Aurhor Interview: Katharine Kerr

Deborah J. Ross: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you come to be a writer?

Katharine Kerr: From childhood on, I’ve always loved to read. Somewhere around age 8 I realized that books did not just magically appear – they were written by people! And I vowed that one day I’d be one of them. I never lost sight of that goal, even when my life turned very difficult in my 20’s. I just kept reading and kept writing for practice. When I finally finished a novel, FLICKERS, that is, a family saga such as was popular in the 1980s, I realized I’d need an agent. People ask me: how did you learn how to get published without the internet? The answer always seems to surprise them. I don’t know why. I went to the public library and looked up the subject in the old-fashioned card catalog. Lo and behold! There was a whole shelf of books on the subject. I read several and followed their advice.

 

DJR: What inspired your book, Haze? 

KK: For some time, several years really, before I started work on it, I had a scene in my mind. A derelict, probably an addict, was sitting on the sidewalk in a far future city when a military officer came striding to offer him redemption . . . for something, I didn’t know what. But they turned out to be Dan Brennan and Captain Evans. I started writing from there.

 

DJR: How does it relate to your other hard sf?

KK: When I wrote POLAR CITY BLUES, back in the 1990s, I didn’t realize that it was the beginning of something longer. After years of working on the Deverry Saga, I wanted to write a one-off, something that ended! One of my friends, Kate Daniel, thought otherwise. She wrote almost all of POLAR CITY NIGHTMARE even though my name’s on the cover – commercial reasons, of course. In these two books, Humanity have settled only a few exoplanets. The dominant species are the Kar-Li and the H’Allevae (known as Hoppers), but the Leps are represented too, under the condescending name of “lizzies”.

            In a short story I wrote, “Its Own Reward,” another sapient species appears, the Val Chiri Gan. This story takes place a long while before the Polar City pair, when the Old Earth is dying. They may reappear in ZYON. I’m not sure yet.

            SNARE and PALACE are two books more closely linked to HAZE. Both are victims of the sudden closing of the same interstellar shunt.  PALACE was another collaboration. I had nothing to do with the sequel, however, and unlike PCN, my name certainly belongs on the cover of PALACE itself.

Short Book Review: If Cats Could Type

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi (Tor)

Charlie seems like an average guy, having given up his career as a journalist for substitute teaching that barely pays for groceries and cat food. He’s kind and sweet, a sucker for a cute cat or two. His current dream is to buy a landmark pub, although it’s unlikely the bank will approve the loan. To make matters worse, his siblings want to sell the house they jointly own. Then his long-lost Uncle Jake dies, and before Charlie realizes what’s going on, he finds himself heir to a supervillain business and the target of his uncle’s rivals, a cabal of rich, soulless multinational predators. Along the way, Charlie discovers a knack for negotiating with wisecracking sentient dolphins who threaten a strike if their demands for better working conditions aren’t met, intelligent spy cats who communicate via typewriters, and a terrifyingly competent henchwoman.

It's all brilliantly witty but with an undercurrent of thoughtfulness. Again and again, Charlie demonstrates how logic, common sense, and an utter lack of deference to bullies can and do prevail. The dialog is top-notch, as are the reversals and plot twists. Having grown up in a union family, I heartily cheered for dolphin workers’ rights.

Fun reading for you and your cats.

Book Review: Superb Hard SF from Katharine Kerr

Haze, by Katharine Kerr (ARC Manor)

Katharine Kerr is one of the most versatile writers of speculative fiction. Although many readers know her best for her long-running “Deverry” fantasy series, she also writes superb urban fantasy and hard science fiction, with such works as Polar City Blues and Freeze Frames. Now she returns to a far future when interstellar civilization depends on travel through hyperspace stargate shunts. Kerr’s universe is richly detailed, enormous in scope of space and history, replete with ancient grudges between sapient races, current politics, and plots-within-plots. And a mystery: the shunts are supposed to be permanent, anchored at each end to nearby planets, but something—or some ONE—has accomplished the impossible and destroyed a shunt. Which vital route will be the next target?

We are drawn into the story through Dan, an immensely talented starship pilot capable of linking with a ship’s AI to navigate the shunts. Like other pilots, he uses the drug Haze to blunt his craving for the transcendent experience of hyperspace when he’s not working. But Haze is highly addictive, and Dan’s use of it has gotten him cashiered out of Fleet, destitute, and turning tricks on Nowhere Street on a backwater planet to feed his habit. When Fleet offers him a way back to his old job, under the care of his former lover, Devit, and enough Haze to keep him functional, Dan doesn’t have a choice. There’s a reason he’s refused treatment for Haze addiction, a secret he guards with his life. Disguised as merchant traders, he and his new crew begin investigating the disappearance of the shunt. And that’s when things start to go seriously wrong.

Kerr’s use of Dan as an initial viewpoint character who introduces us to this world is brilliant. He’s at turns fallible, aggravating, and heart-breakingly attractive. The offspring of a noted film beauty, he’s been genetically modified to be sexually irresistible to both men and women, and to unconsciously respond to their advances. Devit has been the only person in his life to care about him as a person, but at a terrible cost. In this society, both bisexuality and polyamory are widely accepted, but relationships like theirs are fraught with challenges. Anyone who’s ever loved a person with substance abuse issues knows how painful and impossibly difficult it can be. As Devit grows closer to legendary cyberjock Jorja, their problems and the choices both must face become more urgent.

As the mystery unfolds, with a nuanced pacing of plot reversals and surprises, layers of both human and alien cultures emerge. One of the more fascinating of these is the relationship—sometimes symbiotic, often sullenly adversarial—between human pilots or cyberjocks and the AIs that run ships, stations, archives, and more. Scholars find themselves at cross-purposes with the military that is supposed to protect them. Old feuds between species simmer just below the surface. The revelation at the end is highly satisfactory, meticulously plotted, and a fresh surprise.

It's hard to list the strengths of this remarkable novel because there are so many. They include exceptional world-building, social systems and relationships, hardware and AIs, and most of all, the characters. People find themselves trapped with no healthy way forward, like Dan and Devit. They try new strategies and alliances, not always successful. As they confront new situations or old ones come back to haunt them, they struggle to move beyond the past. Wounded, recovering, and scarred, their lives can never be the same. In other words, Kerr’s fully rounded characters change and grow in ways that drive the story forward.

Award-worthy and highly recommended for lovers of space science fiction.

What We Lose, What We Gain

Wright & Teague Delphi Rings

I wrote this post in 2011. Still true, perhaps even more so now.

Some years ago - like maybe a decade - most of my jewelry was stolen. None of it was very valuable, although there were some pearls and jade and a little amber, and a lovely pair of moonstone stud earrings. But, as is the way of things, each piece had a story that was part of my life. That was the real value, and hence the deepest loss. I'd had some of them since my childhood, and some had been gifts from loved ones who've since died. Some of it was my mother's.

I went through the expected rage and frenzy, scouring local flea markets in the forlorn hope that I might spot a piece or two. Of course, I did not. When that stage had run its course, the police report filed (and, doubtless, forgotten), anger turned to grief, and grief to acceptance, and acceptance to looking in a new way at what I'd lost.

I wrote in my journal that the thieves had taken bits of minerals, crystals, shells, fossilized tree sap, but they could not steal:

the stories in my mind
the books I've written
my children
the redwoods
my dreams
my friends
their kindness and generosity to me
my capacity for joy...

Short Book Reviews: A Cozy Battle-Orc Fantasy

 Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree (Tor)

Is there such a thing as a cozy high fantasy with a female battle-orc heroine? Elves, dwarves, enchanted swords, necromancers…and spicy romance novels? Yes to all of this, because Travis Baldree has invented the subgenre!

Bookshops & Bonedust is a delightful prequel to Legends and Lattes, although each works beautifully on its own.

Recuperating from wounds incurred in the hunt for a powerful necromancer, battle-orc soldier-of-fortune Viv finds herself in the sleepy beach town of Murk with nothing to do. In desperation born of overwhelming boredom, she follows the literary suggestions of Fern, the ratkin owner of a dying bookstore. Any fantasy reader worth their salt knows what comes next! Not only is Viv drawn into the enchanted world of novels but she sets about reviving the bookstore, complete with a surprise appearance by the elf author of fabled romance adventures. Along the way, Viv encounters a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a retired mercenary turned baker extraordinaire, a mysterious traveler in gray, and a talking bag of bones. All is not hunky-dory in Murk, however, for the necromancer responsible for Viv’s injury is still on the loose…

I loved every page of it!