What was the inspiration for this story? / Where did it come from?
I had an assigned topic: Galactic empires. I don’t devote a lot of bandwidth to the old-fashioned faster-than-light Romes that SF loves, but one of my major playgrounds begged for some treatment of the subject. The Great Ship is undeniably ancient, but if the early universe can produce enough intelligence and willpower to build such an object, where has that intelligence gone? And more to the point of “Golden Balloon,” what about those billions of years between the Great Ship’s birth and the present day? Ask Quee Lee and Perri. The general consensus is that the first wave of civilizations vanished quickly, for this reason or that reason . . . but I have to wonder: Is that a respectable conclusion?
With those questions in mind, I built an empire out of invisible buttresses. A subtle, half-defined empire whose story is told through a narrator with his own subtle, half-defined nature.
What are some of your favorite short stories?
Certain titles pop into my head. Unfairly pop in, because I read quite a lot for a lot of years.
“The Women Men Don’t See” by James Tiptree Jr.
“They’re Made Out of Meat” by Terry Bisson
“Aye, and Gomorrah” by Samuel R. Delany
If you can only live to see one science fictional innovation, what would it be? Why?
The SF world congratulates itself on its forward vision. But there’s a strong conservative element to the field. One scenario that gets huge play: Aliens arriving inside starships, usually of the faster-than-light variety. This is a replay of Europeans landing in the Americas. But we aren’t Natives and the ETs aren’t going to be the same as us, with a few centuries of boat-tweaking and disease-resistance thrown into the package. The Fermi Paradox is a vivid, living problem. What I hope for/believe in is a single bright shout from the sky. Dull as it might seem, signals at the speed of light are quite a bit more likely than Vulcans coming out of warp. So yeah, I’m hoping for getting us connected to the galactic Internet.
What are you working on?
I’m working on little stories now, plus for a long-delayed sequel to my Amerindian series with Raven Dream and Mara. And this summer, with some luck, I should start work on the next Great Ship book—my followup to The Memory of Sky.