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Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview J. R. Martin, whose debut novel The Engineer’s Apprentice appears on 20th June 2023.
The Engineer’s Apprentice is your first full-length novel, due for publication on 20th June 2023. What can you tell us about writing your first book and preparing it for publication?
It took a long time to get it ready. This book actually started off as a short story in 2011. Over the years, as I’ve worked on other projects, I’ve kept coming back to this one. Eventually made up my mind to finish it and get it edited. I went through the revision process and had beta readers look over the manuscript until it was ready.
After that getting the cover was easy. I was able to find a cover designer quickly who worked with me to design something interesting. Now I’m ready to release this to the world and start the next one.
You describe The Engineer’s Apprentice as “an alternate-history steampunk western”. Tell us something about the world of the novel and the Western Native Lands.
That’s the part I’m really excited about. In this world a meteor shower occurring in the late 1700s, left a new metal scattered across the globe. It was discovered that this metal when combined with other ingredients produced limitless power. An amount the size of a grain of rice could power a steam engine indefinitely.
In areas like the Western Native Lands, it was discovered that the metal could be used to produce a type of magic. Once discovered, the Native Americans quickly used this to erect a barrier preventing U.S. citizens, Spanish, Mexican, and anyone else from entering their lands. They allowed eastern tribes to enter and the population of Native Americans increased as tribes banded together to protect their new homeland. Eventually, the technology made keeping slaves obsolete and they were freed without a civil war, but were still considered a burden on the country. Many slaves stayed in the U.S., but a large number left and moved into the Native Lands as long as they worked to protect the borders along with the Native Americans.
How far does that world differ from the historical West, and why?
Because half of North America is still populated by Native Americans, the country is vastly different. Texas is the furthest west the country has progressed. A magical barrier, running north and south, stretches across the continent and Native Americans are allowed to live their lives the way they choose. The Native Lands are lush and filled with vegetation and animals.
In contrast, uranium is a catalyst to make steam power work and the mining of it across the world, plus the use of steam power itself, has created a society that although technologically more advanced, has a high rate of a disease called Uranium Sickness, which would be similar to cancer today. At first only miners were getting it but anyone is coming down with the sickness.
This excess energy has also led to a change in weapons. Steam and running water are both sent to homes. Steam powered guns are the norm. Airships exist and freight is shipped as often by ocean as it is by air.
Your protagonist, Annie Sakdavong, has just graduated top of her class from college as a steam engineer but must still do an apprenticeship with a master steam engineer. Finding someone to take her on proves less than easy. What fate awaits her if she fails?
Annie comes from a merchant class. Due to the technology, the merchant class has more power than they historically did and think of themselves like kings. Because of this, their daughters are sometimes married off to secure deals. The reason for this is that merchants have begun training their wives to be sword maidens. In the world it is told that a man was not allowed to bring guards to a meeting but was allowed to bring his wife. Fearing something was wrong, he hastily married a woman who was a skilled assassin. When the meeting went south and his wife saved his life, the merchants took on the practice of having many wives who serve as bodyguards.
Although Annie was trained to be a sword maiden, she doesn’t want to do that because she wants to live her own life. But as her father’s only daughter she is honor bound to do as she is told. Her mother has made a deal with her father that if she does not become a licensed engineer, he can marry her off. She sees becoming an engineer as the only way she can be free of the sword maiden title.
Tell us about Issa Obasi, the African man who takes Annie on as an apprentice. Who is Issa and what are his goals?
Issa is building a technology that can combine the power of steam and magic. Right now, it is the incompatibility that protects the Native Lands, but Issa sees creating “magic steam” as a way to stop the increase in Uranium Sickness. He is also frustrated because engineers with fewer patents have students beating down their doors to become apprentices, yet he has never had one. Combine that with the fact that even though he owns the patents, because he is black the courts don’t always enforce patent law when others infringe upon his patents. He must therefore license his other technologies at deep discounts to make any money off his work.
When Issa meets Annie he has found his first apprentice and he is happy to have someone he can pass his knowledge to.
What does it mean to be a master steam engineer?
In this time apprenticeships are still commonplace. Master Engineers do everything from designing new steamworks, the steam technology itself, or repairing existing steamworks. A real-world analogy would be the IT field. Some people in IT fix and manage computers, and some people design new computers and software to run on them for others to fix. That is what steam engineering is and Issa is one of the greatest designers but still has to do some repair work to make sure he can make ends meet and he can help people who are struggling with the prices being charged by others. With the number of patents he has though, he really shouldn’t have to do the additional work.
It’s not long before Issa and Annie find themselves caught up in a dangerous situation - industrial espionage with magic and a Native American who can pass through walls. How do they deal with this sudden threat?
That’s the part that gets really exciting. Although Issa and Annie have a plan for their lives, sometimes life has a few curveballs to throw. They have to learn more about themselves, and each other, to overcome the challenges they face. The story deals with understanding who you are and empowering oneself to define how you live your life yourself.
As a Black man and an Asian woman, they find that the police aren’t interested in their problems. What do they do and how do they set about solving the mystery?
When they realize they will need to help themselves, they begin tracking down leads as they come. Tracking those leads takes them to the Native Lands, a village of freed blacks, and into the slums of Dallas as they look for the person behind the robberies.
There will be lots of adventure, excitement, and thoughtful moments to help you understand Issa and Annie.
Have you always loved Science Fiction and Fantasy and what drove you to write?
Science Fiction and Fantasy have always been interesting, but honestly I loved mysteries and crime fiction a lot when I was younger. Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins were the books I cut my teeth on so to speak. The first fantasy book I can remember reading would be either Dr. Dolittle or The Hero and the Crown. From there I was hooked and read Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and any other fantasy books I could find.
My love of science fiction came from Star Trek and seeing characters like Geordi La Forge or Benjamin Sisko. I loved seeing those characters on the screen and honestly that, and a lack of books featuring characters of color in prominent roles, lead me to write.
Despite what some people may say about representation not being important, as a kid, seeing Geordi and Sisko showed me that I could do great things. I actually fell in love with technology after seeing Geordi fixing everything on the ship.
As I got older I looked for books with a more diverse cast of characters on purpose and had trouble finding that in the worlds of fantasy and scifi. I decided to write and tell stories with characters that, in my opinion, reflect more of the way the world is.
How important is it to you to write stories that are more diverse than the norm?
That is very important to me and is the motivation for my writing I mentioned. When I say diverse I don’t just mean stories only featuring characters of color, I mean stories reflecting the way the world is today. Most sci-fi takes places in and around major cities, yet you rarely get the sense that they live in worlds with much variation. I believe that should be corrected and not in a token way.
From outside, the USA sometimes seems like a fantastical world in itself. Is there anything in that and is that why the US generates so much creativity?
My perspective on this may be unique since I’m a child of GIs and was raised in Europe a majority of the time growing up. I’d first off say that every country has lots of creativity. Look at French art, German and Japanese engineering, dance in India, or Caribbean food and music, they are all forms of creativity and a unique spice and texture to life that is their own. I came to understand that the intermingling of these complexities is what made life interesting. I also learned that everything is a matter of perspective. People always seem to have exotic fantasies about places they haven’t been and only read about. That’s why so many Americans travel abroad and some people see others as lesser when they haven’t left their own country. Yet, how many people take the time to explore the lands they live in? It’s almost like it’s an afterthought in a lot of cases, but in truth, every place, even places like Dallas, has tourists coming to see things that locals take for granted and may not have ever seen themselves because they are worried about the next adventure somewhere else.
I say all of that to say that perspective may make it seem like the U.S. generates a lot of creativity, but other places have just as much creativity, it just may not readily fit the appetite of people in the U.S. It’s something you have to make the conscious choice to seek out and explore. This is doubly true when you add in the fact that marketing costs money and the only things that get heavily marketed are the things that are going to potentially make a profit. I’m sure there are many great novels and writers in the world that I’ve never heard of, but because they don’t have the budget to market their work outside their country I may never hear about it until someone makes a game or series about it. An example of this is “The Witcher”. We also have to realize that in this global world some many things influence each other subtly. But these last two points are much deeper topics that could stand alone in a series of posts on their own.
You have had short stories published in several anthologies, including The Underdogs Rise (Volume 1), From Planet Texas with Love and Aliens, and Gunfight on Europa Station. What can you tell us about the anthologies and your short fiction?
I loved writing stories for those anthologies. Gunfight was the only one that had a strongly defined theme and I enjoyed working with Cat Rambo on that story. It was nice adapting an idea from a western into something that fits into a sci-fi environment. Planet Texas has a horror story I wrote years ago, and that story is interesting because it’s dark in many ways. It takes place at night, in a dark apartment where the light ends up becoming your enemy in a way. Imagine a horror story where turning on the lights gives the monster more places to hide. The Underdogs story is more slipstream and it’s about taking a journey and that no one ever truly knows everything. Sometimes, we need to have a childlike perspective in this complex world of ours to understand it and the people around us better.
I like short stories because they allow me to experiment with a genre before I start on longer works.
What are you working on now? Will there be a sequel to The Engineer’s Apprentice?
That’s a great question. I know there are some writers who have 1 or two really good ideas and that’s it. I personally have five filled notebooks of story ideas. I sleep with a notebook next to my bed and when I dream, I wake up and write the details of the dream as best I can. Unfortunately I can’t remember every dream clearly but those notebooks contain the ones I was able to get down. I love writing in all genres and have ideas for horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in between.
Right now, The Engineer’s Apprentice looks like it will be a 4 or 5 book series. I already have an outline I’m putting together for the second book, a skeleton for the third book, and an idea of what I think will happen in books four and five. Obviously some things will change, as the final manuscript is put together and ideas and plot threads resolved or carried over into future instalments. Book two has already changed a lot because the ending of book one changed a little and the overarching idea of the series has changed because of this. There were some places I wanted to take the story initially, but after thinking it over and seeing the first book, there is a better overall story that won’t need to be forced, but organically arises. That’s the beauty of storytelling, at least the way I do it. Instead of characters ‘telling’ me what’s going on, I feel like I’m peering into a different universe and just watching what happens to other people then telling their story. In that way, I see things happen and I’m like. “Oh, that’s more interesting to write about and focus on than the other thing so I’ll recount that part of the story and leave out some of the other parts.” In that way everything is still happening, but it may not be as cool to watch.
Can you tell us something about your cover art, and the artist?
I paid an artist to create the picture for me. My wife is a graphic designer and she and I went ahead and created the cover from that image.
About J.R. Martin:
J. R. Martin was born in Texas to military parents. Due to constant travel, they made sure he had plenty of books to read. Soon reading wasn't enough and he began writing stories of his own. Now you can find him in such collections as Gunfight on Europa Station released by Baen and From Planet Texas, With Love and Aliens. He also received an honorable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest. His first novel will release in 2023.
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