“The Lord of Mars” is a captivating story about an experimental space colony whose members are striving to survive both the harsh Martian climate and the escalating political situation. Where did the idea for this story come from?

I’m not sure it’s a political situation so much as a working conditions situation, but yes, that is definitely a core conflict!

I had something like an “ah-ha” moment, but it might be better described as an “uh-oh” moment? All I remember is that I was idly thinking about private space exploration, and I realized that the people on a planet might be employees of a company rather than the public servant astronauts we’re used to and I thought . . . uh oh. What happens if the situation starts breaking down?

There’s a lot of amazing science fiction about the dangers of labor exploitation in space. Often it’s pretty dystopian. Also, those stories tend to be told in the far future. I was curious what the initial stages of that dynamic might look like.

How did you approach imagining life on Mars? What kind of research or creative decisions went into building that world?

My biggest inspiration is a podcast called The Habitat, which a dear friend of mine made. It follows six people who volunteered to live inside a fake Mars habitat on the side of a volcano in order to help NASA understand the psychological challenges future explorers would face. It’s really fantastic.

I researched what the current major theories were on how humans might live on Mars, and what kinds of technology we might use. Potatoes are a crop that seems especially promising, in part because potatoes are just a miracle food.

About six months after I sold this story, I had lunch with another science fiction writer friend who said he’d just completed a big worldbuilding gathering with actual scientists. Apparently, according to the new data coming, conditions on Mars are even harsher than we realized. A lot of the ideas in here might not be feasible. But I also never wanted to get too bogged down in figuring out whether a Mars colony is feasible. Smarter people than me are working on that one. I was more interested in finding details that would capture how precarious and scary and awe-inspiring it would be to pull it off.

Reading this story from Oliver’s perspective, I felt such strong feelings of isolation, both physical and emotional. His loyalty towards both the Queen and his fellow “leveraged employees” is a major source of conflict for him that really evokes these feelings. Did you know from the start that this dynamic would be a central part of the story or did it develop as you wrote?

According to my Scrivener doc, I started working on this story in 2021. I think I wrote that first scene, maybe a little more, and then it sat fallow for a long time.

Nothing came to life until I figured out that Oliver was going to be torn between those two camps. Originally, I thought this would be a story about the organizers, since I was one of a number of folks who helped organize a union at my old job. But as fiction, that story didn’t feel interesting to me. A lot of my work starts out being inspired by some aspect of my experience, but the characters never come alive until I yank them away from what I’m familiar with and hurl them toward maximum conflict.

I wrote most of this story in early 2023, sometimes while my infant son slept in a carrier against my chest. I remember feeling very happy and focused. But maybe that feeling of isolation or torn-ness comes from the transition I was making in becoming a parent, too.

What drew you to speculative fiction/science fiction as a genre?

I’ve been writing and publishing fantasy and science fiction for twenty years—literally. My first story came out when I was still in college in 2005. I don’t think I’ll ever really know the answer to that question, any more than I’ll know why I like chocolate cake.

But I think I keep returning to the genre because it’s the mythic space in our culture. I like telling stories that mix psychological realism and impossible situations. Real feelings, but definitely not Real Life.

What do you hope readers will think or feel after living among the Martian colonists?

We’re so used to thinking of exploring other planets as a dream or even a privilege. But if all these wild dreams come true, going into space will become someone’s job. What is our dream for those jobs?

Do you have any upcoming projects that you’d like to talk about?

I have a novel out on submission! It’s about a boarding school cut off from the world by a mysterious disaster, and the disaster lesbians trying to save it.

I took a long, largely unintended break from publishing short stories. The idea was to write novels, and I did, but that took a long time, too. Working on this story has made me hungry to write short(er) more often. I’m wrapping up a revision of a novella. I swear the next one will be even shorter.