Ask the Author: Edward Ashton
Answered Questions (9)
Edward Ashton
That's an excellent (and currently open) question. My next two books, "Mal Goes to War" (available for preorder now, releasing in April, 2024) and "Currently Half-Way Through the First Draft" (releasing some time in the first half of 2025) are stand-alone novels, not connected to Mickey in any way. What happens after that will be determined after consultation with my agent, my editor, and a casting of the bones. I do have the skeleton of another Mickey book in the back of my head, but it's not 100% clear right now if or when it will ever see the light of day.
Edward Ashton
Thanks for the kind words! In answer to your question: when a human is spun around an axis, there are several forces in play simultaneously. Centrifugal force presses you outward. Centripetal force (in Mickey's case applied by the floor of the carousel) balances that force and keeps you from flying away. If those were all there was, then rotation would be a perfect simulation of gravity and nobody would puke on the cyclotron ride at the county fair. Unfortunately, you're also subject to Coriolis force, which acts perpendicular to the direction of motion and the axis of rotation. The practical effect of this is to smear fluid around your inner ear whenever the orientation of your head changes, which tends to induce intense nausea in most people. That's why you're generally okay on the cyclotron as long as you stare straight ahead, but you get sick as soon as you turn your head.
Edward Ashton
I think the main reason Director Bong connected with Mickey7 is that he and I have a lot of convergent interests. In particular, I think he and I share a penchant for using humor to lighten stories with very dark themes, as well as an interest in using SF as a vehicle for commentary/criticism of contemporary society.
Edward Ashton
Thanks, Pete. Really appreciate the feedback. My next book is actually with my agent right now. It's set six years after the events described in Three Days in April. The tone is pretty similar, but the new book focuses more on the social implications of what is basically a massive speciation event.
Edward Ashton
Thanks for asking (and thanks for reading!) My next book is actually with my agent right now. It's set six years after the events described in Three Days in April, and focuses more on the next generation of Engineered - the ones whose modifications actually work they way they were intended to. The overall tone isn't too dissimilar, but I shifted a bit of the focus away from tech, and toward the social implications of what is essentially a massive speciation event.
Edward Ashton
Oh, I don't think it could. If I were to go into the details around how that therapy works, though, we would definitely be getting into that territory.
Edward Ashton
I wasn't trying to establish any real parallels between the Civil War and the abortive war between the Engineered and the UnAltered described in my book, but yes - that was the jumping off point.
Edward Ashton
I'm actually not familiar with that particular interview, but as you've probably picked up from the book, the history and origins of our species have been an interest of mine for a while now. Most of what I know comes from soaking up books like Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, which I highly recommend if you're curious about this stuff.
Edward Ashton
Not to get too spoilery, but the original idea for Three Days in April actually came from a project that my lab was working on--a really clever method for delivering chemo to tumor sites while sparing normal tissues. As I was doing background research for the trial, it occurred to me that with some tweaking, this idea could conceivably be put to much less altruistic ends.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more
Mar 28, 2025 05:13PM · flag