『INTERVIEW: Science fiction writer Alex T. Singer』のカバーアート

INTERVIEW: Science fiction writer Alex T. Singer

INTERVIEW: Science fiction writer Alex T. Singer

無料で聴く

ポッドキャストの詳細を見る
概要
 An interview with Alex T. Singer, winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best science fiction short story published in 2025, for her novelette "We the Fleet."Do you or someone you know need professional tech guidance for your author, coaching, or independent publishing business? If so, check out our sponsor Cloudessy, providing fractional Chief Technology Officer services. Simplify your tech stack, prevent launch failures, and build systems that actually support growth.https://marketing.cloudessy.com/30-minute-tech-stack-update/Brian Pauls: Alex, welcome to The Cosmic Codex. I appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us.Alex T. Singer: I appreciate being here. Thank you very much.Brian Pauls: Well, I would like to start with a question about your background with speculative fiction. How did you get started with an interest in speculative fiction, in particular science fiction?Alex T. Singer: Well, like a lot of people, I’ve been interested in speculative fiction my whole life. It was ingrained in me very early on by the books my parents read to me. My father actually read 2001: A Space Odyssey to me at a very formative age.1 Then he showed me the movie, and apparently Kubrick meant nothing to me, because I was just annoyed it wasn’t the book.Brian Pauls: I get that. I have the same attitude toward movies a lot of times. But exposing you to quality science fiction…Alex T. Singer: Oh, yes. My father was one of those people whose taste in novels went very, very highbrow. He was very interested in the high-concept stuff. He taught me to read using Moby-Dick, so there you go.2Brian Pauls: Oh, wow. The full text, not a slimmed-down kids’ version?Alex T. Singer: No, full text. He was explaining the themes to me as he was also explaining how to spell “whale.”Brian Pauls: Were you able to explain what ambergris was at a young age?Alex T. Singer: Yes. I think I confused a few of my first-grade teachers when I brought that one in as a book report.Brian Pauls: Well, I love Moby-Dick, so kudos to your dad. I’m guessing this turned you into a lifelong reader early on.Alex T. Singer: Yes, it did. I was also going to say that I’m very lucky my grandfather was also a writer. He was trained as an intelligence officer during World War II. The war ended before he was able to deploy, but he had all that intelligence training, so he wrote a lot of conspiracy thrillers.3Brian Pauls: Oh, wow. What an example.Alex T. Singer: Oh, sure. The biggest one he ever did was The Parallax View. It was well known enough that it even got a movie adaptation once upon a time. Warren Beatty was in it, so it was a very cool thing.4Brian Pauls: That gives me something to go track down. It’s hard to get my wife to watch science fiction movies, but I bet I could get her to watch that.Alex T. Singer: Oh yeah, especially because it ended up in the bones of so many conspiracy thrillers.Brian Pauls: My next question—I think you lit on it. It’s one thing to be interested in science fiction, but you became a writer. How did that happen?Alex T. Singer: Well, my grandfather, mostly. He was very encouraging. He would have me sit with him and show him the stories I’d write, and he’d give very gentle but firm feedback. He was very good at telling me, very gently, “You’re using a few too many adverbs, Alex.” He always made the time for me, and he was a very good mentor like that to a lot of young writers.Brian Pauls: Well, that is fantastic. And obviously, you have just won the Sturgeon Award.5 Tell us a little bit about the story that got you the award.Alex T. Singer: Certainly. “We, the Fleet” was my Sturgeon-winning story.6 It was a short story—”short” is relative; it was really more of a novelette—about a first contact from the point of view of the alien. She is basically a hive mind. I based them very heavily on ants and bees, using their social structure with a techno-organic aspect to make them completely unlike humans.Brian Pauls: Explain that for us. That’s a word I don’t know.Alex T. Singer: Oh, techno-organic?Brian Pauls: Techno-organic. Okay, sorry, I misunderstood. Got it.Alex T. Singer: Techno-organic is that fusion of the technological and the biological to make a new kind of creature that has some anatomical references while also being very machine-like in its aspects and mindset. So when she encounters a human for the first time, she has no context for what we are. It was a short story about connections—about de-othering the other, essentially. Because of that, I wanted to start with the point of view of a creature that would normally have been considered the villain in a lot of classic science fiction.Brian Pauls: I met you at the Sturgeon Symposium recently, where you read the story to us.7 One of the things I said to you afterward is that I found something touching about your story: you have a discussion in there about what family means. I’m paraphrasing, and...
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません