Interview

The End Has Come: An Interview with Hugh Howey

By Aidan Moher May 15th, 2015
Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

In collaboration with editors John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, A Dribble of Ink is proud to introduce a series of interviews with the authors of The End Has Come, the final volume in the The Apocalypse Triptych. Following on The End is Nigh, and The End Is Here, The End Has Come contains 23 stories about life after the apocalypse.

Interview with Hugh Howey about “In the Woods”

“In the Woods” opens with a sense of mystery and confusion, almost a rebirth for the main character April. What inspired such a tense opening?

It’s a nod to the beginning of the second novel in the Wool trilogy. Here we have a survivor from the old world entering a new and much darker one. To me, that’s what apocalyptic fiction is all about: What would it feel like to be dropped into a hostile place where survival from day to day was a real ordeal? Read More »

Interview

The End Has Come: An Interview with Megan Arkenberg

By Aidan Moher May 14th, 2015
Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

In collaboration with editors John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, A Dribble of Ink is proud to introduce a series of interviews with the authors of The End Has Come, the final volume in the The Apocalypse Triptych. Following on The End is Nigh, and The End Is Here, The End Has Come contains 23 stories about life after the apocalypse.

Interview with Megan Arkenberg about “Like All Beautiful Places”

(Interview by Lauren Smith)

Tell us about your story, “Like All Beautiful Places”.

“Like All Beautiful Places” follows the environmental catastrophes that began in “Houses Without Air” and “Twilight of the Music Machines.” After earthquakes and toxic rain devastate San Francisco, a small group of survivors attempts to reconstruct the city in an immersive alternate reality. Grecia, the narrator, struggles with her role in the project—and, more broadly, with her place in the world, now that she’s freed from the consequences of a series of disastrous personal decisions. Read More »

Interview

The End Has Come: An Interview with Nancy Kress

By Aidan Moher May 13th, 2015
Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

In collaboration with editors John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, A Dribble of Ink is proud to introduce a series of interviews with the authors of The End Has Come, the final volume in the The Apocalypse Triptych. Following on The End is Nigh, and The End Is Here, The End Has Come contains 23 stories about life after the apocalypse.

Interview with Nancy Kress about “Blessings”

(Interview by Jared Cooper)

“Blessings” shows two sides of an alien invasion—an apocalypse for some, a new life for others. What elements of the story did you focus on while writing this third triptych piece?

“Blessings” follows the previous two stories in this series, carrying my “apocalypse” forward another few generations. When I started the first story, I wanted to write about a different apocalypse from the usual, so I chose this: an incident that makes everyone nicer. Less aggressive, biologically incapable of violence. That raised questions: How could such a thing come about? Who would desire it? I knew from before I began that aliens wished to remake us, and that genetic alteration of the entire world was the way they could do it.

This third story was thus free to explore how such an experiment ends. The aliens have succeeded—but only temporarily. Regression to the mean is a real, inescapable biological phenomenon (which is why children of Nobel winners don’t also win Nobels). Human beings have had millions of years in which they were biologically hierarchal and—yes—violent under the right circumstances, which vary from person to person. Violence is, unfortunately, a survival trait. It reappears, despite the Dant. And as with all human change, some gain and some lose. To me, that’s reality, and any good fiction must reflect that reality. Read More »

News

Tor.com reveals Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

By Aidan Moher May 12th, 2015
Every-Heart-a-Doorway_Seanan-McGuire

Yesterday, Tor.com announced Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, a novel to be published in collaboration between the Tor.com Imprint, which focuses primarily on Novellas, and Tor Books.

“When Seanan McGuire sent me her pitch for Every Heart a Doorway I was delighted,” said Tor.com Senior Editor. “When the book arrived, and I read it, I was dumbfounded! Seanan had surpassed herself.”

“Seriously,” he continued, “I have been telling everyone I meet how great this book is, and I’m more than a little jealous that you’ll have the opportunity to read it for the first time, and I won’t.” Read More »

Interview

The End Has Come: An Interview with Ken Liu

By Aidan Moher May 12th, 2015
Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

Buy The End Has Come, edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

In collaboration with editors John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, A Dribble of Ink is proud to introduce a series of interviews with the authors of The End Has Come, the final volume in the The Apocalypse Triptych. Following on The End is Nigh, and The End Is Here, The End Has Come contains 23 stories about life after the apocalypse.

Interview with Ken Liu about “The Gods Have Not Died In Vain”

(Interview by Georgina Kamsika)

I love the format of the story. Did the story come first, then the formatting, or did the format help shape the narrative at all?

I decided from the start that I’d write all three of the stories in the series as a mix of “chat” transcripts and traditional narrative, so the format was determined at the start. The way the story is told is of course part of the *story* itself, and the two are inextricably linked.

I understand that you love researching for your stories. Can you tell us about any research you might have undertaken for this one.

One of the persistent themes in my science fiction is dealing with the social and economic challenges of artificial intelligence. Even without fully self-aware AI, increased automation threatens the employment prospects of many workers, including those in the service industry and “white-collar” office jobs that are traditionally understood as being relatively free from such threats. For this story, I did more reading about the field, especially companies like Narrative Science that are trying to use automation to perform some tasks that are usually thought of as the domain of “knowledge workers.” Read More »