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>> Hi my name's Mary
Robinette Kowal.
I'm the author of
"Calculating Stars"
and "The Lady Astronaut" series.
You are joining me in the
room that I usually write in.
This is in the home that
my grandfather built
in East Tennessee.
There's a writing desk
built into the corner here.
And yes there is a bed right
here which is great for naps
and often also a
small cat joining me,
although probably not today.
My most recent book is
called "The Relentless Moon".
It's technically Book 3,
although I try to think
of it as a standalone.
It is set in an alternate
history in 1963.
Eleven years before this, a
meteorite, an asteroid slammed
into Washington D.C. and kicked
off the space program fast
and early and very hard.
And it's at a time when
computers are still women,
so if you want to send a
computer into space you have
to send women which means that
at this point in the timeline
of this universe there's an
established colony on the moon
with about 300 people.
It's with people from all
over the planet, it's men
and women working
in space trying
to build a new future
for humanity.
And in the midst of this,
there's a lot of civil unrest
because it's also taking place
at the same time the civil
rights movement is happening
in our real world and
with the added pressures
of this enormous climate
change that is happening
because of the meteorite strike.
So it's a time of unrest, it's
a time of hope and what you wind
up with in "The Relentless Moon"
is basically a locked rooms spy
thriller in space.
When I was thinking about what
novel I wanted to tackle next
in this "Lady Astronaut"
universe, one of the things
that kept nagging at me
was what was happening
on Earth and the moon.
This is a parallel novel,
there's another novel
"The Fated Sky" that takes
place as my series protagonist,
Elma York is on her way to
Mars but I refer back to a lot
of things that are happening on
Earth, I refer back to riots,
I refer back to political
unrest and I was like
"What's going on there?"
and so I wanted to
really dig into that.
And the other thing I would
say is that I very much
as a reader like ensemble casts.
I really enjoy heist films
or movies or books because I
like the way different people
can bring their strengths
into a thing.
So doing something that is a
political thriller gave me an
opportunity to look
at the way this kind
of situation affects a lot of
people across a gamut of society
but also in this very
tight knit closed community
because you know when you're
on the moon there's
literally nowhere to run.
So it gave me all kinds
of opportunities to sort
of really dig in and play how we
react to catastrophe and stress.
And some of the nobler
impulses that we often have even
when it's at a time
when it seems
like we should be
at our most selfish.
When I was thinking about
who I wanted to center
in these novels, Elma
York, Nicole Wargin,
the fact that I wanted to call
it "The Lady Astronaut" novels.
The thing to understand
is that I grew
up watching people in space.
I was born in 1969 and.
I saw a man land on the moon.
Granted you know
I'm 6 months old
at the time my parents
are very proud
of the fact that I could sit up.
But still my first moment where
I'm really really conscious
of the space program aside
from just like "Oh yeah,
people go into space."
is when Sally Ride goes up.
And looking back at the
history of this and thinking
about how long it took us to
send someone up, it bothered me.
It especially bothers me
now that this is a problem
that we still have ongoing.
And so I wanted to see
what it would have been
like if we had actually
centered women.
I sometimes say that this is
Apollo-era science fiction
that's women centered.
I wanted to read Ray Bradbury
but with 100% more women
and people of color.
That's what I wanted,
I wanted that sense
of Golden Age adventure
but I wanted to be there.
And so I created this world and
it's interesting that I felt
like the only way I could
actually plausibly get women
into space in the
1950s and 60s was
to slam a giant asteroid
into the planet.
Any time you're talking
to anyone, it's important
to understand that we are
not writing in a vacuum,
that there is always something
some seed some influence.
Ray Bradbury has been a huge
influence on me because of the--
Lyrical is not the right
word because I don't think
that his stories
are meant to be sung
but they're meant to be spoken.
There is a beauty to his
language that is both poetic
and also very grounded and
I have just always admired
and loved his writing.
So the genesis for Elma York
is actually a novelette called
"The Lady Astronaut of Mars" and
in that I was supposed to start
with a famous first line.
And you're going to think
"Ah, she's going to talk
about a famous first
line of Ray Bradbury's."
No, it was actually the
first line of "Wizard of Oz".
But what I wanted to do was
to do a Bradbury homage
using this framework.
Every character in "The Lady
Astronaut of Mars" is named
after a Ray Bradbury character.
The "Martian Chronicles"
was such a,
it's just such a
beautiful beautiful book
or you know it's supposed, it's
what we call a fixup novel,
which means that it's a
selection of short stories
that he wove a through line into
but it's just so imaginative
and it was based on what
they thought and knew
about Mars at the time.
Like when he was writing it,
yeah he was stretching things,
but he wasn't actually
completely violating their
fundamental understanding
of Mars at the day.
[inaudible] is violating
ours now but I was like
"What would happen again if
he were writing that kind
of fiction but with our
understanding of Mars?
Now what sort of future,
what sort of world
and the inhabitants
would that look
like if he knew what
Mars was actually like?"
And so that's the kind of
thing that I wanted to play
with you know like
what would it be
like if we were sending people
to Mars in the 1950s and 60s
with the knowledge
that we have now.
What would be like if we were
going to live on the moon?
And again, I've said
this already
but you know what would it be
like if there were a 100% more
women and people of color?
And that's basically
what I wrote the thing
that I wanted to read.
So when I think about ingenuity
and American ingenuity,
I have 2 thoughts.
One is that most of the people
that were most ingenious
that we hold up are immigrants
or the children of immigrants.
And it is so easy to
forget that when we talk
about being American and
American exceptionalism
and American ingenuity, that our
country is founded on 2 things
that other countries don't have.
One is a great shame, which
is our long legacy of,
and I actually you know what, I
take that back, I shouldn't say
that other countries don't have
this because our long legacy
of colonialism is a long
legacy throughout the planet.
But it's impossible
to think about America
without remembering that that's
part of what we're built on
and that part of that
ingenuity comes from people
who have been oppressed,
figuring out how to get
around that oppression.
That's what drove
a lot of people
to leave England and come here.
And then there were
a lot of people
who were forcibly
brought here who had
to use their own ingenuity to
find ways to live and survive.
So when I think about American
ingenuity, I don't think
about just the inventions
that we've made,
I think about the changes
that we have made to society.
I think about the
ways in which our hope
for a better future causes us
to push against boundaries.
I think about all of the ways
in which we have both
uplifted each other
and also created barriers for
each other that have driven us
to have ingenuity, which
is perhaps not the answer
that anyone is actually looking
for but it is what I think
about when I think about
American ingenuity.
So I write hard science fiction,
which means that it
is rooted in science.
And the research that
is involved in trying
to do something like
this is pretty intense
because everyone is
going to call you
on anything you get wrong.
The other thing that I
have that is a challenge is
that I'm also setting it
in a historic area although my
mom dies a little bit inside
every time I say the 1950s are a
historic era but the first thing
that I do is I do
very broad research.
And then I get in touch
with my reference librarian
for some specific things but the
other thing that I do is I reach
out to subject matter experts.
With these books, in particular,
I had lined up a science
consultant who was on board
with me for the entire process
and that was Stephen Granade.
Then I also reached out to
NASA and to some other people
in the rocket science
industry, aerospace industry,
so I got access to these
amazing opportunities.
People are incredibly
generous with their time
and knowledge and
I'm so fortunate.
I had 3 different
astronauts consulting
on the most recent book
"The Relentless Moon"
[inaudible] Cady Coleman
and Jeanette Epps all
gave me their insight.
And what's fascinating
is in a pool of people,
I think there are 36
active astronauts right now,
and they all have wildly
different experiences
about some things and then
exactly the same response
to other things like
"What is space like?"
The sense of wonder is
consistent and the sense
of this is one planet and
it is fragile and needs
to be protected and cherished
and all of the people on it,
that is something that is
consistent every time I talk
to an astronaut.
So it's interesting seeing
where those similarities are
and where the really differences
are in their experience.
I've gotten to talk
to rocket scientists,
orthopedic surgeons,
flight surgeons.
It's been one of the most
delightful times that I've had.
Really what I tell people is
that I'm just indulging my
natural curiosity and if I have
to write a novel in order
to be invited to NASA to go
to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab
to watch an entire practice
spacewalk, thank you yes I will,
how many novels would
you like me to write?
When I started writing
"Relentlessness Moon"
it was before we were
in the middle of a pandemic.
There was unrest but
no more than usual.
So when I'm thinking about
the "Relentless Moon" now,
it is a very different book
then the one that I wrote,
even though it is of
course completely unchanged.
The thing that I think I would
want readers to take away
from this book now,
which is not the thing
that I necessarily wanted when
I wrote it, is understanding
that the reason it seems timely
is that these are patterns
that repeat throughout history.
I was writing about
the civil rights move-,
actually no I was writing
about going to the moon
but I was not ignoring the fact
that it was set during
the civil rights movement
and so I was including the
riots that would happen.
I was also thinking about the
way we respond to catastrophe
and we respond to
catastrophe in this kind
of spectrum [inaudible]
on one end you have the
first immediate response
of most people is a
desire to help and then
on the other end what you
have is fear and a desire
to protect what is your own.
And most of us exists somewhere
in the middle but it's very easy
to fall to one extreme or
another although I don't think
that the desire to help
is necessarily an extreme
to be avoided.
But it is interesting how often
when you look back at history
that choice about where
we land culturally
and as individuals is
often shaped by someone
that we admire, someone who is
a tone setter, someone who's
in a leadership position.
And when you look at
the way we've responded
to the pandemic globally,
you can see the difference
that the leader makes
in how we respond.
So for me what I would say
is that what I want people
to remember is that there is
more than one possible response
and that when you're at the
fear end of the spectrum,
to think about what
is the kinder choice?
What is the choice that is
going to uplift everyone?
There's this saying you know "A
rising tide raises all ships."
I come out of a theater
community,
specifically I'm a professional
puppeteer, and the saying
that we have is "The
only competition is a bad
puppet show."
And what this means is that
when someone is encountering
something that they
haven't experienced before,
if their first experience
of it is negative,
they think "I don't want to
experience that ever again."
and they will never see
another puppet show.
But if they go to a puppet
show and it's really good,
they think "I want
more of this."
and then they will go
actively seek it out.
And you know this could be
something that I was talking
about fiction but
really what we're talking
about is our interaction
with other people.
If someone's first
encounter with how to respond
to something is something
that makes them feel good,
if it's something
positive, they're going
to seek out more of that.
And that's something that we
as individuals have
some control over.
It's not to say that that
is the only response.
Anger and fighting are
absolutely necessary
and sometimes the only
way to make change happen
like the riots that
were happening were
because people weren't
listening.
And when I look at
what is happening now,
which is such a parallel
to what I was writing,
the thing that is
difficult but important
to understand is the reason
that we are having riots now is
because we haven't
been listening,
because this fundamental problem
that we were addressing during
the civil rights movement wasn't
addressed, it's still a problem.
And this is why this cyclical
thing happens, why this feels
like history is repeating
itself because it is,
because we have not listened.
So we have an opportunity
to listen and to try to make
that kinder choice and also
sometimes that kinder choice is
to support the people who
are doing the very hard work
of fighting.
One of the things that I put
into the book was something
that I had planned on being a
secret and like spoiler land
and I didn't want people to know
and that's a polio
outbreak on the moon.
And let me tell you
that the difference
in the way I responded to
the pandemic having written
about the polio outbreaks
and research them heavily
is pretty profound.
I think that I probably
would have been doubtful
and hedged my bets early on.
But having written about
the polio outbreaks,
my first immediate response
was we are listening
to the scientists and we
are putting our masks on
and we are social distancing
because we are going
to take this really seriously.
People talk about the Spanish
flu and that's a great example
of how it affected
the entire planet.
Polio, on the other hand,
is a really good example
of what happens when you
have a silent carrier,
when you can be asymptomatic
and still spreading the disease.
And more importantly and
terrifyingly, both polio
and what we are learning
about COVID-19,
there are lasting effects.
[inaudible] one of the reasons
that polio was so terrifying was
that you would have
polio and then
when you survived it you
would have lasting lifelong
compromised health.
Sometimes it was very
obvious with limb paralization
but the other thing that you
got was something that's called
post-polio syndrome, which is
that 20 years later polio
can come back and people
who didn't even know
that they had it
as a kid now have symptoms
and there are weakness
and chronic fatigue and
paralysis turning up.
So with COVID-19, I'm like
when they the moment I heard
that there was lung
scarring, even in people
who were asymptomatic, I
was like "We are not messing
around with this disease.
We are not taking a
chance on catching it
because there is no telling
what that future looks like."
So one of the things
that is fascinating
about being a science
fiction writer who works
in historical things is that my
basic brain is look at history
and then map what
the future could be.
And so when I look at
polio and I look at COVID
and I map what a potential
future could be I'm like
"I will do everything
in my power not
to inhabit the dystopic
version of this future
and I will make all of the
choices that I can possibly make
that are under my control to
avoid a path in which I might be
or might cause my loved
ones to be dealing
with unexpected ramifications
20 years down the line.
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