Love Across the
Universe Interview Question #3
We asked the Love
Across the Universe authors to tell us their favorite science fiction
narratives. They could choose television shows, movies, books, or anything
else. We asked what they loved about it, and if they would change anything in
it if they could.
Elsa M.
Carruthers—“All B+ut You”
I love Firefly!
M.T. DeSantis—“The
Princess of Sands”
A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeline L’Engle. It’s been my favorite for years. The technology is just so
interesting. And the idea that our minds are the most advanced technology of
all is one that’s stuck with me. The integrating of such heavy ideas into the
story of a girl rescuing her father and discovering herself along the way is
heartwarming. So, no, there isn’t a thing about it I would change.
Traci Douglass—“A Dream to Build a Kiss On”
My favorites have always been the underdog stories, like Star Wars or Firefly, where you have a band of rebels fighting for their lives
and what they believe in, winner take all. You can’t take the sky from me! Oh,
I also did love The Martian too. J
And Ready Player One, though I
suppose that might not be considered sci-fi… And Star Trek, of course.
A.E. Hayes—“Tristan’s
Tryst”
This is an easy one for me: The remake of the original TV
series Battlestar Galactica. The
writing on the show is absolutely mesmerizing and incredible, and weaves
together the future with the present. Politics, religion, war, life, death,
God, gods, technology – it all flows together seamlessly. The acting is
stellar, and whenever I watch the show, I find myself relating to Starbuck’s
kick-ass attitude, or Six’s ability to use intellect and seduction to get what
she wants in order for her race to survive, or Adama’s sense of stoicism while
he tries to remain in control of 50,000 people. I wouldn’t change a thing, from
the writing, the cast, the music, or the controversial ending.
Serena Jayne—“You
Only Love Once”
Orphan Black is my
favorite science fiction show. I love how each of the clones has a distinct
personality. My favorite clone is Helena, who is the embodiment of the id in
psychology. She has no impulse control and is super fun to watch. The only
thing I would change is for it not to be in its final season. I also want to
give a shout out to Star Wars. Han
Solo always makes me swoon.
L.J.
Longo—“Breathless”
God, I am such a huge fan of Sci-fi and so much of it is so
bad, I don’t know where to start. I adore 1984,
Hyperion, War of the Worlds, Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep, and Dr. Who.
I used to re-write Ray Bradbury or Issac Assimov stories to include more
diverse (sometimes just more fleshed out) characters. Firefly and Alien are perfect. Star Trek Next Gen could be edited to
remove the campy bits and re-written/cast so that the women aren’t so difficult
to watch.
Oriana
Maret—“Renewal”
I love the classics: Heinlein, LeGuin, Asimov, PKD, and
others. As for contemporary SF, my favorites include McDonald, Brown, and
Corey. My favorite narratives are political and social conflict; the struggle
to overcome and overthrow. I write a lot about rebellion and individual agency.
I’d change the idea that science and God are separate, that the acceptance of
one excludes the other—this is a widespread belief in SF that’s too narrow for
my taste.
Cara McKinnon—“The
Pirates and the Pacifist”
My first adventure in space is still my heart’s true love: Star Wars. I was born in the middle of
the original trilogy’s original screen debuts, so I’m too young to have seen
them in the theatre the first time around, but we had them taped on VHS off of
HBO and watched them constantly. I have no memory of a time when I didn’t know that Darth Vader was Luke’s
father or that Luke and Leia were twins (which made the kiss in Empire super weird). Leaving aside the
prequels (which could have been amazing with a few tweaks and shifts and with
Lucas doing story work rather than writing/directing), the Star Wars universe
will always be one of my favorite places to visit. I’ve been thoroughly
enjoying the new generation of movies, and I’m looking forward to The Last Jedi this winter.
I think what grabs me the most about the Star Wars Universe
is something that is exemplified in Star
Wars (aka A New Hope): a lived-in
world where there’s a sense of both earthy grittiness (Han, the Falcon, Mos
Eisley, dirt on everything) and
otherworldly mystique (Obi Wan, the force, lightsabers). Star Wars as a series
may be set in space, but its emotional appeal makes it more fantasy (space
opera) than the intellectual drive of hard sci-fi, and that’s another reason I
adore it. Also, Han Solo was my first major fictional crush and I’ve never
really gotten over him.
Sheri Queen—“Red
Sand”
I have several and for different reasons. I love Dr. Who because the characters are so
well developed over the course of the series. It also has a fantasy aspect that
I enjoy. Time travel, folks, that’s pretty awesome! Another series is The Expanse, again for similar reasons
with the characters, except I also like the gritty aspect of the show and the
dystopian feel it has to it.
Mary
Rogers—“Breakfast on Pluto”
In the 8th grade in Miss Capobianco’s English
class we read a short story that was wonderful! I was surprised to find out
it’s science fiction, because my father read Sci-Fi about a book a day (his
commute was over six hours a day!) and I thought I didn’t like it. The place
was foreign, and it was vaguely scary, and the river was the Ou Di Sun. Later,
you discover it’s the Hudson! It was future NYC. That’s the kind of story I
like best in sci-fi. One that has enough of the present to anchor you, and
enough of the future to make you think! Bradbury.
Emmerite
Sundberg—“Fluid”
I hadn’t read a lot of science fiction growing up. I found
to my delight that I enjoyed sci-fi through Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. She built a completely foreign concept into
something both believable and wonderful. While a ship that controls human
bodies could be seen as horrifying, she went with the harder concept—that the
ship was something to root for.
K.W. Taylor—“Reprogramming”
My favorite science fiction narrative is A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle.
I’m very excited about the upcoming film adaptation, too. I love it because it
was one of the first SF novels I read with a young female protagonist who was
portrayed as being highly intelligent. She wasn’t just along for the ride, and
she wasn’t being rescued by a man—she was the one bent on rescuing the men
around her!
Genre: Science Fiction Romance
Publisher: Stars and Stone Books
Date of Publication: August 1 2017
ISBN-10: 0-9977081-8-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-9977081-8-9
ASIN: B071JSHCGC
13 Stories of Science Fiction Romance Set on Intergalactic Shore
#spacebeachlove
#spacebeachlove
Summer love is summer love, no matter the planet. Climb aboard your spacecraft or time machine and travel across time and space with these thirteen tales of love on beaches in the future and among the stars.
Includes stories by USA Today Bestselling Author Traci Douglass, Cara McKinnon, Rhonda Jackson Joseph, A.E. Hayes, Sheri Queen, M.T. DeSantis, L.J. Longo, K.W. Taylor, Mary Rogers, Elsa M. Carruthers, Emmerite Sundberg, Serena Jayne, and Oriana Maret.
The
Greatest Gift
Rhonda
Jackson Joseph
Book Description:
Tariq has chosen Jasmine and her
family to rescue when the earth is destroyed. While her children and sister
easily find their niches within their new society, based on their natural gifts
and talents, Jasmine struggles to find her fit. Tariq’s patience and ability to
see things within her that she doesn’t see in herself will help lead to
Jasmine’s discovery of the greatest gift within herself.
About the Author:
Rhonda Jackson Joseph is a Texas
based writer and professor who must exorcise the demons of her imagination so
they don't haunt her being. A life-long horror fan and writer of many things,
she has recently discovered the joys of writing in the academic arena about two
important aspects of her life: horror and black femininity. She balances her
natural darkness with the light and love of romance stories.
When Rhonda isn't writing,
teaching, or reading voraciously, she can usually be found wrangling one of
various sprouts or sproutlings from her blended family of 11...along with one
husband and two furry babies.
Rhonda can be found lurking (and
occasionally even peeking out) on social media:
Twitter: @rjacksonjoseph
Facebook official: https://www.facebook.com/rhondajacksonjosephwriter
Instagram: @rjacksonjoseph
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Rhonda-Jackson-Joseph/e/B008FVK13M
Red
Sand
Sheri
Queen
Book Description:
If she can only save one thing,
which will it be—the red beaches of Mars or a love she can’t imagine living
without?
Bria has just been fired from her
job as an ecologist at Trans Life Corp, the global leader in virtual reality
living, and she’s devastated that her life’s work has ended with nothing more
than a pink chip severance package. She’s been deemed obsolete in a world where
every aspect of life has been automated, and even relationships are carried out
in virtual environments. Then Bria’s sister, Samira, enters her in a singles
sweepstakes to an exclusive Mars resort to force Bria to have a little fun for
once, and Bria is one of the lucky winners.
Thayne is the owner of the
exclusive Mars resort and has set his sights on expanding to a remote area on
the other side of the planet. He is looking for the right person to lead his
new venture when he comes across Bria. She’s exactly what he needs. His success
is driven by his gift for acquiring rare talent, and he always gets what he
wants—until now.
Bria refuses Thayne’s job offer.
She’s not interested in helping destroy another ecosystem for corporate greed,
and she’s definitely not interested in any kind of romantic
entanglement—virtual or real. Yet despite her better judgment, she’s drawn to
his zest for life and his creative nature. But finding a way to keep their
clashing values from destroying their chance at love proves harder than Bria
could have thought possible.
Excerpt Red Sand:
The strength of
water pushing against sand captivated Bria. If only she had such power, she
could change the world—or at least her little part of it.
But this was
just a miniature version of the real thing. She flipped the rectangular,
glass-enclosed frame over to watch the liquid bump the tiny particles into
different shapes. Reds, browns, and tans jostled one another until the sand
settled into wavy mounds at the base of the container. Bubbles rose to the top
and burst. Bria turned the device again and again, repeating the process, absorbed
with how different the formations appeared with each rotation. Life was like
this crude imitation of a sandy beach, always changing when getting pushed
around by a greater force.
Here she sat in
her repurposed home on Boxcar Alley with no job, no more research, and no
future at Trans Life Corp.
Earth was
screwed. She knew it. Trans Life knew it.
Did the board
members care that nature and all her beauty had been overrun by technology? Not
a bit. They were already working on expanding to other planets.
To her shame,
she had to admit her role in the virtual living that was taking root and
growing weed-like over the planet. She had utilized all she’d learned as an
ecologist and worked with other experts to engineer its equivalent in the realm
of virtual habitats. She was as much to blame as Trans Life Corp for how the
world had been altered into a state of disconnect from what was real—what you
could truly feel, taste, and smell.
What she
couldn’t have foreseen was the rapidity with which people embraced artificial
environments, especially the Love Triangle, where all your pleasurable sensory
needs could be met with the help of a CompuBot—available with or without
interacting with another online user.
About
the Author:
Sheri Queen received her MFA in
Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She grew up in the Hudson
Valley region of New York—an area she loves to depict as a backdrop for her
stories—and enjoys traveling to new places where she is constantly discovering
inspirations for her writing. She especially loves visiting old graveyards.
Website: https://sheriqueen.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SWQueenFlemming
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SheriQueenMFA/
A
Dream to Build a Kiss On
Traci
Douglass
Book Description:
A
Dreamworld Short Novella
Can passion bloom between a
bookish botanist and an analytical android?
Adam has served as a devoted
assistant since the day he was created twenty-six years ago. His ordered world
centers on logic and logistics, until a strong solar flare causes a glitch in
his synthe-soul circuits and his normal routines are thrown into chaos. In a
flash, his universe is filled with wild, dark desires that until now Adam has
only imagined.
Jillian Lewis has spent her
entire career in search of the rare, elusive Shadow Moondrop Orchid. She’s
forsaken any semblance of a normal life in pursuit of her goal and now has the
ultimate prize within her reach. By securing a coveted invitation to the fabled
Dreamworld Resort, she has just three days in which to locate and record her
once-a-century flower before it disappears again.
With the clock ticking, will they
surrender to the unpredictability of love or will their chance at forever
disappear like stardust on the summer wind?
Excerpt A Dream to Build a Kiss On:
2069 – Remote
tropical island in the Atlantic Ocean
Adam desired
Jillian Lewis, and not just for her beautiful brain.
The desire, of
course, was completely unexpected and entirely new, especially for an analytical
android such as himself. Add in the fact he’d never actually seen the visiting
botanist face to face, let alone heard her voice, and it was all a bit
disconcerting. Until this point, they’d only communicated through electronic
messages and then only ever about her upcoming stay at the exclusive Dreamworld
Resort where he resided or her plants or science in general.
But still, her
words intrigued him.
She spoke
passionately of her specimens, the exotic flowers she’d nurtured to maturity
from rare and ancient seeds. She also freely shared her knowledge of said
specimens with him, answering all his endless questions without ever once
becoming annoyed or bored as many of the resort’s other guests sometimes did.
“Happy
twenty-sixth birthday, my friend,” Reziel Shaytan said, clapping Adam on the
shoulder as he walked into his office. “Have you decided what you’d like for
your gift?”
“Gift, sir?”
Adam asked. “Technically, this isn’t my birthday since I was not conceived in a
human womb, nor did I undergo the delivery process.”
Rez gave him a
look, taking a seat in the black leather executive’s chair behind his massive
desk. He was Adam’s creator and owner of the resort. “What shall we call it
then? Your anniversary of existence?”
Adam considered
the question a moment. “Yes. I think that would be appropriate, sir.”
“Fine.” He shook
his head. “Abnormally strong solar flares are expected this weekend. Have you
taken the necessary precautions?”
“Yes, sir.” Adam
had been created to be as human as possible. His operating software,
Synthe-soul, endowed him with both keen intuition and the ability to process
emotions. And yes, those processes were sometimes prone to glitches—especially
during times of low charge or erroneous electrical storms—but overall, his
humanity grew stronger each day. “I doubled my charge time last night and I’ve
scheduled my system updates for early this afternoon, to avoid any
interference.”
“Good.” Rez sat
back and scrubbed a hand over his face, the strain of recent events evident in
the faint lines around his eyes and the tightness of his lips. Adam did his
best to protect his master, but there was only so much one android could do
when the man’s very existence was forbidden. Half djinn, half angel, Rez had
been cursed to walk the earth alone—at least until Doctor Harold Thomas had
tumbled into his life, quite literally, and their two souls had become one.
Soul mates. Adam had read about such bonds, but hadn’t experienced that swift
rush of acute longing for another being since his activation. He had all the
right components for human physical intimacy—even a healthy regenerating supply
of nanocyte sperm to create his own hybrid children someday—but he’d yet to
meet a person with whom he wanted to share such a deep emotional connection.
“Adam, please
also double check with our pilot in Miami to make sure the guests arrive well
before the flare occurs,” Rez said. “I don’t want another debacle like the last
time.”
The “last time”
had been a newlywed couple on their honeymoon. Their flight had taken off as
usual from the airport, heading due south toward the uncharted island where
Dreamworld was located, when their aircraft had gotten caught in a time warp
flux and the poor unsuspecting couple had ended up in ancient Byzantium. It had
taken weeks, and all Rez’s immense powers, to get them back to the present
unharmed. Luckily, legends about the Bermuda Triangle had helped Adam cover his
friend’s magical tracks.
“Texting the
pilot now, sir.” He typed the message in his mind then used his internal circuits
to connect wirelessly with the pilot’s com unit. “And shall I check on the
orchid specimen as well?”
“Orchid? That’s
right. The botanist is coming today.”
“Yes, sir.” Adam
glanced at his computer again, Doctor Lewis’s latest email still up on his screen.
“May I ask you something, sir?”
“Go ahead.” Rez
sounded distracted as he sorted through his messages for the upcoming weekend
arrivals.
“Explain human
intimacy.”
He stopped and
stared at Adam. “Excuse me?”
“In all my years
of existence, I’ve yet to experience true human connection and intimacy.” Adam
frowned. “Not the physical components of the act. I’m well versed in all the
necessary techniques through my regular software updates. But the emotional
aspects are a bit more challenging. I wish to learn more so that one day, if I
encounter my soul mate, I will know what is happening and can respond
accordingly.”
“Ah, I see.”
Gaze narrowed, Rez walked around his desk to stand before Adam, his tailored
navy suit in direct contrast with the easy tropical luxury of the office’s
interior design. “I’m sorry, my friend, but that is knowledge even I can’t
conjure. True connection and intimacy between two people must grow
organically.” He crossed his arms and lowered his head. “Besides, with the
flare and our other guests, we don’t have much time. I’ll need your help to
guide the botanist to her orchid on the other side of the island. And I need
you to assess if she might be right for our other project.”
That project
included a new addition to the permanent staff on the island—a native species
conservationist. Available positions were rare at Dreamworld, and while Adam
appreciated Rez hiring another person to help share his workload, he would miss
his hours amongst the island’s forests, nurturing their growth and choosing
compatible new additions for the already rich ecosystem.
Disappointment
sparked through his circuits, though he did his best to hide it by adjusting
his wire-rimmed spectacles. “Of course, sir. Whatever you need.”
“Thank you,
Adam. Perhaps next weekend, when things aren’t so crazy, we can discuss your
gift again.”
“Fine, sir.
Shall I contact the botanist with her final boarding information?”
“Yes, please.”
Rez straightened, his expression thoughtful as he headed for the office door.
“Let her know everything will be ready when she arrives.” He stopped at the
threshold and turned back, his smile kind. “And don’t worry about making that
soul-deep connection, my friend. When the time is right, it will happen.
Perhaps when you least expect it.”
About the Author:
Traci is a USA Today Bestselling
Author of Contemporary and Paranormal Romance. Her stories feature sizzling
heroes full of dark humor, quick wits and major attitudes and heroines who are
smart, tenacious, and always give as good as they get. She holds an MFA in
Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University and she loves animals,
chocolate, coffee, hot British actors, and sarcasm—not necessarily in that
order.
Website: http://www.tracidouglass.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Traci_Douglass
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tracisdouglass/
Newsletter Sign-Up: http://tracidouglass.net/author-newsletter/
Fluid
Emmerite
Sundberg
Book Description:
Iyonne has despaired of ever
finding the right woman for her. But when she crash-lands on a seemingly
uninhabited planet, she finds her. Sissiasandra has been alone for so long, the
last of her kind. She believes that she will never again know love. Until
Iyonne walks onto her beach. The two fall in love instantly, but there is one
big hurdle to their happy ending. Iyonne cannot live in the ocean, and
Sissiasandra cannot leave the sea to walk on land. Will they overcome their
separation or are they doomed to live alone forever?
About
the Author:
Sundberg is the friend of dragons
and mother of chinchillas. She spends her time pairing people with good books.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her two bunnies and five chinchillas.
Twitter: @writerchilla
You
Only Love Once
Serena
Jayne
Book Description:
Carpe
diem the hell out of love.
In the year 2222,
