#SciFiSundays | An interview with T.S. Beier author of the Burnt Ship series – beginning with “Escaping First Contact”

Beier responds: This is a hard one to answer! My dad lent me his copies of Dune and Ender’s Game as an early teenager, and I really enjoyed them, but I don’t think I became huge fan of Spec-Fic until my second year of university when I took a genre class that focused on Sci-Fi. The professor was this eccentric older man who assigned us Neuromancer and every class he’d ramble off random Classic Sci-Fi titles (e.g. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys). I wrote them all down, and soon enough I was reading as much Sci-Fi/Speculative Fiction I could find. Before that class, I had only written Fantasy, but Neuromancer inspired me to write my first Speculative Fiction, which was this Cyberpunk about a woman bounty hunter in mega-city in the middle of a wasteland. I never finished this novel, but the setting inspired my post-apocalyptic novel What Branches Grow.

What are your favourite series or stand-alones in Science Fiction?
Either books, films or tv series.

Beier responds: This is so hard because I love so many for various reasons!

But, I’ll try (and will likely forget something).

Series: 

• Tanya Huff’s Confederation series
• Alan Dean Foster’s Commonwealth novels
• anything Alien vs Predator (the 90s ones are my favourites)

Books: 

• anything by Samuel Delany
• The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Becky Chambers)
• City of Saints and MadMen by Jeff VanderMeer
  (if that doesn’t count, as it’s kind of fantasy, then Annihilation)
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurly

TV/Movies: 

• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Fifth Element
• Star Wars (all of them, even the prequels, and I love the shows)
• Star Trek series (Original, TNG, DS9, and Voyager; I’m not up on the newest ones,
  and I’m not fond of Enterprise)
• Snowpeircer

When it comes to crafting together a wholly new world in Space Opera – how did you first approach planning out the species and the differences your characters would inherently be from one another whilst keeping the tone of their individualistic personalities and quirks relatable to readers? Which were the most challenging to create? What aspect of their species was harder to develop?

Beier responds: Before this trilogy, I wasn’t really a plotter, but I wanted to ensure that I wouldn’t create something in book three that would be inconsistent with books 1 and 2 (for example), so I plotted all three books together. I had all the arcs and plot trajectories planned, though I left space for personality to grow organically (Stares was scary when I first envisioned them, but I loved the way they turned out). I used a notebook to plot out the overarching societies of the aliens (and the humans too), including physiological traits and cultural practices – every time I thought up something new while writing (male Pir-An giving birth, for example), I’d add it to my charts. For the characters, I stole pages from my kids’ 3 x 2′ Paw Patrol colouring book to use as a giant schematic of their arcs and how they intersected with one another. I also listed each character, gave them a personal arc for the series, a goal for each book, and then a personal arc. I definitely had the personal arc trajectory of Klenni and Flugger, for example, planned ahead of time. A new character in book 2 I actually ended up amending considerably when I started writing her, but I had space to change a few components in book three (and for the better).

My biggest challenge with the aliens was making them alien enough yet also relatable so readers could empathize or understand them. The hardest species were the ones the most culturally similar to us – the Strenoi. The Pir-An and Rips were easy because they were so different, but I actually found it made more sense for the Strenoi to be a little more like us in the end. Book three expands on the Strenoi a lot more.

The trilogy you’ve created is called the Burnt Ship Trilogy – which lends itself to different tangents of curiosity – what did you hope readers might pick up about the title of the series as they start to read the story? And, what can you share for readers still considering the series for themselves in regards to the origins of how the title was selected?

Beier responds: Titles are always the worst thing to come up with as they are so important. In truth, the series’ name plagued me for months. There are so many Sci-Fi series out there that I wanted something new but also related specifically to the story (not just “The Expanse” – not knocking on that title though; it totally makes sense for that series!). As such, while I was scanning my poetry collections for epigraphs for the start of the novels, I came across John Donne’s “A Burnt Ship.” The idea behind the poem, of a crew having to escape a sinking ship, and then them all dying anyway, isn’t a direct plot of the trilogy, but given the cover’s focus on “big ship” and ship battles in the novels (where, in space, you’re even more likely to die if you have to jump out) it clicked for me. The poem is the epigraph of Book 3 (which also worked well with the title Dead in the Water). You could also dig deeper into it and find many ways it fits with the themes and concepts in the books. I very much love titles and epigraphs that have a thematic connection to the story itself.

One of my main interests in reading Speculative Fiction and especially Space Opera is the largeness of the world(s) which can draw you into such a deeper expanse of what we understand about life and the universe overall. How did you work on the aesthetics of your world and series — to the point where the texture of this world would feel as real and interactive as our own? How did you approach crafting the visuals and what was your favourite scene which gave the best impression of this world?

Beier responds: One of my major inspirations for the work was Alan Dean Foster. I’d never compare myself to him, but his expansive worlds were a huge part of what I was aiming for. I think expansiveness comes from the details. You see more of the worlds in the second two books of the trilogy and I tried to give each world memorable details, from how the societies are set up (the Strenoi worlds are fiefdoms, which, from above, look like flowers; Bubble has cities jammed against the coasts but vacant stretches on the inland) to Misery‘s confounding hallways and, later on, organic components. Part of what made Misery memorable is that the captives aren’t sure what certain things are for. There’s that Far Side comic – Cow Tools – that someone once interpreted in the vein of how if you want to flesh out a world, add a bunch of stuff but don’t explain all of it. Make it seem functional, and readers will fill in the gaps themselves. I strove to do that with that big ship (some of the stuff is explained later) and with some of the aspects of the other alien societies too.

My favourite world-building scene in Escaping First Contact is when they climb the ladder and enter the warehouse-like room with giant containers and floating orbs. It opens up a whole new idea of what Misery is.

The ship is evermore a strong character in its own right in regards to its importance to the trajectory of the story – part Rubik cube and part Borg cube from afar, how did you keep the suspense taunting the readers within this first installment whilst building the bridge into the sequel? What inspired its squared construction and its hidden secrets?

Beier responds: What inspired it was video games and 70s-80s Space Horror movies. There are always levels in space-based games where you have to fight your way through a ship or space station. The “not knowing what the ship is” came from movies like Forbidden Planet, Galaxy of Terror, and even Event Horizon. I love abandoned spaces (ghost towns, defunct factories, etc) so a derelict ship is like one of my favourite tropes in Sci-Fi. The square shape was simply because I wanted something looming, imposing, and inscrutable. In terms of tying it to the sequel, it would be a bit of a spoiler to explain how it ties in, but the ending of book 1 does set up for more.

As this is a bit of a flipped script on First Contact,
what do you hope will entertain readers the most?

Beier responds: The interaction between the aliens! I also love learning about alien cultures (in novels), so I hope people enjoy the nitty-gritty details (and find the reproduction aspects amusing).

You’ve mentioned this series has a diverse cast – can you talk a bit about how you wanted diversity to be represented in your characters and what makes the series collectively diverse?

Beier responds: As Classic Sci-Fi is a favourite genre of mine (author Jack Vance, for example), I wanted to write something with that tone and feel (they are often self-contained stories with small casts), but include characters that were rarely, if ever, included back then (women [as main characters], people of colour, LBGTQ+). As such, while racial discrimination isn’t a part of the story (as, being a white writer, stories dealing with this are not mine to tell), I wanted my two main human characters to be people of colour. Koharu is also a bit of an homage to Machiko Noguchi from the Aliens vs Predator series as well. There is a great deal of focus on xenophobia amongst the different species – from all angles.

I also wanted to show a future where no one gives a whit if you’re queer. Given I only had two humans to work with, and I didn’t want only aliens to be queer (though, in truth, none of them even have the concept as we do, as there wasn’t a history of sexual repression on their planets), I decided Rammy would be gay (as I already had plans for Kosa). I also tried really hard to have diversity in the background or with minor characters. It drives me crazy in old movies when all the background characters are white dudes, so I strove to include people from all walks of life in the trilogy. It was an attempt to be inclusive in a way that I want my daughters to grow up in.

Likewise, your series delves a bit into the personal lives of your characters – would you consider your series to be character-driven moreso than adventure driven? And, if so, what areas of their lives did you want to explore the most and why? What do you like best about letting characters drive a narrative to where collectively they’ve enlarged a world simply through their own presence?

Beier responds: Definitely more character-driven. While I love writing action scenes, I love playing characters off one another more. When it came to what areas I wanted to focus on, it really depended on what made the most sense to further the story along. Kosa is a dancer, for example, but while it was a big part of her life growing up, she only makes casual mentions of it now – it wasn’t necessary to do a flashback to those days. Kosa also mentions her mother living on UBI due to a disability, which I think shows a lot about the society of her planet more than an info-dump about the planet would. What I love the best about this approach to writing is that the characters surprise me. I love writing dialogue because I let the characters just “talk” to one another and see where it goes. Conversations can reveal just as much about a person’s backstory and personality than actions. Sometimes more.

How did you want to augment your aliens to having their own thoughts and opinions outside of our own cognitive thoughts to where it not only feels like we’ve stepped outside Earth but we’ve embraced an entire society not limited to our own portals of knowledge? How did you want to draw those differences out in your characters and in the world you’ve created?

Beier responds: This was quite difficult because, as I mentioned before, it’s a balancing act between being able to relate and becoming completely foreign. As such, I thought it was important to have at least two members from each alien species in the story, so they could have their own conflicts. Having Crenkleost and Ow’llent from different castes was helpful in this regard, though Stares’ pervasive and personal questions helped flesh out a lot.

It feels like fate plays a strong role in the series – of whom is put together and of whom survives – how did you want this to thread through the series whilst keeping a level of suspense hovering round the edges as well?

Beier responds: In truth, not really! My goal for the series was to throw “normal” people in an extraordinary situation – it’s more luck than fate (though readers can interpret it however they want!). While some of the characters are soldiers, they aren’t superheroes or augmented in any way. I think the tension in the story comes from how none of them are in control – a lot of the time they are resisting the forces weighing down on them. They just want to live normal lives – none of them (ok, maybe Stares) want to be saviours.

The covers for all three novels are stunning – did you help develop the look of the covers or did your designer come up with the covers based on your stories?!

Beier responds: Thank you! I’ll share my concept drawing with you because I think it’s hilarious: