Goodreads asked Michael Schulkins:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Michael Schulkins I’ve been a science fiction fan all my life, but until Up a Tree: A Jobs and Plunkitt Galactic Adventure came along, I had never written any. And I still may not have, because instead of inspiring that classic sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe, Up A Tree shamelessly hijacks the tropes of science fiction and turns them into a vehicle for humor and satire. There isn’t a lot of humorous or satirical science fiction abroad in the galaxy these days, presumably because science fiction usually takes place in the future, and you can’t make fun of things that haven’t happened yet. But I wanted to make fun of the here and now by abusing the there and then of science fiction. The big question was whom I should put in the vehicle. Inspiration came when I thought to combine two disparate influences: P G Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories and Keith Laumer’s Retief stories. Everyone knows Jeeves (or at least they should), Retief maybe not so much. Retief is sort of an intergalactic James Bond who travels to interesting and amusing alien planets, saving the inhabitants from the predations of politicians and other fools. So, through the magic of science fiction, Jeeves and Wooster are reborn as the iBot servant Jobs and his master Galactic Senator Braydon Gorebush Plunkitt XII, who travel the galaxy saving the alien races of the United Systems of the Spiral Arm (Armericans) from the predations of politicians, Senator Plunkitt, and other fools. Up a Tree is the first of those galactic adventures.

flag