Human Voices, Alien Conversations
Human Voices, Alien Conversations is a tour through the modern world of speculative fiction, featuring a variety of perspectives. Authors, critics, editors, and artists, legends and new talents, reflect on their passage through words. Interviewees include a TV star turned novelist, the first transgender woman to win a Hugo Award, and the editor of The Best Science Fiction of the Year (2016 – ).
The book takes the form of a literal journey, opening with James Machell stepping off a plane to explore SF. Along the way, he learns the secrets of non-fiction writing from the co-editor and biggest contributor to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The intricacies of world building are explained by a bestselling author of epic fantasy. He discovers the background to some of the most iconic images in SF from their artists as well as the literature that inspired them. “Would artificially created animals be kosher to eat?” is just one of the conundrums traversed.
Featuring candid discussions about creative doubt, the pressures of making art under late capitalism, and how AI threatens a new generation of creatives, Human Voices, Alien Conversations snapshots SF before its predictions come true. Includes conversations with Ken Liu, Bogi Takács, Paolo Bacigalupi, John Picacio, John Clute, Samuel R. Delany, Samantha Mills, Jeff Noon, Steven Youll, P. Djèlí Clark, Chris Moore, Ai Jiang, Cheryl Morgan, Neil Clarke, Pat Cadigan, and Matthew Holness.
Praise for Human Voices, Alien Conversations
This collection presents sixteen fascinating interviews with important contemporary science fiction figures ranging from established figures such as Samuel Delany and John Clute through such younger up-and-coming writers such as Ai Jiang to others whose contributions to science fiction are editing (Neil Clarke) illustration (John Picacio) and television (Matthew Holness). The range and variety of these pieces produces a captivating impression of the vibrant and varied genre that science fiction has become. Some of these interviews are being published for the first time and provide readers with exciting new insights and others, that have previously appeared in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, are enhanced with the addition of editorial headnotes, references and an eloquent and helpful contextual introduction by Machell to make this a coherent, compelling and comprehensive account the state of science fiction today. Machell’s interview style is exemplary: astute, precisely formulated and occasionally provocative. His questions generate original responses from even the most familiar interviewees, and the resulting dialogues develop a genuine sense of the excitement, variety and importance of today’s science fiction scene.
-Dr. Simon Malpas, Senior Lecturer at The University of Edinburgh
A wide and diverse range of views and perspectives from established participants in the science fiction scene to relatively newcomers to the field. From Ken Liu to Cheryl Morgan, the interviews provide an insight into the inner workings, identities and ideologies of the interviewees. Science fiction, as a field, is always constantly changing. With such new blood and perspectives coming in, the field will continue to grow (and change) in the future. Readers would take away three things: evolution, experience and ethos. These three things underlie why the interviewees continue to write or create in the science fiction scene.
-Joyce Chng, Strange Horizons non-fiction editor
Click here for an interview with the author:
James Machell 