For inspiration, I definitely had thoughts of the Alien-style “workforce in space” undertones (though with decidedly less acidic drippings in my result). I like the idea of a person just trying to carry out a normal life in space, and the economies that crop up in that “landscape.” I thought of how tired that person might get with so much darkness stretching between them and the nearest human. How burnt out on the daily grind. How old they could feel while still so young. And—depending on the profession they took up—how chronic injuries might be a huge part of their life.

I often draw from the Russian folklore I grew up hearing, and with this particular story wanted to try working with an invented myth rather than an established one. Lake Baikal is of course a real place, and one that’s special and fascinating to me, as I have family living in the nearby city of Irkutsk and visited occasionally as a child. The seals, or nerpa, endemic to the lake are real as well, and though some mystery surrounds them—like how they came to be there in the first place—the queen and her mythology aren’t part of that mystery (not in our world anyway).

I am a multi-instrumentalist (acoustic and electric guitar, keys, drums and bass). I’m also trying to learn the saxophone. I used to make beats but haven’t had time for that in a while. I’m one of those outlier writers who can never write to music because then my music brain kicks in and I’ll spend the session analysing the vocal harmonies, chord progressions, and key changes that I won’t be able to focus on writing. So I write in silence.

In the months before drafting “SyncALife,” I experienced a loss that made me think about how easy it is to fondly remember a loved one, but miles more difficult to discuss the harm they might have caused in their lifetimes. This felt especially true of men—and paternal figures—who seem to receive more grace when it comes to their shortcomings. This story was a way of exploring the long-term effects of hypermasculinity.

I was playing Skyrim again and having fun reading all the books. It sort of clicked in my head that maybe what this story was lacking was the “in world” texts . . . so I started with one, and then it just expanded wildly from there and the connected narratives of identity and representation and connection all gelled in my head. Also, I have always wanted an excuse to write a video game cut scene.

Alas, this story originated with life and death. You can see that I am the viewpoint character, and that the drama taking place in the foreground is the events concurrent with the sudden illness and untimely death of my wife Judi. I wish the story hadn’t originated, but we can’t always get what we want. It is the second, and I hope final, story specifically driven by this loss.

When I was about thirteen, a group of us went camping in someone’s cow pasture. There was a murky pond where we swam and fished. I waded deep into the dark, fish-reeking water, up to my throat, when my feet touched something sharp in the mud. I stepped back, but I found more hard edges, coated in slime. Probing around with my feet, horror and disgust broke over me when I realized where I was.

I backed a Kickstarter with a reward level that included working with Maurice on a short story. We’d both written airships, and I had friends who had lots of great things to say about Maurice as a person, so I thought that would be a fun experience. I was a little nervous, because a previous attempt to co-write a story didn’t go well. But that was a novel, and this would be a short story. I hoped that I’d have a better experience.

I love stories where characters find their person(s) through adventure, magic, and hardship. Before writing this story, I was also daydreaming epilogues for my favorite Hayao Miyazaki films. I thought, “What happens when the main characters grow old? What happens when one of them loses their partner in life? How do you process that grief when you’re jaded by the world and have magical abilities?” I was still processing my own grief and anxieties while writing it, and for a time I wasn’t sure how it would end.

SF is the only genre explicitly designed to explore the impact of scientific and technical change. The moment you posit a discovery that changes the way we understand Nature—human, biological, subatomic, what have you—you’re talking science fiction by definition. Those are the kinds of issues that interest me the most, and SF is the only genre big enough to explore them.