In this week’s author interview, learn more about James Dick, whose latest Analog story began with a vivid dream about being a spacecraft worker. You can read “Nebulous Negotiation,” co-written with Jen Frankel, in our [July/August issue, on sale now!]
Analog Editor: What is the story behind this piece?
James Dick: In early 2016, when the concept of viruses bringing the world to a standstill was the stuff of science fiction, and the concept of Trump in the Whitehouse was a joke on The Simpsons, I was a student at Seneca College in the Acting for Camera and Voice program. I pulled some long hours in those days; it wasn’t uncommon for me to be on campus for fourteen hours, and during the long stretches in scene study when it was my classmates’ turn to chew the scenery, I retreated to the back of the Studio A control room to write.
One day, three characters appeared in my mind: a giant spacefaring octopus named Tensiken, a human named Cassandra Loomis who worked for him, and a killer robot named MANIC who enforced Tensiken’s will. I found these characters compelling, and though I could clearly see their relationships to each other, I didn’t yet know what world of mien they’d inhabit.
Over the next half decade, I would try to insert them into a novel, a novella, an anthology, and several different short stories, all to no avail. I tried changing their backstories, inserted and removed supporting cast members, but nothing clicked. Finally, I sequestered their names in a fat binder at the bottom of the bottommost drawer in my desk and moved on to other projects, and only returned to them just last year.
AE: How did this story germinate? Was there a spark of inspiration, or did it come to you slowly?
JD: I reconnected with author Jen Frankel a couple years ago and renewed a friendship that had lapsed for a long time. We’d talked about collaborating on a project for years, but we never followed through.
Then, in 2022, I had a dream.
I was a worker aboard a spacecraft deep inside a nebula. Working conditions were so bad, my team and I were forced to steal from our employers in order to survive. The punishment for this was that they unleashed a giant carnivorous grub-monster on us. It was as fast as a subway car and utterly unstoppable.
I awoke trembling and reached for my dream journal. The minute I finished committing the dream to its pages, the faces of Tensiken, Cassandra, and MANIC floated up from the depths of my memory. With a certainty as clear as day, I knew that my dream was the world this trio were destined to inhabit.
Later that day, I told Jen about my dream, and she was as enthralled as I was. I immediately asked if she wanted to collaborate on this story, and to my eternal gratitude, she said yes.
While I may have thought of the length and breadth of the story, I credit Jen with its depth, especially in the character of Cassandra Loomis. Jen injected Cassandra with an incredible warmth and even-handedness, balanced against a well of awkwardness and simmering frustration. She also contributed intriguing ideas about Tensiken’s biology and backstory that continue to have repercussions for his personality in future stories.
AE: Is this piece part of a greater universe of stories?
JD: Yes it is! In fact, the second story, “Celestial Mechanics,” is already being shopped around for publication.
After we completed “Nebulous Negotiation,” I realized there was a much larger story being told on the spacecraft Harvester I, and I needed more tales to flesh it out completely. I’m guesstimating that Jen and I will end up with perhaps ten stories of varying lengths by the time we’re finished, but however many or few the final tally is, what matters most is that I finally found a universe for my three characters to live in, a home where readers can meet them, and I got to create it all with a writer I admire.
AE: What is your history with Analog?
JD: A couple years ago, I read Playing the Short Game by Douglas Smith, a really excellent book on how to market and sell short fiction. One of the market databases he suggested was ralan.com. Through ralan.com, I found Dell Magazines, and bought samples of Analog and Asimov’s to get a feel for what they publish.
I was particularly impressed with Analog for its blend of fiction and fact articles by some incredibly smart people. Everything in Analog feels grounded, with the grit of real science all over every story. Every time I finish reading an issue of the magazine, I feel as if I’ve learned something, and that’s a feeling I want to instil in my readers. That’s why Analog was the first place I thought of to publish my hard sci-fi story, “EDIE,” and I was over the moon when Analog later accepted “Nebulous Negotiation.”
I hope that many more of my stories find a home here.
AE: How much or little do current events impact your writing?
JD: This is one of my favourite questions, not just to be asked, but to ask other writers as well. We all have a conscious answer we like to give: “Oh, a lot.” “Not at all.” “Depends on the story.” Truthfully, I think we’re far more influenced by the world we live in than we like to admit, and the world’s influence manifests itself through our writing in ways we never expect. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that we find how strong that influence is.
Okay, enough philosophizing. Let me answer the question.
I’m very much in the “Depends on the story” category. I’ve written stories that tackle modern issues head on, but more often I try to write stories that allow for a bit of escapism. Sometimes current events creep their way in, sometimes not. I prefer to be a writer of diverse range.
AE: Are there any themes that you find yourself returning to throughout your writing? If yes, what and why?
JD: For almost the entirety of the 20th century, science fiction asked the question “What does it mean to be human?” It’s a good question, but one that I think has long been answered by history.
My brother is a history major, and he has a keen eye on current affairs. Through him, and his study of the past and present, I’ve learned that being human means some very horrible things. We consistently ignore each other, allow hate to fester within us, and eat lies for breakfast. When I hear people ask, “What does it mean to be human?” I get very frustrated. To me, history has already answered it: we’re a species with few good qualities and many, many bad ones. 20th century sci-fi likes to say that the former outweighs the latter, but I’m unconvinced.
So, the question I return to repeatedly in my fiction is not “What does it mean to be human?”
It’s “Is ‘human’ the best we can do?”
Literature and genre fiction is full of characters who cling to their humanity at the expense of all else because they believe that being human = goodness. I flip that thinking on its head: I write about people who crave change, who ask “Is there another way we can do things?” I write about individuals who, rather than equate humanity with goodness, believe that true goodness involves letting go of things we’re comfortable with, such as our humanity. Frequently, they are rewarded by becoming stronger, wiser, kinder individuals, even if they’ve physically left their humanity behind. Understanding humanity might be a good first step, but once we know what we are, what do we do with that knowledge?
AE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
JD: I participate in a weekly Evening Prompt Group hosted by author/editor Genevieve Clovis, of Clovis Editorial, along with a handful of other writers. Genny gives us a single sentence as a prompt, and for twenty minutes, we write whatever we want based on it. It’s a bit like an improv class for writers. Not only do these sessions help keep my imagination limber, but I frequently end up with one or two pages that could, by themselves, form the seeds of a larger story.
Whenever I feel unmotivated or frustrated in my writing, I open one of my old prompt notebooks, find the oldest pieces of writing inside, and give myself the challenge of expanding one of them into a story. This way, I don’t have to feel like I’m wandering through a jungle at night trying to find ideas. The ideas are already there, I just have to expand on them, which is significantly easier for me than trying to ideate from scratch.
Personally, I write because I have to. It’s a biological process for me, like eating or breathing. I need the feeling of putting pen to paper to feel fulfilled as a person. I need the joy of seeing the images of my mind come to life.
AE: What is the weirdest research rabbit-hole that working on a story has led you down?
JD: BARRELS!!!
Ahem, sorry. Let me start from the beginning.
Back in 2020, lockdown put a lot of time on my hands. I spent most of it writing a novel called Winter of the Snake (since condensed into a short story with the same title) where the lynchpin of the plot was a cooperage that made faulty barrels.
Now, naturally I didn’t know squat about cooping, nor could I tell you the difference between a tun, a cask, and a hogshead, but I learned.
God help me, I learned . . .
I learned about staves and hoops. I learned that toasting has nothing to do with bread. And I learned that “raising the barrel” was a process more delicate than an experiment in the Large Hadron Collider. I think I actually spent more time researching cooping than writing the story, just to get this one single plot point ironed out.
If I sound like I’m complaining, I’m not; far from it, actually! As Jacqueline Carey writes, “All knowledge is worth having.” I was enormously surprised to learn that the art of making sealed containers was a major factor in the expansion of the European powers overseas in the 18th century. The coopers called the shots in the American colonies, and if you wanted to learn a trade that would ensure your grandkids had money in the bank, you found a local cooperage and signed up for a seven-year apprenticeship.
That last note is in case any of you time-travelers get stuck in Virginia, 1751 A.D.!
AE: Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?
JD: Fair warning: I’m about to get existential again.
In five billion years, the sun will expand, the Earth will be incinerated, and there will be no one left alive who knew that you, or me, existed. With that in mind, let me ask you this . . . why do you write?
Are you writing to leave a legacy? Well, all legacies are fleeting in the cosmic scheme of things.
Are you writing to make money? That’s a gamble, and pays off for less than one percent of the writers in this world.
Are you writing for the gratification of others? If you can do that and feel fulfilled, more power to you . . . but I think it unlikely.
Personally, I write because I have to. It’s a biological process for me, like eating or breathing. I need the feeling of putting pen to paper to feel fulfilled as a person. I need the joy of seeing the images of my mind come to life. I don’t actually need other people to read my work in order to enjoy writing, though it is nice. I write because I love it.
Ask yourself why you write, or why you do anything. The only answer that you should find is, “Because I love it.” We’re all headed for the cemetery and the sun and the burned Earth. The only difference between you and the person in the grave next to you is that one of you will have spent your life doing what they love. Don’t waste time trying to please other people. Satisfy your own interests, your own curiosity, your own passions. If that’s writing, great! If it’s something else, equally great! Know yourself, and spend your time chasing what you love.
AE: Many of our Analog authors are interested in science. Do you have any scientific background, and does it impact your fiction?
JD: Does 300+ hours spent playing Kerbal Space Program count?
Joking aside, I have no formal scientific education aside from the occasional post-secondary elective. I simply possess an insatiable curiosity about life, the universe, and everything. For me, learning helps overcome writer’s block. Any new topic, or combination of them, can be the spark of a story, and while I don’t believe realism is necessary to tell a good sci-fi story, it makes for a nice garnish. That’s why I try to learn all I can about the subject of a story that involves science before attempting to write it. Sometimes, the research reveals something more interesting than what I thought of, so I change direction and end up with a richer story because of it.
An example of this would be “EDIE,” my story featured earlier this year in Analog. It’s a story about a robotic mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. I’ve seen countless NASA livestreams so writing good tension wasn’t an issue; it was the technical side I needed to work out. What does such a mission look like? Well, as it turns out, a proposal for a Europa lander was already written and is still awaiting approval at NASA. I copied the entire mission plan, added a new aspect (a melt probe that would plunge into Europa’s crust), and got to work.
AE: How can our readers follow you and your writing?
JD: You can find me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004482918057, and on Instagram @james.patrick.dick.
The Astounding Analog Companion 