My stories are about odd situations that are bigger than the people in them. They’re typically Sci Fi, Fantasy and often quite weird. They’re about changing the world and realising that we can all have a part in that. My non-fiction tends to be about these very same subjects."
1) So, what’s new from you?
Project Hanuman! It’s a new space opera but also a retelling of
how Hanuman lost his powers. It’s set within a utopian civilisation called the
Arcology who span much of the galaxy but live mostly online. It’s not too much
of a spoiler (welcome to chapter 1) to say they get destroyed at the beginning
and the rest of the story is about a group of survivors trying to wrestle with
what’s happened.
2) How did it come about?
I’ve been wanting to write a space opera for a long time but I’ve
never quite figured out the story. Part of the reason for that is I wanted to
bring the experience of a far off galactic civilisation up to date – using the
most cutting edge physics. Thing is, there’s a lot of physics out there that
most people haven’t ever heard of and much of it is so counter-intuitive that
writing about it could feel entirely alienating in a bad way.
After my BFS and Subjective Chaos nominated novella, The Entropy of Loss
from NewCon Press, seemed to find a great audience I started to think I had a
way forward – which was to concentrate on just how strange the idea of
information is within mathematics and modern physics.
3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.
The thing about hard science is that it’s hard. Popular science
books have to flatten and simplify it – if for no other reason than the
language of these things is mathematics and if you can’t speak that much of
what modern physics has to say about the universe is beyond reasonable reach.
You obviously can’t write that on the page and expect anyone to be
interested or for it to make for a thrilling story. I can imagine people
thinking, oh, this is ‘hard science’ and switching off immediately as it not
being for them. That’s the furthest thing from what I want to achieve.
Fortunately for me I’ve been long enthralled by the story of
Hanuman, spiritual child of Vayu the wind god. There are many stories about how
Hanuman lost his powers but they all centre on someone needing to learn how to
control their power – not in the sense of flying better but in the sense of
power without control is dangerous to everyone around us.
This was my way in – a fantastic story about a powerful being
reduced to nothing and having to learn about responsibility from the ground up.
4) What was
your favourite part of the process?
Figuring
out the main characters. Prab and Kercher (together with Hanuman). Prab was my
everybody, the ordinary person thrust into astonishing events. Kercher’s my
reject, the one who is torn about the system they’re supposed to save.
As
always, a great story has to be driven by the characters not the setting.
5) What was the toughest part of it?
Navigating
that line between the madness of how modern science describes the universe
and creating a story in which everything feels interesting and familiar enough
to have you turning the page.
When big events dwarf us how do we find meaning, how do we make a difference when it feels like we have no power. To be honest, that feels pretty important to me right now.
7) What are you working on now?
I
have a bunch of stuff coming! Next year I have a Cold War SF novel and
following swiftly on its heels the first of an Epic Fantasy duology set for
2027. Alongside those will also be a light-hearted portal fantasy series also
due to launch in 2027.
I'm exhausted just reading that list! Thanks so much for talking to me, Stewart, and here's hoping Project Hanuman is the first of many huge successes!
