Interview with Darrin Doyle, author of Let Gravity Seize the Dead

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Darrin Doyle, author of Let Gravity Seize the Dead.

Is Let Gravity Seize the Dead a ghost story, and what does that mean to you?          

It’s a ghost story in the sense that the 2007 family is haunted by their past ancestors and the traumas that they suffered one hundred years earlier. “Ghosts” to me don’t necessarily have to be the literal incarnation of a person who needs to “move on” or anything like that. I think it’s more complicated. A ghost can be any echo of past trauma, a residual aftershock that trembles in the present and shows that we’re all connected, all part of a larger system. When there are tragic deaths, maybe there can be a ripple, of sorts, that continues to disrupt the present in various ways. Whether or not there are literal ghosts in my novella is up to the reader to decide.

To what extent is the theme of Let Gravity Seize the Dead rooted in your experience of Michigan?

This story is entirely rooted in Michigan. I grew up playing in the woods whenever I had the opportunity (there always seemed to be wooded areas near where I lived) and this novella is a sort of love letter to Michigan nature. For this particular book, I spent a lot of time at Ludington State Park (which has many beautiful hiking trails) and Wilderness State Park, where I often stay in a rustic cabin, isolated from people, to do some writing. I used these places as “research” not only to help with descriptions but to simply absorb them into my soul and let them affect the style and tone of the entire novella.

What can you tell us about the Randall family and the old house they move into in 2007?       

The Randall family consists of Beck and Mallory and their two daughters, Lucy and Tina. Beck is an electrical engineer, but he gives up his career to move his family to this very isolated cabin that his grandparents built in the early 1900s. His motivations for doing this are mysterious even to himself, but he buys the cabin and property from his father, who warns Beck that terrible things happened there. The cabin is located at the end of a winding, two-mile, single-lane dirt road, a few miles from the small (and fictional) town of Wolfolk, Michigan. The perfect place for a haunting!

The house has a history that connects with the family’s past. How do teenage daughters Tina and Lucy discover it? 

I see Tina as an intuitive and sensitive person with a mischievous streak. At age 12 (nearly 13), she’s got a wild imagination and playful spirit, and she begins to feel the presence of their ancestors. She starts writing letters to her great-great grandmother, for instance, and becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened to them. She discovers the truth not through research or through any literal communications with the dead, but through the natural world itself, which in the novella is a kind of container for the past. I see nature as a cyclical force, both predictable and unpredictable, which can literally hold onto the secrets and spirits of those who lived there before.

How do the history of family and landscape come together?

There is a mysterious seven-note whistle that sometimes echoes through the forest. It seems that only the children can hear it, and the children in both timelines believe that the whistle portends death. There’s also a black rabbit that appears in both timelines, and this rabbit may or may not be “The Whistler” because we never actually see it whistle, but it seems to be a kind of connecting spirit that links the past and the present. The black rabbit is neither good nor evil, but like nature itself is a neutral force that's there to remind the characters of their link to the past and to the natural world. One of the 1907 characters insists that the black rabbit has human teeth, and though we never actually see this, it suggests that the rabbit is a figure that represents a hybrid of civilization and nature, domesticity and wildness.

On your website, it says you know “what skeletons do.” Can you elaborate on that?

I’m glad you asked that! I love the phrase because it’s mysterious, but the truth is that it comes from an inside-joke with my family. My son Charlie was 3 years old, and he (like most kids that age) said some pretty wild things. One day, he said to his older brother (who was 5 at the time), “You know everything.” My 5-year-old said, “I don’t know everything. I don’t, like, know what Japanese things say.” And my 3-year-old paused for a second before saying, “But you know what skeletons do.” We thought it was so weird and funny, and we never asked him what he meant (we didn’t want to know).

You have worked in many diverse jobs and are now a professor teaching at Central Michigan University. Tell us about that trajectory.

I’ve had many, many jobs, yes, from paperboy to janitor, pizza delivery driver to telemarketer, mover to copy consultant. I held odd jobs from age 9 until age 25, when I decided to finish my undergraduate degree in English, at which time I took a couple of creative writing classes. I’d always liked to write on my own, but I never really considered it a serious pursuit. Two of my professors at Western Michigan University encouraged me to apply to the MFA program there. I’d never even heard of MFA programs, but suddenly it opened up the possibility of pursuing an art with the career goal in mind. After that, I took a few years off from school, taught English in Japan, worked as a technical writer and freelance writer, and then decided that I missed the community of graduate school and went to get my PhD from the University of Cincinnati. After graduating, it took four more years and about 400 job applications but I finally landed a tenure-track job at Central Michigan University, where I teach creative writing.

How did you become a writer and what can you tell us about your other works?

As I alluded to in my previous answer, the bottom line is that I eventually devoted myself to it (at the ripe old age of 25). I stopped dabbling in it and became disciplined and started writing every day. I did this for years before I saw any notable success or publications. But eventually I went from a person with zero books published to now having my seventh book published.

As for my other works, I’ve published three short story collections and three novels (all available at any bookseller). My stories tend to include comedy and darkness, realism and magical realism, satire and strangeness. I’m an impatient person who enjoys many modes of writing, so I try to never write the same thing twice. My most successful book as far as sales is my recent comedy/horror werewolf novel, The Beast in Aisle 34.

The cover art for Let Gravity Seize the Dead is very striking. Who is the artist and can you give us a clue as to its significance?

Yes, I love this cover! It was designed by C.B. Royal, who is the daughter of Jaynie Royal, the founder of Regal House Publishing. The image is perfect: it’s a skeleton of a rabbit entwined with leaves and branches. The tones are earthy brown, grey, black. I already mentioned the black rabbit “whistler” figure from the novella, and the entwining of branches and leaves and vines with the skeleton nicely illustrates the idea that nature is both in constant flux and yet never changing, never forgetting.

Why are ghost stories and horror of such enduring importance? Where does it all begin?

Ghost stories and horror are a way for us to grapple with the central question of life, which is what happens after we die. Maybe ghosts are a reminder of our mortality while also being a kind of reassurance that things don't simply end after we die. In another sense, as I spoke about earlier, ghosts represent the past returning into the present, so they’re probably a way for us to deal with any kind of loss, regret, and trauma. On another very basic level, it's just fun to be scared (at least for some people, haha). There are all kinds of studies about the endorphin rush and the heightened senses that occur when we enter a mode of terror, followed by the pleasant release once we realize that the threat is over.

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About Darrin Doyle:

Darrin Doyle is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently the novella, Let Gravity Seize the Dead (Regal House Publishing) and the novel The Beast in Aisle 34 (Tortoise Books). His short stories have appeared in many literary journals. He teaches at Central Michigan University. His website is www.darrindoyle.com

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Interview with LCW Allingham, author of Muse

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview LCW Allingham, whose horror novella Muse has its debut on April 9, 2024 from Speculation Publications.

Tell us about the original inspiration for Muse. How does it relate to your previous work?

I watched the 2018 Suspiria remake and the themes of exploitation and greed really dug in with me and started churning in my creative mind. In all creative industries we have real life stories of these immense talents, burning so brightly, and the people who just mine that talent to depletion. In my stories I tend to be character driven and really break apart the psychology of the characters in these fantastical or horrific situations so with Muse the deep POV came out in three characters who are unaware they are all actors in a situation that has been set in motion.

The title is a telling one because so often in the history of art women were seen and treated as “Muses” but marginalised and overlooked as artists. How important is this theme? 

Exactly. A mortal muse is so often treated as just an object, to be moved and bent to the whims of the artist. It draws to mind these fey women from the Jazz age who were bold enough to break the social norms of the time. They were so adored for a moment and then tossed away for something new. So many were left disabled, addicted, sick, poor or just shunned while the artists would go on to achieve fame and fortune with their likeness.

The muses of myth, however, were immortal and they were subject to no man. The artists, were, instead reliant on them. Without their favour, an artist could produce no work. They didn’t evoke inspiration they were inspiration themselves. They had all the power.

Muse is your debut horror novella, and focuses on the power and danger of creativity. Where does the horror spring from?

People tend to think of creativity and art as a beautiful, light pursuit, but art is often pain and trauma channelled, and there are so many things that can go wrong with that pursuit. We all love Starry Night and marvel of the brilliance of showing air turbulence in art but the cost of that beauty was Van Gogh’s sanity. We jam out to Nirvana knowing that Kurt was tormented. Art makes life worth living, but the drive to create can drive creators into their own hell. And that’s just the creation process.  What about when you show that work to the world? When you have to rely on businessmen, fans and patrons to allow you make a living off your art? When they think that their investments entitle them to a piece of the artist themselves?

You mention that Muse also foregrounds themes of feminism and exploitation. Why are these significant to you?

These are major themes in many of my stories. First of all, I think to be a woman, or a marginalized person in America is to be exploited. Hard Stop. But when you add in the complications of being a creator, who makes something that no one else can make, marginalized people are expected to give themselves away for free. To educate the world. To provide their fruits, their cultures, their innermost thoughts and creations for the simple appreciation of those things.

I struggled with this in my own life. Shouldn’t I write just for the joy of writing? Screw the student loans I needed to pay off for my writing degree. And how dare I ask for a raise in my design job? I was lucky to be given the experience. And because we had so much fun playing in a band, we didn’t really need to make money doing it, right?

We have to value our creators and protect them. They are not products. They are vessels and they must be nurtured in order to flow.

Who are your protagonists, Cedric Fleck and Terra Desmarais, who find themselves working with unusual art associates in NYC?

Cedric is a point of view character in the story. He comes from a lot of trauma involving his family and his upbringing and he taps into that to create beautiful pastel work that is gaining traction in the art world, but without professionals in the business, he might languish in obscurity, which, for him, also would mean poverty and maybe worse.

When Cedric’s agent takes on Terra, Cedric really wants to hate her because everything seems effortless for her and she doesn’t even seem to care, but when he meets her, he feels this kinship. Neither of them come from privilege. Both of them are fish out of water in the shark tank of the NYC art scene.

They’re both artists at their core. There is nothing else for them but to create, and it bonds them tightly together in an unusual way.

What about the associates, Mr. Black, Mr. Silver, and Mr. Green? How much can you tell us about them? 

The associates have been in the business so long they’ve practically invented it, even down to taking on names that are almost caricatures of themselves. Black for ink of art reviews, Silver for money given in patronage of the arts, and Green for finding fresh talent. These aren’t their real names, but it’s the ones they use as they work quietly together to rule the art world.

For an artist, drawing the attention of one of them is both the big break that will make their career, and also the most dangerous thing they could ever do.

You have wide experience in the fields of writing, art and music. To what extent has your personal experience inspired the story behind Muse?

I grew up in a vibrant art community, as the child and grandchild of artists and craftsmen and then worked as a musician in my 20s before moving fully into the writing community. 

I could go on and on about all the complicated dynamics of creative people and those who love their work, but I think it can be summaries by saying in any art industry, an artist needs to have a strong core, especially once they start to find some success. There is a reason drugs and depression are so rampant in the arts. The crush between over-the-top adoration and increasingly harsh criticism from strangers is compounded by the inner critic most artists carry with them.  I’ve seen many friends and acquaintances go numb in one way of another.

As someone who has worked in the visual arts, what are the different challenges of writing?

I don’t know that it is really different. In both mediums, at least for me, it is an act of having an idea in my head that I’m trying to translate to the physical world. The translation process is what every creator has to work out for themselves, through constant skill building, workshopping, and just work.

 My mom used to say you’re an artist when you complete your one hundredth painting. I think the same can be said with writing or really any kind of composition. It’s not the actual one hundredth piece of work you produce. It’s the skills, discipline and unique voice you develop while you get there.

Talk to us about Speculation Publications, where you are one of the founders and the executive editor. What is its remit?

Speculation Publications has focused primarily on anthologies of folklore, myth, horror and fantasy. We started with an annual anthology that we had been putting out for a few years called the Collections of Utter Speculation. Initially it was a way for authors of different genres to write on a common theme, the theme being generally some type of historical or potentially supernatural mystery, like The Jersey Devil. We formed the press and opened it up to other authors with The Dancing Plague and it was pretty amazing.

We have deviated a bit from those themes but it seems to always come back to the folklore and myth. We did a book of summer romance last year, called Beach Shorts, and so many of the stories turned out to have shape shifters or magic of some kind.

This year, we’ve moved onto novellas. We’re currently reading the submissions for the Utter Speculation Novella series and will announce our first book of that series within the next month or so.

As well as Muse, you are also preparing for the publication of your debut novel, Lady, which will be out in September through Mirror World Publishing. What can you tell us about Lady, which you describe as a feminist historical novel, and how does it relate to Muse?

Lady is an amalgamation of histories that we only have little scraps of because they’re about marginalized people. It takes place in fictional barony in the War of Roses Era of England, a time of incredible violence and upheaval, just before the reign of the Tudors when the entire system was upended. It is about smaller people than the Yorks and the Nevilles and the Lancasters, but the ones whose lives and livelihood felt the ripples and sometimes tidal waves of the decisions made by those famous players.

I recently heard a quote from Nicola Griffith about how people will find a way to be themselves and that is what this novel is at its core.

The novel centers around a young baroness, Rosalynde, who is in a marriage unlike what we expect of that time, but which I suspect was prevalent. Her husband, Alexander, is a prominent baron, and queer. Rosalynde is very capable, pragmatic, and although she can play the part of a demure and submissive lady, she is not those things. She’s drawn to athletics and warfare. These two chose to be together for the benefits of marriage, and in doing so have some to respect and love each other in a way that is much deeper than bodice ripping romance. So when Alexander falls deathly ill, Rosalynde is entrusted to maintain the barony, and the best way she can do so is by posing and fighting as her husband.

I was told before that I write in too many different genres and on too many different subjects. I should hone in on exactly what market and genre I wanted to focus on and that is very good and practical advice that unfortunately doesn’t work for me. But what I do have in common is these themes of finding one’s true self, finding their power as a woman, as a neurodivergent person, as a marginalized person, as an immortal goddess locked into the tyrannical patriarchy of her father. Lady, just like Muse, is a story of woman vs the system and how to win in that system set up to destroy you.

You are an art collector as well as an artist. Does that give you a differing perspective on the creative process? 

Growing up so immersed in art, there wasn’t much separation between what I could potentially create myself and what was out there in the world and it wasn’t always healthy or helpful. It used to be that I would see something gorgeous and think, I should be able to learn how to make that. If I would try, I would fail because while imitation can help you hone your skills the results will always be hollow. A pretty picture, maybe, without any soul.

I developed my own style when I started to step back from that weird inner critic that told me I should be able to make everything myself and I just allowed myself to appreciate how exceedingly beautiful and unique the variations of art are. My style is nothing like what I tend to collect. I don’t even always like my own paintings, but they’re entirely from me, just as the art I collect is entirely from the artists. 

Muse is dedicated to your mother, the late artist Patricia Allingham Carlson, who passed suddenly in September 2023. What can you tell us about her and why you chose to dedicate the book to her? 

Art and creativity and my mother, Pat, are all completely intertwined in my life. My mom was an art teacher and a watercolour artist. She embodied both in equal measure and all the time.

In every home we lived in, no matter how modest, the family room was converted into a home art studio where she would teach classes and make her own work. Other kids had big screen TVs and ping pong tables and we had a matting table and self-drying clay and student acrylics. She had hundreds of students over the time I grew up, and some I am still friends with today. She made a big impact on many lives.

She and I often talked about the nature of inspiration. She actively encouraged me in my writing from a young age so she often was the first one to read a piece I wrote. She read an early draft of Muse and she related to Cedric and how he just needed to create, even when he wasn’t sure why. When she passed, it was a lot and too fast and I still have a lot of complicated feelings about it, but putting out this book which draws on so much that I got from her, feels like a way to work along side of those feelings, move with them instead of trying to solve them.

What are you planning to write next, and what are you working on now?

Between Speculation Publications, and putting out two books of my own this year, I am squeezing in writing time in bits and pieces but I have a novel I finished the first draft on that I’m really excited about. It’s a twist on the classic haunted house troupe about a family that moves to the northeast to get a fresh start after a pretty terrible break from the abusive patriarch.

Tell us something about your upcoming appearances for 2024 and where your readers can find out more about them.

I did a bunch of readings earlier this year and I’m actively booking more now. I believe the excerpt I read of Muse for for Strong Women, Strange Worlds will be available on their website at some point.

Muse will have a release party sometime in April, so check my website and my socials for what one. 

Quakertown Arts Alive Festival, in Quakertown, PA has a book corner where you can find me with Spec Pub on May 18

I’ll be with Speculation Publications at the Horror on Main horror convention in Harrisburg, PA in where I might also be reading. That will be June 28 – 30

And I’ll be at Creatures Crimes and Creativity Con in Colombia Maryland in September 13 – 15^th. It’s a really great, intimate convention where the readers and writers are all sitting down together.

My co-editor, River Eno, and I are also putting together a podcast called Utter Speculations where we just go down rabbit holes together about books, writing, creativity, feminism, philosophy, movies and magic. You can find very raw episodes on Buzzsprout for now.

Everything else will be on my website at www.lcwallingham or my socials (below).

 

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About L.C. Allingham:

LCW Allingham (she/her) is a Philadelphia area author, artist, musician and editor. Her early education was uniquely rich in the arts, learning music, performance and fine art all of her life, but she was always compelled toward the written word and storytelling. She received her degree in Journalism from Temple University and wrote home renovation articles before turning her focus exclusively to fiction. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications and she is an editor for the Collection of Utter Speculation series. In 2022 she co-founded the indie press, Speculation Publications, with her long-time editorial partners and serves as executive editor. She writes in many genres but particularly horror, fantasy, historical and speculative fiction. She is an active feminist and human rights advocate and lives in Pennsylvania with her family, her pets and her ever expanding art collection.

Muse is her debut horror novella, and her debut novel, Lady, will be out in September 2024.

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Interview with Haldane B. Doyle, author of Her Unbound Hallux (Our Vitreous Womb, Book 1)

 

Today it gives the Speculative Fiction great pleasure to interview Haldane B. Doyle, author of Her Unbound Hallux (Our Vitreous Womb, Book 1).

Your new novella, Her Unbound Hallux, is an entrant for this year’s SPSFC. For those who don’t know, what is the SPSFC and how did it start?

The Self-Published Science Fiction Competition was started a few years ago by Hugh Howey (who hit the big time with his self-published novel Wool) and his collaborators to showcase the amazing range of writing coming out today. It is the little sister to the much older SPFBO competition for fantasy.

Her Unbound Hallux is a hard science fiction novella and the first in a tetralogy published under the series title Our Vitreous Womb. What can you tell us about the series title and the novel’s title, and what is a Hallux?

Aha- you fell into my trap! I named the first novella that so people would wonder what a hallux is (and once they find out go on to annoy their friends with that trivia). A hallux is the proper name for the big toe, which is one of the most unusual features of the human body compared to any other species. Our weird locomotion opened the door to other features like our chonky brains and our taste for vodka (ethanol is utter poison to other mammals). “Our Vitreous Womb” is a metaphor for the continent of Australia where most of the story takes place. In the distant future Australia contains an inland sea, that is preparing to give birth to a marine-adapted branch of humanity set to colonise the world’s oceans.

The series imagines a far future where modern humans are disappearing and where biotechnology - if that’s the right word - has reshaped the world. What made you pursue this idea and why are you impatient with post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi?

I’m also not sure what to call the biotechnology in the story. It lacks the mechanical/industrial technology we automatically think of today. The closest story I can find is Xenogenesis, but that relies on alien biology that is pretty much space-tentacle-magic. I have a background in research science and wanted to see if I could construct a biological civilisation that is completely plausible. If I missed other hard sci-fi based purely on biology I would love to know about them. I’m @DoyleHaldane on twitter.

Regarding dystopian and post-apocalyptic sci-fi- I love it, but the world can only burn for so long before the fuel runs out. I’m much more interested in what sprouts from the ashes.

Tell us about yourself. You started out as a research biochemist, and now you own and run an experimental farm in Australia. What can you tell us about your work and how much does the biology inform your imaginary future?

I take a lot of inspiration from self-taught scientists like Luther Burbank. Mostly I gather wild plants or orphan crops and do speculative breeding to develop locally adapted food systems. My most ambitious project involves hybridising a local nut tree from the Jurassic with its long-lost cousin from Brazil.  Anyone with a little patience can create completely new organisms in their lifetime with very minimal resources.

The accidental hybridisation of three wild grasses created wheat and that then formed the foundations of Babylon and Rome. Crops catalyse the growth of different societies around them. I firmly believe we are at the very beginning of a symbiotic relationship with the entire biosphere of the planet. I see my fiction as a way of shining a light on that possibility.

As a scientist, do you think you take a different approach to writing science fiction?

Becoming a scientist made it harder to turn my brain off and enjoy sci-fi. I never forgave The Matrix for explaining that humans were “batteries”, ignoring thermodynamics. Xenomorphs violated the conservation of matter by growing three sizes before Christmas and that made me spit acid. Biology is difficult to fictionalise since most things happen slowly.

I took a very ideas-first approach to my own writing, which made my first attempts utterly indigestible. Luckily, I’m almost devoid of self-consciousness, so shared my half-baked work with dozens of critique partners to refine my approach. I rewrote the story twice (80k then 50k words) before I stumbled on the idea of splitting it into four novella-length works from different points of view (thanks to a Covid fever dream- never waste your altered states). Of those novellas, I rewrote two from scratch. I’m not afraid of “wasted words”. I figure if you want to be a writer then you better enjoy putting words on the page.

The world of Our Vitreous Womb sounds very other. Humans are a small remnant and replaced by the Ostrals, who have a very different attitude to mortality. What can you tell us about the Ostrals?

I can’t give too much away about their origins, but the Ostrals represent the next step in a long trend in human evolution. Larger brains and lower reactive aggression have steadily allowed hominins to form larger and more complex social groups, mirroring a similar process that led to beehives and termite nests. The Ostrals are a kind of human superorganism, split into small groups of related individuals, selected for specialised roles (mirroring how cells in your body form organs). All this is possible since Ostrals have almost no instinctive fear of death. Death being a bad thing is almost universally assumed in our storytelling, and I wanted to subvert that. I expect to many readers the idea seems hard to relate to. I would argue that a Neanderthal would find millions of people living in cities equally incomprehensible.

The central character of the series is a man, a sapiens, called Oji Anabasi, who you describe as “podgy, hairy, sex-obsessed and terrified of death.” You chose not to use Oji as narrator - why was that?

The first two attempts to write the story had poor Oji as the protagonist. Even though he tries his best, he is simply too unlikeable and ignorant to carry the story. The most interesting part of the world is the Ostrals, so I had much more fun exploring their journeys in books 2, 3 and 4.

In Her Unbound Hallux, the narrator is Oji’s mother, Miobeth Anabasi. What can you tell us about her and what sort of being is she?

Miobeth is an Alate, a privileged class of people kept in luxurious seclusion. Their lives culminate in meeting their Emperor- a God incarnate who transforms them into angels to fight the evil Slave Empire. Or that is what they tell themselves while they pass their days painting and sewing.

After Her Unbound Hallux, there are three further sequels or parts to the series. What is it about the shorter format that appeals to you?

I enjoy reading novels, but usually after 30k words I have either figured out the point of the story or lost interest in finding out. A novella-length story that packs in a novel’s worth of ideas, plot and characterisation is my holy grail in writing. I’ve read a few like Elder Race, so I know it can be done. Also, the dominance of novel-length stories is a hangover from the logistics of the printing press. In this age of eBooks and self-publishing, it makes sense to break out of that mould. The Murderbot Diaries is a great example of what is possible.

The three sequels are Her Lethal Secretions, Her Pellucid Pupil and His Indelible Fingerprint. What can you tell us about these instalments and the characters who narrate them: Lanella, Suvita and Remus?

Lanella is a Halian type of Ostral, selected to be irresistible to the sapiens still living in distant South America. Suvita is from a subterranean albino lineage selected to be a living library. Remus is a Lampid type of Ostral, ridiculously tall and elaborately striped. They often become envoys that cross continents on foot. Each character fails to fit social expectations and ends up forging their own path. Suvita is asexual, and Remus is attracted to other males, though the role of sex and sexuality in Ostral society is quite different from today.

When creating the world of Our Vitreous Womb, how much did you work on the details of the world before beginning to write?

World building was done first in great detail. I took my time asking lots of questions about how everything worked in terms of economics and politics, and how it could have arisen over historic timescales from today. I’m a big-time planner when it comes to plots. It is the only way to achieve the density and cohesion I like. For major characters, I need to get inside their heads before I draft, but the minor characters I leave undefined so they can surprise me when they turn up. The saucy old nun in Book 1 (Sister Janay) is a great example of this. She just burst out when that door opened, fully formed.

The words Ostral and Ostrala hint at Australia. Why did you choose that place in particular and how does the landscape lend to visions of the future?

Glad you picked that up. The story is set in New Zealand and Australia. The splendid isolation we have here means biology has more opportunities to do wild experiments. I set it here as an example of writing what I know (though 30 000 years in the future required a little imagination). Playing with sea-level rise maps got me thinking about the potential of an Australian inland sea. In many ways, the Mediterranean Sea was the womb of Roman civilisation. In my novel, a future Australian inland sea is set up to serve a similar function for the next big transformation.

You mention in a previous interview that you were influenced by the ideas of Professor Joseph Tainter, who envisages the end of our industrial society. What do you think of his idea?

Civilisations come and go. Ours probably will as well. Humans long for immortality (both as individuals and as cultures) but this instinct is probably misplaced. Every new generation leads to innovations and wild experiments and that makes history worth living through, but the price of that is letting go of the old. I couldn’t think of anything more boring than achieving a final utopia.

Please tell us about the meaning of the word apoptosis and its significance in your world.

You really did your research! Apoptosis is programmed cell death. When a cell in your body gets infected or damaged, it will usually initiate its own destruction for the benefit of the whole. This process is even used to grow complex structures, with groups of cells dying to leave others behind. Human societies function like this as well. Just as a bee will sacrifice itself to defend the hive, humans will often endure incredible danger and suffering for those they love. The Ostrals just take this one step further.

What are you working on now and what can you tell us about your short fiction?

As to what I am working on now- if you had asked me a few weeks ago I was just about to start drafting a 1980s dark nostalgia magic realism novel (with a heavy pinch of environmental chemistry and nutritional science). I have put it aside for now (not because I was having nightmares about what category to click for it on Amazon) but rather to explore the possibility of creating a visual novel (a type of story-focused video game). Self-publishing Our Vitreous Womb gave me a chance to brush up my limited art skills (I made all the covers myself, partly because I had no idea what a biological sci-fi should look like to begin, partly because I am dirt poor). I also branched into audio, narration, podcasts, basic animation, etc, etc. Growing up I loved the “Choose your own adventure” books, and I suspect a more literary approach to writing non-linear fiction, combined with the many new tools for art and sound, could be opening up a whole new medium to people like me who are too obsessive to work well with others. I also hate to admit that I admire the careers of independent game producers like Toby Fox (who made Undertale with only a single collaborator) more than any living novelist. I will probably write more novels/novellas in the future, but I figured while I am at the start of my creative career it makes sense to give a few different media a serious effort.

Regarding short stories- I was lucky to win a place in the cli-fi parody anthology “The Flesh of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth”. My story “The Recalcitrant Savior” features a geriatric gay power couple as president and vice president of the USA, dealing with a disgusting bioweapon attack. People can get a free copy of it by signing up to my email list at www.haldanebdoyle.com.

You can also find my short stories narrated on YouTube by my dear friend at “Stories from the Sky SFF”. My favourite is “The Fermi Orthodox”, which combines cheesy space opera antics with a plausible novel theory combining the rare Earth hypothesis with the Fermi paradox. I also write the occasional short story on my experimental farming blog (zeroinputagriculture.substack.com). My favourite would be “A Burr in the Woods” which explores the power of Luther Burbank style crop breeding in a very near future suburban dystopia (though aren’t all suburbs dystopian? Just ask a Neanderthal for confirmation).

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About Haldane B. Doyle:

Haldane B. Doyle is the fictional alter-id of Dr. Shane Simonsen.

Haldane grew up in subtropical Australia as a biology obsessed nerdling, consorting with blue tongue lizards, breeding mantis shrimps and molesting octopi when he wasn’t cultivating rare succulents and carnivorous plants.

He trained as a research biochemist, then made just enough money to retire before middle age to his experimental farm. There he works hard to develop novel and orphan crops that rely on zero inputs, including domesticating a staple tree crop from the Jurassic. He blogs regularly on this work at Zero Input Agriculture on Substack (or see older Zero Input Agriculture posts here) and will write a book about it someday.

Apart from farming he finds time to imagine the distant post-industrial future, creating fictional worlds that could quite possibly come to exist (though hopefully with less heart-slicing drama). His style of hard science fiction relies on extensive research into real research.

Sci-fi fans are tired of apocalypses. Star-trek futures have slipped out of reach. That just means it’s time to imagine a future that’s both realistic and inspiring instead.

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