Welcome to Lightspeed Magazine! We’re honoured to share your story “The Overview Initiative” with our readers. Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?

Initially, I started with trying to envision a positive future. I came up with the Overview Initiative concept, then immediately realized all the reasons it is a terrible idea. That tension, as well as a tension I’ve been feeling around what the “point” of science fiction writing is more broadly (as if there is one singular point), drove this story. After I had that concept, it took another long while to crack the nested reveal structure and do the research to make the story realistic and believable.

This is a timely story, coming so close on the heels of Artemis 2’s return to lunar space. In what you’ve seen of the online reactions to Artemis 2, do you think they reinforce the themes you were going for?

Absolutely. I think people, including me, are craving some vision of humanity that is not a return to Great Powers posturing manifesting in the slaughter of civilians. It is not lost on me that Artemis 2 was launched amidst my American government’s wanton and monstrous attacks in Iran. There is no reason we cannot be a planet that commits to the former without succumbing to the latter. But I’d be lying if I said I knew how to get there from here.

I liked the idea of this story being made of nested stories, all focused on making a philosophical change, and how it lets the story comment on itself. What led you to set it up this way, as opposed to focusing entirely on Dr. Li’s story?

For this story, I had the structure first, so Dr. Li came from the structure, rather than the structure coming from her part of the narrative. I was interested in this story as a metacommentary on the role of SFF short stories in general. Had we stuck purely with Dr. Li, that angle would disappear.

However, I would trade all the metacommentary to live in a world where Dr. Li could win her argument.

Between launching millions of high schoolers into orbit or science fiction writers being a modern well of hope, there are big ideas at work here, but I’m not sure whether to approach them with an earnest or satirical lens. How were you hoping that people would read this?

Both, honestly! I am not sure I want to tell people how to read the work. Writing this was an exercise of exploring the tension between finding ways to be earnest without being toxically positive or feeling like I was lying to the audience. I hope the reader gets something from that tension as I did writing this story.

Are there any recently published stories or authors you’d like to recommend?

I love my friend Sunwoo Jeong’s newest piece, “Permanent Press,” out now in Uncanny (bit.ly/4tGx8ym). Sunwoo’s work is uniformly incredible, blending melancholy, joy and the magic of nighttime spaces into a voice all her own. If you liked “The Overview Initiative” and enjoy chasing the surreal and sublime, go read it!

Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

If you liked this story, please do follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @davidmarinowrites, as I have more coming out! I can say for sure that I have a fantasy story coming out here in Lightspeed in the future, and I just had a much darker experimental science fiction story, “When Will Mars Have a Dawn?” that came out in Lumina Journal this April (bit.ly/4ulOwIB), with more stories on the way. Many more things in the works!