Tor Books, in partnership with Literary Hub, presents Voyage Into Genre! Every other Wednesday, join host Drew Broussard for conversations with Tor authors discussing their new books, the future, and the future of genre. Oh, and maybe there’ll be some surprises along the way…

Welcome back, travelers! Aptly enough for today’s books, I’ve been thinking about how there is an element of time travel in producing this show. I start talking with the Tor team in late spring about the authors who we’re gonna try to invite, I start reading the books sometimes even before then, and I record these conversations weeks if not months before we actually air them.

When I was recording today’s conversation with Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Lost Ark Dreaming) and Brenda Peynado (Time’s Agent), I was feeling (as I think many people were) a question about the future. I say a question: really, it was many questions about the future, and it’s not to say that I’m not still wondering what kind of future are we going to have, how are we going to make sure that it is as equitable and available and peaceful and generous and wondrous as we can possibly make it… But I recorded this conversation in mid-July, and here in mid-August, things feel different, look different. Who’s to say if they will actually end up being any different, but it is a testament to the power of the imagination. It is a testament to the power of embracing the possible instead of leaning back on what we’ve always done.

That, I guess, is the great promise of genre literature,  certainly in the speculative fields. We can put forth a future that we would like to see or we can put forth a future that is a warning. This episode, we dive into two great examples of both.

Just dreaming, always,
Drew

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FROM THE EPISODE:

Brenda Peynado: I like to think of a character as a guitar string or ukulele string or choose your string instrument string, and I feel like the best fiction strings it taut and plucks it, and you hear the song, and that is the best fiction. It’s a song that doesn’t give you complete answers because you’re not looking at the string and inspecting the string, and you’re not pulling the string off the guitar to sort of test it. You’re not getting all the answers. You’re only hearing the song. And I like when, by the end of the book, you hear this song at the end that comes from being in tension. And for me, giving all the answers is the effect of just pulling the string completely off and then suddenly there’s no song anymore.

Suyi Davies Okungbowa: It’s like sometimes I read like these magic systems and it’s almost like you’re telling me how to make a guitar instead of just singing a song, you know? And I’m like, no, I, I don’t wanna know how to make a guitar. No one does! We know guitars exist! I think that’s sufficient for the average person, you know? Sometimes I don’t even know the lyrics or like the notes being played. But I know there’s a, there’s a timber that I’m getting, there’s a tonal quality that I’m receiving from this music being made from this string being plucked.

And I think the best fiction or the fiction that has the strongest effects on people is that, that most conveys its tonal qualities even when you’re not quite sure what all the lyrics of a song are saying, right, you are getting what it is conveying, you are getting the communication, and natural communication sort of transcends the words, if this makes sense.

BP: Yeah, to take the music metaphor even further—

SDO: It’s a good analogy, Brenda. I love it.

BP: I feel like the, the songs that get stuck in your head are the ones where you’re like, I, who is that? I have this song in my head. What was that next stanza? What was that next? It’s the song that isn’t complete yet, and you’re thinking, and then there are a lot of people who’ll say like, if a song is stuck in your head just sing the whole song to its completion so you can just, that’ll help at least get it out of your head.

And it’s those songs that are like stuck at halfway. And I just love, I love the fiction that brings me to a point that I, I think I might’ve heard the whole song and then I put it down and I’m like, what was that? There’s something, there’s something I can’t let go. There’s something that hasn’t yet been pinned down for me, and yet the song is in my head like that, just feeling of like, I must play it again.

Read the full episode transcript here.

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Tor Presents: Voyage into Genre is a co-production with Lit Hub Radio. Hosted by Drew Broussard. Studio engineering + production by Stardust House Creative. Music by Dani Lencioni of Evelyn.