was kind enough to let me ask him all sorts of questions about the novel and Galactic Journey.  In our wide ranging conversation we talk about everything from recent trends in YA fiction to characters writing the story themselves, to the importance of small moments, to the future of Galactic Journey, and more!

Let's get to the interview!

NOAF:  Congratulations on your new novel, Kitra! Who is Kitra and why is her story so compelling?

Gideon Marcus: Thanks very much! Kitra is a 19 year old amateur glider pilot with one overriding passion: to go to space. Her mother was an interstellar ambassador, an almost larger than life figure, and when she died, she left behind big (metaphorical) shoes to fill. What makes Kitra special is what can make anyone special: persistence and a determination to seek help in achieving one's goals.

As for what makes her story compelling, I think a story of hope against odds, of ingenuity beating adversity, always resonates. But right now especially, when we're all stuck in various levels of isolation and there's no clear path back to normal, a story about being trapped in a small ship for weeks on end resonates all the more strongly. It's eerily timely and, I'm hoping, inspiring.

NOAF: Sounds like there's a lot of wonderful things happening in this book!  What challenges did you come across, when you were plotting out everything that needed to happen?

GM: Plotwise, I wrote myself into a corner about 65% of the way through the book. I really didn't know how Kitra was going to accomplish the most important thing she needed to do to get home. When you read how she and her crew got through the puzzle, you'll think it was just brilliant foreshadowing . .  . but really, I just sat in my backyard and thought, "What would the characters do?" They quite literally wrote their own solution.

More technically, my biggest challenge was scientific consistency. Kitra is a "young adult" novel, which means it needs to be accessible to everyone age 10 and up. At the same time, there's plenty of Star Wars-style science fantasies out there that play fast and loose with physics. I wanted to write a story that is plausible science fiction while still enjoyable and a quick read. That was the challenge, making sure I kept all the numbers right - how much fuel they had, their food reserves, the mechanics of space travel, etc. It's all invisible to the reader (this is a novel, not a textbook!) but that consistency is important to me.

NOAF: What inspired you to write this novel?

GM: Two main reasons. First: I wrote what I wanted to read. Second: No one else was doing it.

I grew up on "classic" science fiction, mostly stuff from the 50s through the 80s. There wasn't a YA genre back then; it was called "juvenile" instead and usually featured young men doing adventurous things among the stars. Back then, space was the final frontier, after all.

For the last twenty years, YA has been dominated by fantasy and dystopia. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, but it got to the point where everyone was trying to write the next Harry Potter or Hunger Games. Space hasn't gotten any less interesting; science shouldn't be passé; and characters don't need magic or special powers to be extraordinary.

As for why Kitra in particular, in those books I grew up with, there weren't enough (read ANY) young women protagonists . . . except in my beloved L. Frank Baum Oz books. There weren't queer protagonists, rarely persons of color in starring roles. It was something I didn't notice when I was a kid. And that's, of course, the problem. I want young people, and older ones too, to read my book and see a world that looks like theirs, with all the diversity therein.

NOAF: What surprised you the most, while you were writing this novel?

GM: A lot of the book was planned well in advance. I'm not exactly a plotter, but I like to bullet point the pivotal scenes. Some, though, I just sat in front of a blank page with my 1000-words-a-day deadline looming, and pulled a chapter out of . . . hyperspace. :) The snowball fight was one of those.

I didn't plan the situation between Kitra and Marta. In retrospect, it's obvious - two close friends with a romantic history trapped together in an enclosed space - something was bound to happen. Not only does it affect the events in Kitra, it will be important to later books in the series, too.

I think that's the mark of successfully realized characters. They do what they want regardless of what you have planned for them!

NOAF: I hear there is a second novel in the series in the works! Where does Kitra's story go from here?

GM: I'm never certain how much to spoil in these interviews! Kitra's saga definitely doesn't end with the first book, though Kitra wraps up satisfactorily (all of the books in the series will; no one likes a novel that's not a complete story.) By the end of the first book, Kitra and her friends have just been forged into a crew. There's a whole universe to explore, and mind-boggling things to discover. Plus, Kitra will grow as a person, as will those around her. I think that will resonate with readers, too, watching these characters mature over time.

NOAF: In another interview you did, you mentioned that you're "not really about villains". Does Kitra's world not have any bad guys?  What does a world without baddies look like?

GM: What's a "bad guy"? I grew up on superhero comics, and I enjoyed the MCU for a while, but I got tired of the zero sum game. If there were heroes, the rationale went, there had to be equally powerful villains, and they had to fight incessantly. In a dystopian novel, there's the big evil government. In a fantasy, there's the Sauron/Voldemort. I wanted to try something different.

The real world is a complicated place. The "enemy" can be poverty, natural disaster, or closest to home right now, a pandemic. There are definitely selfish, cruel people in this world, but they are almost always the symptom of a problem rather than the source.

My wife once observed that "good writing is the art of making small things matter." Writers have gotten obsessed with toppling Big Bads, or a series of successively tougher "bosses". The scope is always enormous: the world, or the universe . . . maybe even the multiverse. With Kitra, I dialed it back. It's just her and the four friends she feels obligated to help. There is no enemy, just a challenging situation to deal with creatively.

That said, the scope will expand as the series goes on. Will there be trouble? Of course. Politics? To a degree. People who try to hurt Kitra and her crew, sure. But there will never be an arch-nemesis for her to rail against.

NOAF: I'd be a terrible interviewer if I didn't congratulate you on your Hugo nomination for Best Fanzine, Congratulations!  You've been on the Hugo ballot a few times now, how did it feel to get that first nomination? What will winning a Hugo mean for you?

GM: Becoming a Hugo Finalist was literally a life-changer. It happened at the same time as my first professional fiction sales (I've been a nonfiction writer for 15 years) as well as my first educational performances. That was when I realized I could make a go of this writing thing. Two years later, I have a successful publishing company, I'm working with laureled authors, and I'm doing what I love most - telling stories that entertain.

NOAF: Why did you start Galactic Journey? Has Galactic Journey's goals or focus changed since you started it? Where do you see the site going in the next few years?

GM: It all began in 1954. That's when my dad started collecting science fiction magazines. He died in 1993 and left me almost a thousand of them. In 2009, I decided I wanted to read them all. To keep me on a regular schedule, I decided to read them once a month "as they came out" with a time-shift of 55 years. In 1958 . . . er . . . 2013, my wife asked me to recommend some of my favorite stories. I decided to write a blog instead, sort of projecting myself into the past to live in the bygone age, day by day. I'm a space historian, and my specialty is the late '50s, so I added articles about the Space Race, too.

Well, you can't immerse yourself in a time, listening to the music, watching the movies, reading the paper, and not have it become part of you. And I kept seeing our modern age reflected in the past. 55 years ago is now, just a little crappier. I found myself excited on the rare occasions I saw a woman's byline in my fiction and started chronicling the (these days largely forgotten) contributions women made to science fiction back then. I got invested in the struggle for civil rights which, even today, is far from complete...and has faltered lately. I wanted to know more about the world of that age, not just the fiction and technology, but the culture, the fashion, the politics, and how they ultimately led to the age we know today.

Twenty people make up the Journey now, demographically diverse, from all hemispheres of the globe. What we make is, I think, a lot more than just a fanzine. It's a living time capsule with something for everyone. We've finished The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and we pretty well wrapped up the latter Silver Age of science fiction. Doctor Who is in its second season and will go on for a long time. Over the next few years, we're going to be covering a lot more familiar franchises: Star Trek, the New Wave of SF, 2001.

And we're really just starting the 1960s in earnest. Society is about to be turned on its ear, and at the end of the revolution are the seeds of our current world. I hope folks enjoy the trip as much as I am!

NOAF:   Thank you so much Gideon!

AiIP: Let's Talk

Grab a seat. We need to talk. It's about something I usually avoid talking about, for a variety of reasons. But it's something that should be addressed, so we're going to talk about it.

First, though, story time. This is a third hand story, so take it with appropriate grains of salt and/or the spice of your choice.

Back before 3024AD came out, I was talking to a co-worker at that time, telling him about my goals. He related the story of a relative who wrote a book, and was offered a book deal with a solid five-figure advance- on the condition that the protagonist was male- not female, as she had written. She refused, and her book remains unpublished.

For a lot of people, for a five-figure advance, they would change their main character to a cucumber. Hell, if you've sent off fifty or sixty queries, you might do it for a whole lot less than that.

There is a lot to be said about the cons of self-publishing- I've covered a ton here, and on ye olde Deanfortythree(e) blog- editing issues, cover art, overall stories- but there are some definite pros, and this is one of them.

Hear Cap's immortal line "I'm always picking up after myself!"

Because- for whatever reason- there is a fantastic lack of diversity in publishing. The optimist in me (he's in there, I promise) wants to think this is unintentional, just coincidence, but... come on. People will talk about how we should read more diverse authors (correctly), but walk into a bookstore and grab one hundred random books. How many are written by non-straight-white-men? Twenty? Maybe forty if you grabbed a bunch from the romance section? The problem lies higher up than the reader, or the bookstore. It lies with publishers who select what gets published, what gets marketed and how much. The ones who decide that, no, that protagonist just won't sell.

But if you're publishing your own work (or working with a smaller press), you don't answer to those people. You answer to yourself, and to your readers. You can write what-who-ever the hell you want.

Because, here's the thing: I'm a straight(ish) white dude. I'm kind of (totally) in the majority here. But I can't change that, and I'm not going to stop writing, either, so what can I do? The same thing anyone can- write something. Write something diverse, something other than the same thing that's been written for a looooong ass time.

I'm probably not perfect at this, but I doubt there's a perfect formula at all. Stories and books will lose a lot if all you worry about if the literary equivalent of affirmative action. But stories will gain much more if authors take a few moments and make their characters more diverse. It will make for richer backgrounds, deeper characters and better books.

And no one will tell you to change it.

-DESR

Dean is the author of the 3024AD series of science fiction stories. You can read his other ramblings and musings on a variety of topics (mostly writing) on his blog. When not holed up in his office
tweeting obnoxiously writing, he can be found watching or playing sports, or in his natural habitat of a bookstore.