I was mildly tickled, certainly not captured, by the thought that Earth is probably about a fourth-generation (across the history of the universe) living planet; that is, about three planetary lifespans of living worlds have probably gone all the way from first replicating molecules to dead husks before we even started. So if there was panspermia, it would have had plenty of time to evolve.

To me, steampunk is a genre that straddles the border between fantasy and science fiction, with one foot in each camp. It’s also a genre that is inextricably bound up with the history of colonialism and empire. As such, it’s particularly suitable for telling metaphorical stories about the impact of technology as one aspect of cultural invasion and the responses of the colonized peoples.

I tend to think of myself as a quiet writer, meaning that when given the opportunity to write about something big — like destructive climate change, for example — I’ll usually look inward for the emotional struts that get knocked over by such life-changing events. With so many bombastic, epic destruction stories in our lives — the “disaster porn” of modern cinema a prime example — I often find myself most moved by the portrayal of believable, honest people who are unfortunately living in the shadow of such towering events.

This is a story about the commodification of absolutely everything. It portrays a future world where culture, religion, and people themselves are consumer goods bought and sold on the open market. No one in the story thinks they are living in a dystopia; they cheerfully collaborate and celebrate their own commodification — until they can’t any more.

I tried to write about Váli for the first time in my junior year of college, right after my first few short stories had been published. It was not a success. I don’t know why I tried again in 2010, during a painful drought in my writing life — by the time I finished the story in December of that year, it was the first piece of fiction I had managed to complete since early 2008 — but this time it took. To date, it’s still my only successful attempt at Norse myth in fiction.

In a way, I had the inspiration for this story far before I ever thought about writing. It came from the idea of the music of the spheres — the idea that the movements of the moon and planets have their own tones or harmonies that are based on the proportions of their orbits. I first learned of the concept studying Shakespeare in high school, but it’s an idea that has fascinated me whenever I’ve come across it.