14 Questions for S.M. Stirling
I’ve known S.M. Stirling, or Steve as his friends call him, for ten years now. He and I were in the same writers group in New Mexico, called Critical Mass, and I believe I’ve read exactly eight-five kajillion of his words. A rigorous editor and rewriter of his own work, he’d often dwarf the rest of our submissions for the month. It’s been my privilege to watch from this vantage point as he climbs the sales charts, from a well respected niche writer to now a New York Times bestselling one.
Unfortunately, my move from New Mexico to London ended my time in Critical Mass, but not the friendships or the contact, thanks to the miracles of modern technology. Steve’s career continues to move from strength to strength as he fleshes out his Emberverse series. Set in a future in which some of the laws of physics have taken a vacation, humanity must live without electricity, gunpowder, or even steam power. Any attempt to harness these old technologies falls flat. Magic and mythical visions, however, gain strength with each passing year. To me, this a brilliant fantasy premise that makes use of the science fiction conceit, “it could happen someday”. The characters learn to make castles out of concrete and swords out of scrap metal. SCA members find their fluency in Tolkein Elvish and armor making skills useful in a way they never imagined. Wicca becomes a mainstream religion, and a history professor who once worshipped the despots of old becomes one. Whether you’ve actually made your own chain mail, or merely think that’s a cool idea, you should give his books a try.
Sohaib Awan at Fictional Frontiers interviews Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones on his first novel The Desert of Souls, non-Western fantasy, juggling modern expectations in historical fiction, and much more:
Sunday was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Clark Ashton Smith. We morbid fans of a writer with a delectable taste for morbidity love to celebrate death anniversaries as much as birth ones, and the seduction of the half-century mark is too great to dismiss.
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Author Dave Gross is perhaps best known for his Forgotten Realms novels such as Black Wolf and Lord of Stormweather. He has also worked as an editor of several gaming publications, including the one-and-only Dragon Magazine, and has most recently become one of the core authors for Paizo’s new