Because our readers have the expectation of that element of “What if?”, it gives SF authors a bigger sandbox to play in. We’re not quite as confined by the rules of the everyday world, especially in terms of whatever science fictional concept we’re exploring. And I’m not saying that a novel needs to hit you over the head with a sociopolitical message, but there are plenty of works that subtly incorporate them. Even in terms of worldbuilding.

Since I began with the idea of using playing cards as spells, I studied cards and learned that the suits have symbolic associations originally based on the Tarot. Take a suit and a number and you could imagine an effect based around that combination. Since that effect wasn’t specific and could vary, I imagined that there was a kind of gambling element to the magic—that you had to choose very carefully the effect you were trying for. Try too much with a card, try to exceed the value, and it might fail to work.

Many of my stories for Lightspeed in particular are challenges I set myself, and this one began as an attempt to write the entire story in the AIsource caretaker’s voice. I discovered while doing it that Sacrid really wanted to heard. One reason I never described her—though I might if I return to her story, a genuine possibility—is that her rebellious ways do presumably include the cosmetic, and honestly, my wildest efforts to be outrageous could very easily devolve to quaint.

I’m constantly thinking about the way art influences and moves us to action, and how those actions can change the world. Not all resistance is violent or visible. Not all art is designed to intentionally create a change, but you can never predict what’s going to stick a match to someone’s fuse, or how long that art will continue to work its magic. I think it’s important to create things regardless of whether or not you think it’s going to appeal to a wider audience, because you are the only one capable of expressing the thoughts inside your head.

I think as a species we’re terrified of things that are smarter than us, and that’s mostly because that’s how we identify our superiority over the natural world: We’re smarter than it. So, the idea that there could be something small and sleek that is infinitely more canny than us immediately makes us scared. And what do humans do when we’re terrified? We make them into monsters so we can summon our peers to the hunt. As for what they are to me, well, that’s a long story best told in another fable, yes?

One day, when I was hiking alone, I was seized by the certainty that I would round the next bend and encounter my parents—not my parents as they are today, in their sixties and living several states away, but in their twenties, not yet married. Would they recognize me? Would I want them to? What would I want them to know? And what of my telling might undo me? I carried the seed of the idea to the Clarion workshop in summer 2016, where instructor Ted Chiang sat us down and—succinctly, without consulting any notes—explained to us precisely how time travel could work, and the issues this poses for free will.

“The Final Blow” is the first-ever story in my “The Gods Have Gone” universe. As a fan of fantasy, I’ve always wanted to create a fantasy setting where there is no metal. Development of metal opens up the inevitability of advanced technical development, so what kind of stories could be told in a setting without metal? I’ve played with this concept in my “New World” mythos, which consists of two stories (“Victim with a Capital V” and “Throwdown,” which are in the anthologies Unfettered II and Unfettered III, respectively). Those stories are set in our world, but one set 2,000 years after bioengineered bacteria destroy all metal.

The inspiration for the spider drones came from the artist Louise Bourgeois, who did a series of spider sculptures in bronze and steel. Her spiders are terrifying, dynamic and futuristic. They are inert but very much alive and the experience of viewing them at SFMOMA changed me. The spider, to me, is industrious and beautiful. From a biomechanics perspective, there is no piece of man-made technology that approaches its sophistication. I imagine the singularity as occurring in a place where nature and technology are indistinguishable.

I’ve had this image in my head for a long time—two old friends, moon colonists and blue-collar workers, whacking golf balls off a lunar escarpment and jawing about the first time anyone (Alan Shepard, Apollo Astronaut) ever teed off on the moon. I’m not particularly a golf fan, but the image was so compelling I was determined to build a story around it. The second inspiration was decidedly less fun—the heart-wrenching experience of watching my mother-in-law slowly decline with dementia over a period of about fifteen years.