INTERVIEW: with authors Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller
Powerhouse speculative fiction voices, Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller, have teamed up as part of Simon & Schuster’s Saga Doubles. In it, two authors write stories; in this case, Kowal and Miller have written two expertly crafted science fiction crime stories set in the far future. Kowal’s story, Apprehension, is about a grieving mother with an exciting past, and Miller’s story, Red Star Hustle, is a “crisscross of heartbreak, addiction struggles, queer messiness, and resisting evil empires, coming together in a space-hopping fight with the whole damn galaxy.”
In this conversation, Kowal and Miller chat with us about craft, inspiration, and the fun they had writing these two stories.
[GdM] Before we dive into Red Star Hustle and Apprehension, could you introduce yourself to our readers—who you are, what you write, and what drives your storytelling?
[SJM] Hi hi there—I’m Sam J. Miller, I write science fiction and horror that’s very gay and usually pretty angry. Extreme emotions drive my storytelling just like it drives my characters—I write about the things I love passionately (like love, friendship, sex, noodles,
resistance), and the things I hate and wish were different (like the housing crisis, addiction, imperialism).
[MRK] Hello! My name is Mary Robinette Kowal, (Mary Robinette is a double first-name) and I write science fiction and fantasy, but have been skewing towards the mystery suspense side of the genres. I’m fascinated by relationships and enjoy digging into people who are committed to each other, even while they are miscommunicating.
[GdM] If you had to distill each novel into a single driving question or idea, what would that be?
How did you come to be the two halves of this Saga Double? It really seems like an opportunity to have fun playing in the proverbial sandbox.
[SJM] Finding a single driving idea is actually harder on Red Star Hustle than it is on many of my other works, where I am writing from a place of anger around, say, gentrification or climate change—with this one, I was just trying to write a fun fast-moving classic pulp science fiction story (albeit one with a lot more mm smut than the classics tended to have)… but ultimately I think that most of the characters ended up orbiting around this question of—how do you balance tackling addiction alongside all the rest of your problems?
[MRK] For me, Apprehension is about what happens when we let ourselves be defined by fear and how being open about our fears empowers us.
[GdM] How has working on this book, separately or together, differed from your usual writing process (if it has)? Because while the two novels fit together in the same universe, they are also very different stories.
[SJM] Yeah mostly this was just a divine cosmic coincidence, that these two stories ended up side by side and were also so similar,
so it felt natural to build in some Easter egg connections. The real joy has been everything AROUND the writing process—working with someone I admire as much as Mary Robinette and figuring out fun exciting ways to promote and talk about the book(s).
[MRK] It’s not often that you get to collaborate with another writer in this way. We each wrote our stories separately, but Sam had the amazing idea to include small cameos from each other’s stories. Just that little bit was such fun.
[GdM] This is a queernorm universe, for the most part, that you’ve created, where other differences are also embraced and borders are blended and blurred. Was this a conscious decision you made together and why is it important to have such worlds in literature?
[SJM] Sometimes science fiction is about spotlighting the dark and painful aspects of our present reality, and sometimes it’s about centering the hope and the beauty and the power and the potential and the sense of wonder. Usually it’s a balance of both, but because my natural tendency is toward the ugly and the oppressive, with this book I wanted to uplift a vision of the future where humanity has hope, we can grow past the problematic aspects of the human condition, and while there will still be problems we can also get to a time when white supremacy and patriarchy have been shattered, and queerness and diversity flourish and are safe and celebrated.
[MRK] It just feels like a natural evolution of the future. I also tend to write toward the futures I want to see.
[GdM] How do you think real-world events influence themes we find in sci-fi? Is there anything you think we’ll start to see more of, or anything you’d like to see less of?
[SJM] For me science fiction is never about the future—it’s about what’s happening right now. And while so much of the world is creeping further and further to the right, and fascism is flourishing
and a toxic white-supremacist Death Cult has taken over the US government, I’m not so sure science fiction will have the stomach to tell that truth. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am. Same with climate change. As these things become more real and more painful, I fear we’ll lose what limited appetite we currently have for holding a light up to ourselves.
[MRK] Sam and I have the same approach to science-fiction, I think. It’s about things that are important to us now and by including them in fiction, we can tip things to the side to see the interconnecting tissue more. We often look to the past to see patterns for the future because those patterns tend to repeat. We’re going to see more dystopian fiction set in fascist regimes or… or we’ll see stories of hope written by people who are using SF as a thought experiment for different paths.
[GdM] What’s next after Red Star Hustle and Apprehension? What are you two working on?
[SJM] Two words: gay biker werewolves. Oh is that three words? Yeah I’m working on a horror novel about gay biker werewolves.
[MRK] I’m jokingly describing the story I’m poking at as: Rear Window in space, but Jimmy Stewart is played by a talking cat.
[GdM] Please tell us about Red Star Hustle as a single novel and how it fits against Mary Robinette Kowal’s novel, Apprehension?
[SJM] Red Star Hustle is about a far-future outer-space rent boy framed for murder, who’s trying to clear his name while staying one step ahead of the bad-ass mech pilot bounty hunter who’s on his tail. It’s a great companion to Apprehension because they’re both crime novels set in space, and they’re both fast-paced pulp stories with heart!
[GdM] Red Star Hustle has a very cool aesthetic. Can you tell us about it?
[SJM] I really wanted to celebrate classic pulp space opera, with a splash of cyberpunk and a heaping helping of noir. But queer. And spicy. So the end result is this kind of grimy, neon-lit, beautiful tawdry look and feel that smells like spilled whiskey and leather and roses and man.
[GdM] For readers new to your work, why is Red Star Hustle a great place to jump in?
[SJM] Because it’s fun? I hope? Some of my stories I’m trying very hard to break your heart, and this time around I really just wanted to tell a fun fast-paced story with lots of sex and fighting. Spoiler alert though, it did end up spiraling into heartbreak territory #sorrynotsorry
[GdM] What parts of building this galaxy were the most fun for you?
[SJM] It was lots of fun thinking through the logistics of a future where inexpensive wormhole manufacturing has made instantaneous travel between impossibly distant points effortless and commonplace—but also just exciting to imagine a positive future, where there’s no existential threat to the survival of the human race due to our own general awfulness!
[GdM] Red Star Hustle combines heartbreak, addiction, and trauma with galactic chases, evil empires, and space travel in the vein of fun, pulpy science fiction of the past. How did you balance the rawness and authenticity of those struggles with the fun while paying respect to both?
[SJM] The fun was my priority; the heartbreak and addiction emerged accidentally during the writing process. Turns out I’m not really capable of being JUST fun and light-hearted.
[GdM] Could you define for me the literal and figurative meanings of “hustle” in the context of this story? It can be taken in various ways.
[SJM] First and foremost, Aran is a hustler—a male sex worker with a primarily male clientele, in a future where sex work has been decriminalized and normalized. There’s also the level of “hustle” meaning “struggle to make money,” because many of these characters have got to hustle to survive. It’s also an homage to fun pulpy action stories like “Kung Fu Hustle” and (I hope) sets up an expectation of an action-packed, fast-moving plot.
[GdM] Can you tell us about Apprehension? How did you come by the idea for the plot?
[MRK] Honestly, I was doing a deep dive on Hitchcock trying to understand how he handled suspense. I was curious to see what it would be like to have that sort of story in space and then it intersected with my own experiences of elder care and grief.
[GdM] I love the idea of an older protagonist; it is not something we usually see in science fiction, and there should be more of it. How much fun did you have creating the emotionally raw grandmother, Bonnyjean, and her very cool backstory?
[MRK] I started working on this shortly after my mother, who was 78 at the time, had to have her hip replaced. She was this amazing woman and got a really bad case of anesthesia induced confusion. She was in the hospital for 10 days due to that. The hip replacement itself was fine. But one of the side effects was that people treated her differently because there was an assumption of frailty after the surgery. I kept thinking about how she had gone from being a woman of a certain age to being “old” over the space of ten days. That said, she would have ENDED anyone who threatened her family.
[GdM] Apprehension has this edge-of-your-seat energy that reminds me of the Liam Neeson movie Taken—that mix of fast pacing, raw emotion, with a dash of “you messed with the wrong family.” Was that kind of action-thriller vibe something you set out to capture from the start, or did it emerge naturally as the story unfolded?
[MRK] Thank you! I would say that I started with these Hitchcockian vibes, but as I moved deeper into the story and discovered more about Bonnyjean’s past as a soldier, the action ramped up. That lead me to drift from suspense thriller to action thriller.
Authors Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller[GdM] Do you map fight/chase scenes visually, or do you prefer to discover them beat by beat through writing them?
[MRK] I have to block my fight scenes because I don’t have a fight background. Or rather… I come out of theater, so theatrical fights are much more my area than actual martial arts. I tend to iterate my fight scenes. I’ll have a loose idea of the blocking, then do the written word version of a “stumble through” then I go back in and refine it based on what I discover.
[GdM] The word “apprehension” holds dual meanings: the act of seizing or understanding, and the state of fear. How does the novel play with that ambiguity?
[MRK] Fun fact, my novel titles don’t translate well because I love playing with these double-meanings. In this novel we have all three forms of the word “apprehension.” There’s multiple types of fear shaping character’s choices, from Bonnyjean’s PTSD to the more active fear for her grandson. Then there’s the act of seizing, in which we have a kidnapping and literally trying to catch a criminal. And finally, there’s apprehension as understanding, in which Bonnyjean thinks she understands people and doesn’t—including herself.
And also, thank you for noticing the title.
Read Red Star Hustle / Apprehension by Sam J. Miller & Mary Robinette KowalThis interview first appears in Grimdark Magazine Issue #44
The post INTERVIEW: with authors Mary Robinette Kowal and Sam J. Miller appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
