Who articulate giant , thrilling space opera is dead ? British author John Love just sell his debut novel , Faith , to Nightshade Books , and it has a Brobdingnagian widescreen premiss that voice like the perfect commixture of space engagement and politics .
Top image by Jabraniho , viaConcept Art Forums
The announcement inPublishers Marketplacedescribed Faith as :
a sci - fi mix of Moby Dick and the classic movie Duel , in which an unknown , invincible , Kafkaesque alien ship has returned 300 year after breaking one galactic imperium to now threaten the human Commonwealth , and the best and brightest minds that are sent in a invincible ship of their own to stop it , with the only problem being that those best and brightest are also some of the Commonwealth ’s most distorted psychopath and if they win , the human empire may find itself in more peril than ever .
We were so excited by that description , include “ sociopaths on an invincible spaceship , ” that we had to inquire Love about it . How did he come up with this harebrained construct , and how did he betray it to Nightshade ? Is it space opera house or military SF ? Here ’s what he told us :
The actual writing of Faith take about fifteen month , but I ’d had the idea in my headland for a few years before that . My chore in the euphony manufacture ( I was Managing Director of PPL , the world ’s turgid record diligence copyright organization ) mean I never properly sat down to compose it until after I retired . Before then , it existed as disconnected scraps of bounder - dog-eared paper . Once I ’d written it I looked on the net for agents active in the SF field who were heart-to-heart to submissions from new source . Jason Yarn of Paradigm was about the 10th factor I adjoin , and he seemed to get what the novel was about . I sign a pot for Paradigm and Jason to represent the novel about a twelvemonth ago . Nightshade ’s offer came about three week ago .
I ’ve always like the idea of a serious literary novel which is also a really good page - Henry Hubert Turner . That ’s what I always desire Faith to be . If I had to choose between the categories you observe ( hard military SF and space opera house ) I ’d say it ’s closer to space opera house . But I always wanted it to have a philosophic dimension too . I tried to write it so it goes profoundly into character , and enkindle questions of identity and motivation ( sorry- that sound pretentious ) but the peg on which all that is hung is the story of a quad battle against a mysterious and progressively unusual antagonist . The tonality is the opponent ’s identity , and that is bring out , fully , mightily at the end .
[ The alien ] ship has already destroy the Sakhran Empire . The Sakhrans are humanoids , with a rather motionless and materialistic lodge . What is give of their Empire , after Faith first call them , is now assimilated into the Commonwealth . The Commonwealth ( as you ’ll also see from the affixation ) is not an Evil Empire ( I like Star Wars , but I did n’t require to go down that route ) . Most of it is fairly open and decent . I did n’t want to have a uncomplicated good - and - bad division of the two opponents . One of them ( the Commonwealth ) is frighteningly powerful but has both good and unfit timber , probably more effective than bad . The other one ( trust ) is unknowable , at least until the end . And strange .
The synopsis describes Faith as “ the bastard child of Moby Dick and Kafka , unvanquishable and strange , ” and maybe the idea come from a kind of subconscious amalgamation of those two . Moby Dick , because of the idea of a mighty opponent ( the heavyweight ) against an equally mighty hunter ( Ahab ) . Kafka , because as the battle proceeds and more is revealed about Faith , it becomes exonerated that this unidentified ship comes from somewhere Kafkaesque , where all normal laws are invert , where water fall uphill . ( That ’s a good musical phrase . I wish well I ’d used it in the book ! )
I do n’t think I know enough about the mart for heavy - tariff outer space opera house to know whether it ’s as warm as it used to be . Iain M Banks novel still betray very strongly in the UK , though I think they have tone you do n’t find in some other space opera . As I say , I was n’t consciously write a space opera , but something else which used the story of a space battle as a peg on which to attend other things I need to say .
Book deal reportBooksIain M. BanksSpace
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