Back in 2011, Jonathan Strahan invited me to contribute to an anthology of “science fiction set in a settled, industrialized, pre-starflight solar system,” and my immediate response was more or less, “I want to go to there!” I never really thought of myself as someone who wrote hard SF (and the invitation specified “original hard SF/action adventure”), but I always kinda wanted to be, so this was a great excuse to stretch those wings.

I have it on good authority that the invention of the Frappuccino is, in fact, the teleological purpose of the universe. The real question is: How do we live our lives now that this purpose has been fulfilled? Have we been set adrift, cosmically speaking? Should nihilism prevail? Is everything nothing? Why does my nose itch? Should I stop asking these questions?

I read up some pottery lore, and dimly recalled doing some pottery on a turntable as a boy. Then I wondered about what the meaning of such an accidental message might be. Choice of point of view character is essential, once you have the basic idea. I liked seeing this from a bureaucrat distance, to show from outside the real pivot person, the scientist who’s frustrated by his finding. I sat down and wrote the story in one afternoon.

The experiment arose from my instinct that what’s most exciting about other people, what’s most likely to inspire our passion and our empathy, is their mystery; when we cease to acknowledge that mystery and convince ourselves that we truly know them, rejecting the possibility that they might not be quite the people we imagine, is when we stop perceiving them as enigmatic other human beings and only as a type of themselves.

When I have my SF hat on, I try to rein in the more fantastic elements so I can at least pretend to a veneer of scientific respectability. The idea that one response to a more sea-bound world would be to engineer a human subspecies that could make use of all that coastal land we’re likely to lose seemed just on this side of plausible (especially if the attempt, as per the story, is not exactly government-sanctioned).

I’m a great believer in Real Fantasy. If I’m expecting a reader to follow me into the dark woods of folklore, dream, and metaphor, I figure I’d better leave them a trail of good, hard, palpable pebbles to follow, and maybe some interesting smells, a beckoning sound or two, and some nice gingerbread to eat on the way (with details adjusted for regional variation).

I wrote this as a birthday present for China Miéville, and as it was a gift, I put bunch of his favorite things into the story—revolution, cephalopods, etc. If we’re talking sparks, this story is kind of in conversation with China’s brain. His brain lights mine up daily. Some of the best things I’ve ever written have come from discussions we’ve had. He challenges me to work in forms I hadn’t thought of working in, and to use things I’d thought were too difficult to use.