Season 4, Episode 6: Intergalactic

Sara and Daniel interview author Alex White, who is a science fiction and horror writer, best-known for the Salvager series and their tie-in novels for the Aliens and Star Trek franchises. In this episode that explores ReadICT Category 6, a book set in space, Alex talks about their newest novel, August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, why writing speculative fiction can be cathartic, and why sci-fi is so much more than "big robots punch each other."

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcription. Some errors may occur. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

[MUSIC]

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, library.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: Read. Return. Repeat.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Read. Return Repeat. We're gonna explore the... yes.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: Yeah, I don't know. I meant to change that to Read. Return. Repeat. podcast.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Okay.

Hello. Welcome to space.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: What's going on?

Sara Dixon, voiceover: The final frontier. This is the story of the starship Read. Return. Repeat. To boldly go and explore stories where no human has gone before.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: What are you doing?

Sara Dixon, voiceover: I don't know, I'm just, I want to be the nerd for once. And I know the intro to the Starship Enterprise,

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: All right. It's called Star Trek.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Whatever. Star Trek. [LAUGHS]

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: So why are we being --

Sara Dixon, voiceover: We're being nerds because we are going to cover category number six, a book set in space.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: So okay, it all makes sense now, yeah.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: I mean, you like Star Trek, right?

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: I mean, I have a Star Trek tattoo, but it was because it was a Friday the 13th thing, and everyone... and I picked it because it was the coolest one, it was like that, or, like, I don't know, it was like Rick or Morty, and I would rather have a Star Trek tattoo. And everyone thinks I'm a huge Star Trek fan, which I watched it as a kid, but like, I'm not... I should not have gotten a Star Trek tattoo. I did not commit enough.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: You were like, "I'm only half nerd."

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: I'm like, I'm a nerd walker, like I'm still a little bit cool. We're librarians.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: It's okay. We all speak nerd. We love nerd. We embrace nerd. We love nerds. So we're gonna talk about category number six. This is actually, despite my ridiculous intro, Read. Return. Repeat. I am Sara.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: I'm Daniel.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: And today we're going to interview Alex White, author of August Kitko and the Mechas from Space. So Alex White was born and raised in the American South. They take photos, write music, and spend hours on YouTube watching other people blacksmith. They value challenging and subversive writing, but they'll settle for a good time.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: In the shadow of rockets in Huntsville, Alabama, Alex lives and works as an experience designer with their spouse, son, two dogs and a cat named Grim. Favorite pastimes include LEGOs and race cars. They take their whiskey neat and their espresso black.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Hmm, fun. Alex is the author of The Salvagers book series, a magical space opera, treasure hunt; Alien: The Cold Forge; and August Kitko and the Mechas from Space. Let's get into this interview.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: Yeah, let's jump into the interview.

Sara Dixon: Hey, Alex White, welcome to Read. Return. Repeat. We're so excited to have you.

Daniel Pewewardy: Thank you for joining.

Alex White: Thanks for having me.

Sara Dixon: So yeah, let's just hop right in with questions.

Daniel Pewewardy: Can you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your newest novel, August Kitko and the Mechas from Outer Space?

Alex White: Sure, sure. Well, it starts out about five minutes before the earth is scheduled to end. You know, much like another famous science fiction novel I think we all know and love: Hitchhiker's Guide.

Sara Dixon: Oh, I totally didn't even pick up on it!

Alex White: The Earth is ending in five minutes.

Sara Dixon: Why didn't I pick up on that? Because I definitely get some Arthur Dent there. Okay, please keep going.

Alex White: Yeah, I mean, like, I wasn't really trying to do, like, a whole Hitchhiker's Guide thing, but I was, I thought I was really clever, and then I realized that it had been done very well before, quite thoroughly. But that's okay. That's okay. More books can do the same thing. But yeah, no, it's about a sad jazz boy and a glam rock star who find themselves in the spotlight when giant mechas show up to destroy the earth and all of its inhabitants. It's got a lot of music, robot battles, chase scenes, and feelings.

Sara Dixon: Feelings.

Alex White: A lot of feelings.

Sara Dixon: Indeed. Yeah, we were just talking about how much we really liked it. So yeah, we're definitely going to get into a lot more of the book and hopefully convince some of our listeners to go out and read it.

Daniel Pewewardy: So I think one of my, like, the first things I kind of picked up on with, like, the jazz influence, it just reminded me of, like, Neon Genesis and a lot of, like, anime and mechas obviously.

Sara Dixon: I had no idea what a mecha was. And we were talking about these questions, and they were like, "Yeah, mechas are like, a thing." And I didn't know.

Alex White: Oh, it's very much, a thing, yeah.

Sara Dixon: I'm not a science fiction person, surprise, but yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy: So I guess I was gonna ask about some of the, like, Japanese influences. Was there an anime influence? And also, like, I know the music and jazz, like, I've been listening to J-jazz to get ready for this, listening to the book. So I didn't know if that was like, did you, was there any music you put on when writing or like what shows you watched?

Alex White: Certainly in my playlist, you're gonna find Hiromi and Yoko Kanno, you know. But it's... yeah, did I, did I... is there any anime influence in here? Absolutely, it's a mech book, you know? It would be, it would be just dishonest to say that there was not. But yeah, I always sort of jokingly called it How to Train Your Evangelion, or maybe Macross Plus Plus Evangelion. You know, it was very, it is, it is very much anime influenced, but at the same time sort of trying to take it in that literary direction, which Victoria Schwab once sort of called her books, you know, AAF. Stands for anime as something. And, you know, I was like, yeah, yeah, no, that that completely describes sort of the aesthetic. And I'm, I'm happy to say that it's been well received in Japan.

Daniel Pewewardy: Oh, that's awesome. That's, yeah, better than the Xbox, which did not. [LAUGHS]

Alex White: The fact that, the fact that there's a Japanese version in the works is, you know, sort of --

Sara Dixon: Oh, cool.

Daniel Pewewardy: Oh, that's awesome.

Alex White: That feels like selling champagne to the French, you know?

Sara Dixon: I will also say that... oh, sorry, I cut you off.

Alex White: Go ahead.

Sara Dixon: Well, I was just gonna say that, like, because I don't, I'm not much of an anime person, I did not.... when we were talking about the book, and it was like, "Oh, this had an anime, you know, vibe to it," I was like, "Oh, I can see that." But it didn't like deter me from reading through the book at all, like I still found it very accessible for science fiction, for, with its strong anime influences.

Alex White: Right, right. I was still trying to model some version of reality without necessarily going, you know, full cartoon.

Sara Dixon: Yeah.

Alex White: But you know, of course, it, you know, like anything they're... you know, the chase scenes, you're unlikely to survive a chase scene in real life. You know, don't get in a car chase. It might be the last thing you do.

Sara Dixon: With tiny, little things with claws.

Alex White: Right, right, exactly.

Sara Dixon: Are they called the golden --

Daniel Pewewardy: The golden, the gilded ghost. Gilded ghosts.

Alex White: Gilded ghosts, that's right.

Daniel Pewewardy: I kind of imagined them as, like the Halo, the bad guys from Halo is what I kind of saw when I was reading it, like the weird cybernetic things.

Alex White: Oh, sure. I mean, like, you know, and they're, they're sort of... I mean, they're described as like a chain cloak with claws at the corners and a head, and it looks like it's been sort of draped over whatever it's imitating. But it's not really, you know, it doesn't really... I think everybody has different conceptions of it, and, you know, I think that's going to be reflected in some of the other questions you probably have.

Sara Dixon: It is. Good, good, good eye. So actually, what I wanted to ask about is the fact that --

Alex White: Good eye to you.

Sara Dixon: -- when... I'm sorry?

Alex White: Nothing, just you said good eye. And I said good eye to you. I'm sorry. I'm super corny.

Sara Dixon: Nope, I love it. I love it. I wish that I had heard it. So I wanted to ask about Ardent Violent is --

Violet? What did I say?

Alex White: It's not violent.

Sara Dixon: [LAUGHS] Violet, Ardent Violet is non-binary. And every time that I read a book, I'm a very visual person, so I like to have the whole movie in my brain, and I cast people and all of the characters. And I can see Gus very clearly. I think you very much do not describe some of the more gendered ways of describing people that you get in a lot of other books with Ardent and I found that really interesting. And so I was having a hard time, just like imagining what this person looks like and I wondered if... it just kind of got us talking about non-binary representation in literary format. And do you think that this science fiction genre is more naturally suited to include representation of all of the, just being more inclusive of people?

Alex White: Well, I, I can tell you that it is a fantasy to imagine a world where queer people are properly accepted. You know, I, I would like that to be the case, and I hope that my life drifts in that direction. Unfortunately, I am at the wrong period in history for that to probably happen completely, as this year is showing with increasing regularity. And so yes, but that's, that is my fantasy. And I thought, I don't want to write a world that's about that. I want to write a world that's about, you know, what it's like to be swept up in a whirlwind and lose your youth.

You know, that's, because that's what life feels like. You know, and the fact that it's very queer and non-binary is, you know, it's, it's there to provide a place for people to go and imagine themselves, and it's there for people who are not part of that community to see the vibrancy of it when it's not being guttered out every five seconds by a very large boot, you know? So, yeah, I tried to write Ardent in a way that people would imprint upon them. And so, you know, I don't want somebody to say, "Well, I'm, I could never be attracted to a non-binary person or something like that." Instead, I wanted to describe them in language that, from Gus's perspective, is admiring, and from Ardent's perspective is unoffensive.

You know, Ardent doesn't think of themselves in gendered terms because that would make them uncomfortable. And so when the narration is happening, I don't allude to things that would make Ardent uncomfortable if it's Ardent's POV. And likewise, you know, unless it's something that needs to be thrown in their face because they are kind of a brat, you know? But that's different, that's not the gender issue. They're just selfish. That's --

Sara Dixon: Totally different.

Alex White: Totally different. But for me, it really is about making sure that the character is well respected. Now, one of the things that I think is really funny is that a lot of times when I'm speaking to people about the book who have read it, you know, friends, family, that kind of stuff, Ardent often gets misgendered. But Ardent most likely gets misgendered into the relationship that they want to imagine there.

So if they like to imagine, you know, an Achillean relationship between Gus and Ardent, then they imagine that Ardent, they'll say, Ardent is a him. And if they want to have something that is a little more heteronormative in their mind, they'll misgender Ardent as a woman. And I've seen it time and again. And what I think is funny is I'm not sure that Ardent would mind that as a character, like, "Oh, okay, you want me to be in the role you find most attractive," you know? And that is, so it's sort of, it's weird. In a roundabout way, it's a compliment because I don't... when somebody has a natural inclination towards something, I don't hold that against them. It's when they use it in a way that is harmful or assume that it's the norm, that it's a problem, you know?

Sara Dixon: No, I think that's really beautiful, and I really like how you did it in the book, because it really made me think and then, and I think I have to just kind of work through letting that go, right? Like, I don't have to know. It's really not my business what Ardent...

Alex White: I mean, if you, if you absolutely must find the clues in there, you could scour.

Sara Dixon: I don't. I think it was an important exercise for me to go through as a reader and just somebody who's trying to have a better understanding of the world. And so anyway, I just really, I liked how you did it in this book, and I wanted to have a chance to ask you about that. So thanks.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah.

Alex White: Can I also say I really, I really appreciated that question. And the fact is that a lot of times when I see non-binary characters represented in fiction, they're represented as sort of asexual, you know, and I think that makes, I think that makes people comfortable. But, you know, when I think about people from the past that have influenced me as a non-binary person, it's funny. It's like David Bowie and Prince, right? But like, but at the same time, they're not non-binary, but they were permission givers. And I think that, you know, what I want to do is I want to represent maybe a section of non-binaryness that is not as, not as well represented. It's not, you know... like, you know, I think a lot of people, when they think of non-binary people, it starts to go towards like the Galaxy Quest aliens, you know?

Sara Dixon: Doesn't have to be.

[DANIEL AND ALEX BOTH START TO SPEAK]

Alex White: I'm so sorry. Go ahead.

Daniel Pewewardy: Oh no. I just noticed I would slip -- when I would read it, and I would just internally, because I'm always trying to be a good ally, and, like, not really, like, apply to, like, the concept of binary gender personally and more gender nonconforming. So I was listening, but I would still slip into, like, my brain would be, like, heteronormative, and then I would correct, like, my internal "No, no, no. Stop doing that. Stop trying to, like..." but that's funny that you said that's what people do, because I was, like, doing it, and then, like, also, like, telling myself to not do it. Just try to be more open-minded and like...

Alex White: Absolutely.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah. So that was, that's, that was, that's interesting, that that would happen. And like, yeah.

Sara Dixon: But like no clues, either, because, like, I was thinking, I was like, oh, cheekbones, or, like, you know, the brow, or, you know, just like, facial features. Anyway. And I so I just really like how you skipped over all of that.

Daniel Pewewardy: I was more interested in the dynamic of one being kind of a semi obscure celebrity with the other one being a super celebrity, like that was a dynamic. And I just like that as a dynamic, because it's like, they're both kind of celebrities. He's more of like a niche, micro celebrity, where she's -- they're like a superstar and things.

Alex White: Yes, he's a musician's musician, as he says, which means he's not famous really. You know, like, I love, I loved writing that dynamic as well. It was a lot of fun. I wanted to write a power couple. And so I thought it, you know, I enjoyed that.

Daniel Pewewardy: It's like, this is a literal Star is Born because it takes place in space.

Alex White: There you go, there you go.

Daniel Pewewardy: Music plays a big theme in August Kitko and so, I have a question about you have a music background and the mothership behind you. So, like, my question, I guess, was about, like, how involved was music in writing this novel, and why do you think like music inside... I was thinking about, like, the theremin being kind of like the science fiction instrument and just like things like, and so I was just like, why do you think sci-fi is always kind of very like enhanced with music and things?

Alex White: So, you know, I think that's a great question. I think that science fiction and music go hand in hand, because, of course, you know, it's always an exploration of our evolution of technology and culture and music will always be with us. It's a part of our human fingerprint the same way that art is, you know, and so we, I love to think about what that might be like in the future.

And what's interesting about it is, I think that a lot of people, you know, for instance, Russia in the early 1900s with the theremin was like, we want to invent the instrument of the future, and that we're going to drift away from traditional instruments, you know? But you can still people, find plenty of people who play the oud or the lute, you know, or any number of stringed instruments that we have sequels and sequels and sequels to, you know, just because, you know, we like, we like pianos, but they still sell harpsichords, you know. And of course, as we move into the future with digital sampling and modeling, you know, all of the instruments that we have known and loved will still be a part of our human palette.

And so I think that science fiction almost can't fail to address the idea that there will be music and there will be art and things like that. I do think that it is very optimistic of me to think that it's going to be something that I would recognize and enjoy. You know, maybe, maybe they're just really into minimalism in a way that it's a, it's the response to an artistic conversation that happened in their grandparents' generation, in 2632 and you know what I mean? Like, every single thing that we think of now as you know, our modern time is a response to, of course, all the conversations that have happened before, you know? And so science fiction is an ideal medium to look into those concepts and try and express them.

Daniel Pewewardy: I was really interested in, like... I'm like, an online meme person, so, like, it kind of reminded me, like, fully automated gay space communism meme.

[ALEX LAUGHS]

Daniel Pewewardy: And I was like --

Alex White: Sure, sure.

Daniel Pewewardy: Which is like, basically, like a utopian where, like, capitalism is no longer and, like --

Sara Dixon: Okay, thank you for explaining it for me.

Daniel Pewewardy: It was a meme that was --

Alex White: That's the shorthand for Star Trek.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah, the shorthand for Star Trek. And then I just because of like, and so I would be trying to figure out, in like, 2600, this is far in the future. It's like, how... like, how is this world and like, at what level... you still had people like, you talked about the scar and how people were kind of like, and I was just very interested in that world building you did and how, like, the Capital Age, I assume, was, like, the age of capitalism and things.

Alex White: Yes, yes. Yes, I mean, like, you know, William Gibson always says, you know, the future is here, it's just not evenly applied. And so whenever you get into the future, you also have to assume that certain people are not going to be afforded the same luxuries. And so I think, though, that I hope that future generations look at some of the lessons that we're teaching them right now by our failures, you know. And I genuinely hope that in 2652 there's a humanity to complain about my inaccurate portrayal, you know. But at the same time, I do think it's funny because Star Trek is always interesting because, you know, it takes place in the 23rd and 24th century. And there's sort of this idea that things went really badly for a minute, and then they continued getting more advanced. And I think that we have a lot of cycles inside of history where maybe, maybe certain sections fell off. You know, they regressed. Certainly again, I feel some regression in our country, occasionally.

Sara Dixon: Occasionally.

Alex White: Just occasionally. And so it, you know, and so I think that needs to be modeled into any story that attempts to go that far into the future. You know, I've never understood how somebody could say like, "Oh, I know what things will be like 40,000 years in the future, 10,000 years in the future," something like that, that that blows my mind. And I respect it, I really do. But at the same time, I'm trying to talk about my own life a lot in my books and and modern life for the people around me in a way that hopefully will still be somewhat timeless.

Daniel Pewewardy: Is there like a bible for the trilogy? Like, do you have, how much did you -- this is off script, but how much did you do in the world building?

Alex White: Oh, sure. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's pages and pages and pages of documentation on what is what. And you know, yes, I think you'll be quite surprised by the amount of world building that's in the sequel. And so, because it just takes what already exists and doubles, triples, quadruples it. I mean, it's very, it's expansive without giving too much away.

Sara Dixon: Cool. Well, so speaking of the whole music piece to it, we did read that you wrote a theme song for the book. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Alex White: I sure did. So I wrote a theme song called Burn Down the Stars. And you can, if you get on soundcloud.com/countermeasures, you can listen to it for free. You can download it for free. And there's a bunch of my other soundtracks on there as well. So I did an album called Race for the Harrow, which goes with the book A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe, and pairs nicely with the whole trilogy, if I'm being honest. But you know, I didn't write whole albums for the other two books because it's a lot of work. But yeah, so there's Race for the Harrow. So you can find that on Spotify, YouTube, any of that kind of stuff. It also goes well if you run like a cyberpunk kind of role playing game in the background, because it's wordless and symphonic but a little bit electronic.

I did an album called Maiden Flight of the Avenger, which you can find it used to be associated with my old podcast, Gearheart, which I still really love the music from it. You know, I do think I've moved on a lot as a writer, but at the same time, it is nice to kind of look back at the music and say, like, "Oh, that was something that I really enjoyed about making that podcast." There's my debut novel, Every Mountain Made Low, has an album associated with it on SoundCloud that you can go listen to. It's got some, it's very sort of folk music and like a little bit of country and blues. I did, and I did a song that I think will come out with the sequel, Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye. So, so I'll do a different theme song for that opening, provided, of course, they want a different theme song. They may just say, like, "Oh, we're going to keep our money, and you just use the previous one you did."

Sara Dixon: What do you mean they? Who's they?

Alex White: Oh, the publisher. The audiobook people, they've --

Sara Dixon: Oh, you put it on the audiobook.

Alex White: Yeah, so the intro to all the Salvagers books, I wrote that. And then the intro to August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, I wrote that as well. And it is a, it is a jazz style theme that follows a lot of the same chord progression as Autumn Leaves, but in a really different way. And so if you like that classic song, Les Feuilles mortes, you know you should go take a second listen to Burn Down the Stars and you'll, you'll be able to say, "I think I can hear it in there."

Sara Dixon: Cool.

Daniel Pewewardy: I'm very early into my J-jazz journey, where I'm just saying, like, "Siri, play J-jazz playlist," like, I'm trying to remember everyone's names and things.

Alex White: Sure.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah, but yeah, no, it's like, I really like, I'm really enjoying it. Like I've listened to, like, other jazz and like, like, a big fan of just like, Charlie Parker and like... but like, it's hard. You have to go deep. Like, it's like a thing. I'm on the very surface level. And then with J-jazz, it's even more, just like, it's... at this point, it's background music. I'm just slowly getting into it.

Alex White: My dad is from Indianola, Mississippi. So I grew up in a jazz and blues loving household. You know, listened to BB King almost every day.

Daniel Pewewardy: That's really, yeah.

Sara Dixon: Well, that's wild, but awesome.

Daniel Pewewardy: Has that influenced you, the improvisational jazz, do you think it makes you a better writer? Having that background?

Alex White: Oh, yeah. No. I love, oh, listening to jazz while I write is awesome. I will say that like there are some, like Coltrane, for example, or Sun Ra or, you know, some of them can get really super esoteric. You know, Pharaoh Sanders, people like that, really amazing musicians. But, you know, I do really enjoy the ability to like disappear into the words while I'm getting that stimulating yet wordless music. Once in a while though, a lot of these, a lot of these guys, they want all of your attention, and they want to show you everything that they can do inside of a scale. And that makes it really hard to pay attention to the book, and so it can change. It can change a little bit. So, yeah, I, you know, I have a very carefully curated playlist of things that I write to and certain albums that I listen to while I'm working.

Daniel Pewewardy: That's, yeah --

Sara Dixon: That's really cool.

Daniel Pewewardy: Speaking of improv, we have kind of gone off a little bit of script.

Sara Dixon: We don't have a script, Daniel. We're very, we're very conversational all the time.

Daniel Pewewardy: All the time.

Sara Dixon: All the time.

Daniel Pewewardy: So I have a question about the... we had a category, and my, it was a book written or with neurodivergent characters, and we ended up not having a guest. We had, like, a table talk episode for that one. And the one I recommended was The Cold Forge, because I kind of picked up, like some especially with, like, Blue Marsalis and also, I can't think of the name, the corporate guy --

Alex White: Dorian?

Daniel Pewewardy: Who's a complete narcissist and kind of like how like... did I read that wrong?

Alex White: No, no, He's, he definitely takes it a step too far. Now I will say I'm always kind of hesitant to diagnose Dorian too heavily.

Daniel Pewewardy: Okay.

Alex White: Because I think that what Dorian really is is he is the ultimate manifestation of the values of the world in which he lives. Like he is the system played perfectly as a human. And so I think that he, while I, I've had people write in, you know, I've had, I've had police detectives say, you know, I have 20 years of chasing psychopaths, and you've written the most compelling psychopath, you know, I'm like, I don't know about this. I think that that's leaving aside the fact that he profits from his behavior and is rewarded for it at every turn by the place that he lives and the people that he works for.

Daniel Pewewardy: My gosh.

Alex White: And so is, is he evil, or is he just blank and a function of that society?

Daniel Pewewardy: Like indoctrinated into that like... yeah, no. Like, yeah, that makes complete sense. Like, I didn't even think about that.

Alex White: I mean, he's definitely evil because he does evil things. But like, how did he get there? I don't like blaming neurodivergence for that because I've known people who are like, you know, I have trouble empathizing with people and I feel like an outsider sometimes, and so I don't... you know, I've known people who are in positions where they are treated harshly by those around them because they don't respond well enough to the feelings. And I think that a lot of people with autism and neurodivergence can really understand that. And so once again, I always sort of... Dorian has empathy. He can see what other people are thinking. That's part of the danger.

Daniel Pewewardy: Oh, wow, yeah, I guess yeah, I was just kind of like thinking, like, just because you're in the monologue of this person making decisions and things, but yeah, that totally makes sense. And, like, I don't... yeah, not to do that to August Kitko, but I guess I was kind of picking up --

Alex White: Let's have that discussion.

Daniel Pewewardy: Okay, so I did have a question, like, was, is August on the spectrum? Because that was kind of some of what we were picking up on, especially with --

Sara Dixon: -- the fact that he can, like, play music and communicate with robots from outer space, like at such a frequency. I don't know, it just seemed like that was kind of that, like genius level, you know, kind of just...

Alex White: So again, you know, I, you know, I think that it's, I think that it's worth interrogating, you know, which tropes might put him on the spectrum. And certainly one of the things that I want to avoid is the idea of savantism, because it's a bit of a harmful trope in my experience, because of, you know, people have a tendency to say, "Oh, your child has a disability. What's his superpower?" And I'm like, well, that, he doesn't necessarily have one other than being my awesome kid that I love and, you know, try and take care of and all. And so why do you need him to have one? Would it make you feel better if you knew that in a world that wasn't providing for him, he was really good at piano or math or remembering dates or, you know, those kinds of things. It's, it's a, it's a panacea for the people asking the question.

And so at the same time, I have a lot of special interests, my son has a lot of special interests, and I obsess over them, and so does he. Writing, I obsess over writing. It's the only thing that I can talk about half the time and I'm super annoying. And it's because I love it. I love the craft of story and creating experiences. Not just writing, but photography and painting and music and all of those things. Emotionally modulating another person in a way that they enjoy is like, probably my favorite thing to think about and do. And so what I'm gonna say is, I don't really think of August that way.

Sara Dixon: Okay.

Alex White: Because I wrote him in a way that I thought was normal, but sometimes we accidentally reflect ourselves in a way that we see as normal, and no author is truly unbiased, and so you've kind of caught me out here. You know, like, is he on the spectrum? Oh, gosh, maybe he should get evaluated.

Sara Dixon: [CHUCKLES] Well, it wasn't just like the playing of the piano, it's also because he was very kind of at the party at the very beginning of the book, you know, didn't want to --

Alex White: Yes, he was not good at partying.

Sara Dixon: Yeah, and he didn't pick up on social cues when he was like, talking about the piano for, you know, long time. So anyway,

Alex White: No, I think you're absolutely right.

Sara Dixon: These are the signs that we saw.

Alex White: I wanted to, the reason I addressed the question in that way was just because of the way it was asked. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that there are a lot of signs there. I think that it would be, I think that it probably would be fair to say that he's neurodivergent. I think that in that world, I think that's so much probably more understood and accepted.

Sara Dixon: Yeah, for sure.

Alex White: You know, because neuro, the overlap between... you know, the Venn diagram, between, like, neurodivergence and queerness, is often kind of a circle, right? You know, there's a lot, there's a lot of people who are neurodivergent, who have a distinct relationship to gender and sexuality and identity. And so I think that, you know, that it's... it's really gonna make its way into the book. I don't know. I lost my, I lost my point there. I'm so sorry.

Sara Dixon: That's okay. No, I think so the reason that we wanted to ask is because it is a category in our reading challenge. And so, you know, it's okay to have it be a question too.

Alex White: If you're reading books that are pride books, you're gonna find neurodivergence.

Sara Dixon: That's interesting.

Daniel Pewewardy: I'm on, like... I have a neurological disorder and ADHD and things, so I'm always like, have those moments. And I remember being at a Civil War reenactment because I always wanted to check one out. I'd never been to one. And I looked like, there seems to be a lot of autistic coded people here. And then I was like, I'm here. [LAUGHTER]

Alex White: I mean, I won't lie, I love being on a train. It's like the best. [DANIEL LAUGHS]

So, you know, yes, I think, I think that that's true as well, anytime you find, like, a gathering of hobbyists, and I think that that's one of the things that I really like about neurodivergent people, though, is, you know, it's like, if you want to go find somebody who's going to be in a stained glass club instead of somebody who's going to check out the latest episode of Seinfeld every night, you know, then not... you know, I'm not trying to bash on somebody who wants to do that, but the scene I want to be at is the one where we're learning a new skill and talking about it, you know?

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah. I think one of my favorite, well, the thing about I liked August is like, he's obviously, like, likes music a lot. And I think one of my -- and this is a thing that's happened to me, because it's like, when you like something a lot, like stand up comedy or whatever like, and you're kind of obsessive and maybe in those, in those, maybe in those neurodivergent ways, and you meet one of your idols, and you're too excited, and he meets the, I can't think of the character's name, but it's the drummer.

Alex White: Hjalmar.

Daniel Pewewardy: [LAUGHS] And he's like, "Oh yeah, you're one of them." I was like, felt. Felt. That's what happened when I met Eugene Mirman.

Alex White: Oh, oh yes, okay. I have certain people that I would have trouble meeting. They're not, you know, it's nobody, like... like, I said I would lose my mind if I met Yoko Kanno or, I think Terry Gross. [DANIEL LAUGHS]

Sara Dixon: Fair.

Alex White: And I was like, I just, you know, I'm like, you're like, fixtures of my life here.

Daniel Pewewardy: Especially when they're also not that famous. They're just like, they're just do a thing and, you know, it's like... [LAUGHING]

Alex White: I don't know what you're talking about with Yoko Kanno. But yeah, no, I get it. I get it. You know, it's not, I'm not saying, like, I want to meet an A-lister. I mean, they seem nice. And I've met a, you know, I've met my share of movie actors, but at the same time, the people that I really want to meet are the ones who are usually the creators.

Sara Dixon: Yeah.

Daniel Pewewardy: Grant Morrison, they are like my... no, well, that's the one that, them and Patton Oswalt are like, ones like my little obsessive teenager wants to interview on this podcast at some point.

Alex White: Well, good luck. Maybe you'll get them on here.

Daniel Pewewardy: We just had Sara's. We had N.K. Jemisin on the podcast. She was able to stay very cool.

Sara Dixon: Super cool.

Daniel Pewewardy: You did a great job.

Sara Dixon: Thank you.

Daniel Pewewardy: To jump back in those questions, so we talked about you exploring neurodivergency and, like, queer identity and with, like, some of your writing. And I noticed reading two of your books now, like the symbiotic nature of, like, with Cold Forge, with Blue Marsalis, and then with like August and the mecha. So I originally, when I first I kind of like saw, like allusions to neurodivergency. But I was reading another interview with you, and you kind of talked about looking at, kind of like LGBT and trans identity through the idea of like, like, the being, accessing a body that's not your own, and things and I just was wondering if you could talk about that some more. And we've already kind of talked about it, but just kind of the symbiosis concept of like, how do you approach this like, when you have personalities meld, and like, what are some of the influences and like, maybe things you're trying to say with, like, your approach to that?

Alex White: Sure. Well, as we've already discussed previously, you know, autism and queerness and neurodivergence are inextricably linked in a lot of cases. And so, I guess what I would say is, how does it really stack up as sort of the trans metaphor is that, in the case of, you know, Blue and somewhat lessened in The Starmetal Symphony, but not, not entirely, it is that the system reduces queer bodies to objects and agendas. And so, you know, we're things to either be secretly admired or reviled by a lot of people, or we're problems. Or, you know, and you know, I can't, I can't just, like, walk out on the street like this without making a political statement, you know, because when one party has said, like, if you question your gender norms in a way that makes me uncomfortable, I will have you jailed. You know, and, and that's what the bathroom bills are about. That's what the health care bills are about. You know, that's what all those things are about. And so yes, the queer analogy here is that the bodies are hated by the system and treated as objects and agendas.

August and Ardent don't get to control their own story. When they... I mean, like Ardent makes the choice to become a conduit, and then other choices are made. You know, Gus doesn't even choose that. From the second the system envelops him, he starts to, you know, to deteriorate under its care while they use him. And now he's happy to be a hero, you know? But I think everybody who's ever attended a protest would like to come home with all their teeth, you know? And so going, you know, going out there and being a hero, you know, shouldn't come with a cost. It just does a lot of times. And so again, I'm sort of trying to link these ideas together. And it is, it is fun to sort of imagine it from the neurodivergent perspective of, like, what if I was another person. But, you know, from the queer perspective, you know, especially in Cold Forge, it's like, well, what if I was a person that's allowed to be in this space? You know, and, and even still, from a meta perspective, I wrote -- [AUDIO GLITCHES] -- as a character who I consider be free in every way that I'm not. You know, and I think that that really, that's what makes it the queer metaphor, for me, the trans metaphor.

Daniel Pewewardy: Thank you for sharing that. I just want to say thank you. We're kind of going, we're talking about things that are deeply personal subjects. And I just want to say thank you for taking time and talking with us. And --

Alex White: Of course. Yeah, it's a deeply personal book. And I, you know, like one of the things that, you know, I really appreciated, there was a really wonderful review of my first book trilogy that had called it sort of good, stupid fun. And I, while I liked everything about the review, I was like, "Just because my books are fun does not mean that there's not a lot going on there. I'm sorry that you missed it." You know, maybe that person saw it and was like, "Oh, you didn't take it far enough." You know, I'm not going to tell a reviewer, but I definitely am trying to say more than big robots punch one another. You know? Big robots punch one another, don't get me wrong.

But you know, as we get older, life takes things from us, including our identities. You know, a painter may lose their eyesight. You know, somebody who's outside every day may lose the ability to walk. And the question is, what are we going to do if and when that happens? Really, when that happens. It's not going to be... you know, if you live long enough, you will lose everything. And that's something that I thought that, going back to anime, that Evangelion actually did an interesting job of evaluating with the character Asuka, who loses her ability early on, and that was how she defined herself, and it drives her into the depths of madness, and it's not fair to her. And I thought that, what an interesting thing. And the older I get, the more I think I really need to be thinking about this. You know, what am I if I'm not this? Writing is my special interest that I'm famous for. So what, what do I do if I can't do that?

Daniel Pewewardy: That's yeah, talking to you now, I realize, but one of the things I was wondering as I was listening to the book this morning was like, this is, I wonder if it's like JRPGs and like these, these machinations always end up being about bigger things.

Alex White: Of course, every sci-fi book should be about something bigger.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah, like, the allusion. But, yeah, I was wondering, like, I wonder, like, I hadn't got to the point in the book, and I was wondering where I was gonna but talking to you I was like, that's, oh, this is makes sense, and I'm starting to see it now, because sometimes it takes me a long time to, like, grab the bigger picture. Playing Final Fantasy as a 10-year-old, like --

Alex White: Final Fantasy XIV where, where you, it tricks you into playing a cop and then makes you feel bad for it. That one?

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah.

Sara Dixon: So we've been talking a lot about how the I think that you have shown us that you felt a little bit of freedom to kind of create this world for your characters in which they feel safe to be whoever they are, where they may not in our current environment. But I feel like science fiction kind of is ripe for doing that, right, because you can build these... and they're not perfect worlds, you know? They're still fighting giant robots that are trying to murder humanity, but like, they don't have to worry about the stuff that they shouldn't have to worry about. And so I feel like that's happened with a lot of science fiction, in my limited capacity for reading it. But what do you think? Can you talk about how it helps us to explore those concepts of like individual expression and social identity? I mean, science fiction just opens it all up for us. Can you talk about that?

Alex White: Sure. Well, the thing about science fiction, and really, I should say speculative fiction in this case, because I want to encompass all fantasy and sort of, you know, some, some of the, you know, more esoteric genres.

Sara Dixon: Yes.

Alex White: You know, it lets us live inside of an analogy. It lets us set up a situation where the rules are an abstraction of the rules that we have to follow or not follow every single day, right? And so by abstracting these ideas out, it lets us pull some of these biases off of the reader. So for me, there are two sort of sacred qualities to writing. And you know, the first one is that when you read a story, you don't have to pay the blood price of learning. Okay? So I don't have to fall down some stairs. Somebody can tell me a story of what happens, and now I will avoid falling down stairs because I lived it through someone else, right? So that's the first one. The second one, and this is the important one for your question, is it enables us to make you evaluate your own biases without warning, right? So talking about how you were going through and you were having trouble imagining Ardent because I wasn't describing gendered features.

And when you're alone and it's just you in that book, and I say Ardent's lips were warm and inviting and soft, you have to determine whether or not you have a response to that, but no one knows whether or not you're having a response to that, right? There are plenty of times when I... you know, you find out you're trans in a lot of ways because you look at the world and you go, "Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that was for me," you know. And you discover things about yourself through various situations that maybe if you'd have had your friends from back home in Mississippi or Alabama around you at the time, you would have said, "Oh, that's, that's terrible, and I hate that. I don't, I don't want that. That's not me," right? And so, you know, science fiction and speculative fiction let us confront you with these ideas very suddenly that are like, "Okay, we're not actually talking about this. We're talking about racism. We're not talking about this. We're talking about systemic violence. We're not talking about this. We're talking about, you know, abusive relationships." All of a sudden, you know, the reader is sucked into a story that is more real than their own life because, you know, it's brought them back. It's added their life to the story to create a bigger thing.

And I think that that's the power of it. That's, that's the whole point is that it enables us to live inside of this extended analogy. I hate the idea that science fiction is escapism, because I think that we escape to discover ourselves free of the context of this world. So, you know, you can only discover yourself if you don't have your parents telling you how to think, your teacher telling you how to think, or a police officer or your congressperson, you know, and stories are where you can do that safely.

Sara Dixon: Correct. And I think as a reader, yeah. I mean, you just kind of, it builds empathy, right? I mean, that's what people say all the time. We say it. We're librarians, and --

Alex White: Please read. Please read.

Sara Dixon: Yes, exactly, but you get a chance to experience things through a different way that you would normally do. And I think that what you're saying about I have to figure it out, right? And I think that this, it's an important exercise that we have to go through. I totally... yeah, I don't know if that made any sense.

Alex White: When it's just you and the book and your reaction, it's just you and the book and your reaction, and no one knows what you actually thought. And there are plenty of people who have reactions to things, and they have realizations about themselves, and then they bury them. And that's always really sad for me. Science fiction opened doorways in my mind, things like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. You know, where it's like Dax. Dax contains many different people of different genders, and has an understanding of what it's like to live those lives. And I thought, what magical thing must that be? You know, I can't how incredible that would be so wonderful to be able to know those things, you know? Because, of course, everybody gets a different experience of the world, you know. But by evaluating that very science fictional idea, I certainly ended up evaluating some very real ideas, you know, things like phenomenology, and what are the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how did those impact the realities of those around us? So, yes, speculative fiction is sacred because it enables us to live inside of an analogy and suddenly debate people.

Daniel Pewewardy: I think there's a subversive element that I just, I'm not really seeing like that you don't see a lot of sci-fi and fantasy on these banned lists as much as you do other genres. Like, it's almost like --

Sara Dixon: Because it's so layered, it's covered. You just like, read the back of the book. You're like, "Oh, it's fine. They're just fighting robots."

Daniel Pewewardy: Like they don't know Dune's actually about how messiahs are bad. It's like no!

Alex White: Don't worry. I'm sure that if the wrong people in Oklahoma hear this podcast, that you'll get complaints and you'll have issues. You know?

Sara Dixon: They won't.

Alex White: They won't.

Sara Dixon: I feel like this is a library podcast, we're fine.

Daniel Pewewardy: Just a bunch of library nerds talking about books. We don't need to worry about what the content is.

Alex White: That's right, well, and I mean when they say, like, I want to ban books, I'm like, if that worked, I would think it was smart.

Sara Dixon: It doesn't.

Alex White: I mean, it doesn't work, because the more you bury them, the more people need them. But I do think that books are the most dangerous thing in the best possible way to ignorance. And if your business model or your philosophy runs on the ignorance of other people, you must destroy truth, right? So I can understand why they come for the books. I really can, you know, in both our states, I'm in Georgia. I grew up in, you know, Alabama and Mississippi, so, like, I know what it's like. And yeah, they're right to be afraid. They're wrong to think they can stop it.

Sara Dixon: I don't think they're right to be afraid, because I think that they should all just be better people. [CHUCKLES]

Alex White: Oh, sorry, yes, if you want to continue making money off the ignorance of others, then we're coming for your business model when we write books.

Sara Dixon: Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about science fiction and space operas with Alex White.

Daniel Pewewardy: Thank you. We'll see you soon.

VOICEOVER: Did you know that the Wichita Public Library has a wealth of local history resources that you can use? From old yearbooks to newspaper archives to genealogy databases, you can find it all here. Located on the second floor of the Advanced Learning Library, our knowledgeable staff can help you with every task from finding newspaper articles that made Wichita history to researching your family tree. For more information, visit wichitalibrary.org/Research/LocalHistory.

Sara Dixon: We're back. Thank you so much again to Alex White, author of August Kitko and the Mechas from Outer Space. Right, isn't it --

Daniel Pewewardy: Or space, from space.

Alex White: Mechas from space, no "outer."

Sara Dixon: It's a really cool cover.

Alex White: August Kitko and the Mechas from Space.

Daniel Pewewardy: That was my fault.

Sara Dixon: "Ardent Violent." I keep messing up all the names, but it is a very cool cover. Did you get to do anything with the cover?

Alex White: I did not. I did not. It was, it was, it was given to me, and it was done by a really good 3D artist. But beyond that, I don't know what all went into it. One of my favorite things about being traditional is not dealing with the covers at all.

Sara Dixon: Fair enough, fair enough. So we've talked a lot about science fiction and all the freedom that it gives. But what are some of the common like misunderstandings about science fiction? And do you have any recommendations for people who maybe haven't had a chance to really dive into it heavily?

Alex White: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked this, because I think there's a lot of fear of sort of jumping into it, because there's a conflation between a sales category and an emotional category going on here. One of the things that I really like about like, the old movie rental stores that I grew up basically in and around -- because I love movies, I'm a big movie person -- but they were sorted by emotional categories, so it'd be like action or comedy or drama, right? And family, which just means like comedy that you should be able to show your kids probably, you know? But some of those don't hold up anyway. [CHUCKLES]

Sara Dixon: It's true.

Alex White: So the thing is, those are emotional categories that describe the emotional timbre of the book, or the work, versus sales categories are so strange to me, because the idea... like, I don't buy a book because it's got a spaceship, and yet, science fiction and space opera, for example, you know, they say, "Oh, well, this is the same thing." Well, okay, but Hitchhiker's Guide is a really long way from The Martian, right? Those two things are not remotely similar. Is a really long way from Becky Chambers, or Adrian Tchaikovsky, or, you know, any of those other you know, bajillion people. You know, why is N.K. Jemisin, you know, in the same row as George R.R. Martin? Those books are not... you know, that makes no sense to me.

Sara Dixon: Agree.

Alex White: Now, you know what it is, is it's, you know, essentially sales departments saying, "Well, you dorks like ray guns, right?" [DANIEL AND SARA LAUGH]

I mean, science fiction was a, was a, was a movement, you know, and I'm not going to say when it started, because everybody disagrees. And if you say Mary Shelley, somebody's going to bring up, like, an ancient myth and tell you that you're really, really, really wrong. You know, like --

Sara Dixon: Nerds. Just kidding.

Alex White: Guess what? You didn't get to invent anything. That's not how life works. You know --

Daniel Pewewardy: I believe it was Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue,"" is what my 18th century science fiction professor said. But that's an answer.

Alex White: Great, great, right. Well, the real question is, you know, you know, when did it enter common parlance and about whose work and that kind of... you know, like, just because somebody wasn't recognized, does that mean they didn't write it? You know, that kind of stuff. It gets really weird. But to take it all back to your question, people should jump into it because there is something for everyone in it. It just, you need to find the right one. And to do that, you should ask a librarian for one. Finding, finding books that match the emotional timbre of what you're looking for is what's important. Do you want action and adventure? You know, do you want drama? You know, I have... you know, my books are not all the same. My, you know, my Aliens book is nothing like my Star Trek books, or, you know, which are nothing like my Orbit books, which are, you know, every single time, you know, I'm working in a different context with different people doing different things, you know. And so I, I think that finding authors that really resonate with you and just letting them take you on that ride. What's the next book? Buy that book. Who cares what it's about? Is it really that important that it has a laser in it? You know, probably not.

Sara Dixon: Or if it does, like, let us know so we can help you find the right one.

Alex White: Right. If you're like, "No, I want lasers," no, I understand. Like, sometimes people want space opera. And I think that we could get into that if we, you know, in talking about, like, what space opera is, you know --

Sara Dixon: Yeah, how do you define space opera? Because your book, I mean, we, when we were talking about it, we were like, it's a space opera. So can you kind of, like, get into that a little bit?

Alex White: Sure. Now, space opera is interesting because it's one of those things where I think a lot of people are like, "I'll know it when I see it." But for me, it is civilizations that sprawl across stars that have real time communication and cheap travel. Okay?

Sara Dixon: Okay.

Alex White: So if you could be friends with somebody who lives on another planet and have regular contact with that person and see them every now and again, you probably live in a space opera. You know? And I know that sounds like a weird statement, but the reason why is hard science fiction breaks down at interstellar scales. Okay? And a lot of times when people talk about this -- and this, this got me into a huge fight at Dragon Con. So I'm really sorry if this invites some sort of doom into this room, but I'm going to say it anyway. The odds that we're going to live and terraform on another world are very low. Very, very, very low, because usually people who are writing those fantasies ignore the realities of no magnetic belt stopping the radiation, or the fact that if it's in another solar system, the relativistic time dilation effects mean that we won't be interested in speaking to one another because we won't have any common interest.

You know, the thing that I love is, you know, you'll find this in all of my books, entangled communication, right? Entangled communication seems so magical because it's the idea that we can look at two quantum entangled particles, detect the state of one and influence it, and that in real time will change the state and influence the other one. While quantum entanglement occurs at a faster than light speed, attempting to change the state of an entangled particle will cause it to disentangle, because the speed limit of information is light speed. And I'm sorry, nobody's beaten that yet, and that sucks. I wanted to go to the stars. I wanted to go to a different solar system. We've got nine planets here and most of them are bad. You know, I want to go to a cool planet where I can... you know, you know, starships represent freedom in space opera, whereas, like, starships represent, like, survival and hard science fiction.

Sara Dixon: Okay, that's a good, that's a good way to look at it. Yeah. That makes sense in my brain.

Daniel Pewewardy: Wasn't there kind of, like, a line in August that you... like, I always think of, like, there's a line from a Simpsons episode in the future, and then, like, March takes a picture and turns into a cake and she's like, "Life's been so much better since science discovered magic," which is like, I'm very into, like... I'm like a big Grant Morrison fan, so I'm already there, but isn't there a line in August Kitko where you kind of...

Alex White: Music is math magic?

Daniel Pewewardy: Well, that the country, the party they're at, didn't they like... I can't, the emperor, I can't think of the name of the city off on top of my head. But where they're at at the opening of the book, isn't there, like --

Alex White: Monaco.

Daniel Pewewardy: Monaco. I thought there was, like a line about Monaco has sorcery or something, but maybe I'm just --

Alex White: Oh, it was, it was just that, yes, all the royals had, like, floating banners and talking portraits and crap, and that magic had sort of taken over the royal aesthetic because it was a way for them to explain their arcane place in the world.

Daniel Pewewardy: Okay, the aesthetic was magic. Okay, I didn't know if it was like this is...

Alex White: Yeah, so that was a different...

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah, okay, just checking.

Alex White: I definitely, I definitely do believe in that, you know, classic Arthur C. Clarke quote about any significantly advanced technology's indistinguishable from magic. I think that was Clarke. But, you know, everybody, sort of in science fiction, I think, has to recognize that. And one of the things you know, that, where I got in a fight at Dragon Con was I asked a panel of hard science fiction authors. I was on the panel, and there was this sort of... I said, you know, do you ever break the rules of science for the sake of plot? And I got, I got harrumphed. I got, I got, like, yelled at. And I, you know, "the fantasy panel's down the hall, get out of here," you know. [DANIEL AND SARA LAUGH]

And I was really surprised, because I was like, "Do any of you use entangled communications?" And one very prominent man said, "Yes." And I said, "You understand that that is bunk, right?" Like, it doesn't work, can't work, and here's why. And I mean, like somebody had to, like, pull him off me, so to speak.

Sara Dixon: Really?

Alex White: Yeah. "Entanglement is faster than light, that's how it works." And it's like, yeah, that's how entanglement works. But you can't get information out of it.

Sara Dixon: People are real intense.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah.

Alex White: Yeah. Well, you know, if you're on a hard science fiction panel in the science fiction track at a major convention, talking to a major author, and then you get him to impeach himself on a question, it can get intense.

Daniel Pewewardy: That's hilarious. We've talked about... depending on the author, some people are like, some people like, fandom and stuff is just like, some people are like, "I'm very careful not to... what I say on podcasts and things." But I know who listens to us, so we actually might get some email. [SARA LAUGHS]

Alex White: Space exploration is critical to our survival. But also, I just want to point out that this planet is also mostly critical to our survival, like 99% critical to our survival. So I want to make sure that we're thinking about sticking around here, as opposed to jumping in a Cybertruck and popping off to Mars and, you know, that kind of crap. Because, you know, if we do what Silicon Valley wants us to do -- and I'm somebody who's worked in and around Silicon Valley plenty -- I think we're going to be making a huge mistake. And I think that that is still true, and maybe even doubly so, that we need to be aware of and worried about as we go into the age of green capitalism. Are they providing solutions or are they providing capital? Most of the time, capital.

Daniel Pewewardy: Talking about morally ambiguous mega corporations, I guess, is a good segue to our next question. So you've written in the Alien universe.

Alex White: Twice, even.

Daniel Pewewardy: And you've also written in the Star Trek universe. And I guess my question is, you've, you also have your own universes. And do you have to like... they all, these are all different universes that probably have different rules in how like, especially how space works. Do you have to like, how does your approach change when, depending on which world you're writing in?

Alex White: Sure, okay, so let's contrast Alien and Star Trek, if we could?

Daniel Pewewardy: Okay.

Alex White: Because I think that. I think that that's, that's my, it's my favorite to throw against one another. Because the base assumption of Star Trek, or I should say, the base assumption of Alien, is that the system is trying to crush you and grind you to dust. Whenever somebody's like, the Alien is about a Xenomorph, I'm like, no, the Alien is about the fact that your boss would feed you to a monster if it made his boss's boss's boss five bucks, right? And I know plenty of people who are company people over the course of my life, who would, you know, absolutely sell you out. You know, I think about, I've met some really evil HR people. There's a reason why the HR person is the villain in The Cold Forge. Now, I've met some really great HR people, too. So if you're listening to this interview, HR person who's thinking of hiring Alex, don't, don't get too mad.

Daniel Pewewardy: Shoutout to Tammy, our HR person.

Alex White: For always being ethical, good job, Tammy.

Sara Dixon: Yes.

Daniel Pewewardy: Big Tammy fans. [SARA LAUGHS]

Alex White: But you know, I've certainly met my share of HR people who feel that HR is about compliance and minimizing risk to the company, and, you know, reducing sort of the threat profile to the company of any kind of litigation. And no matter who the HR person is, I've never heard of one of them going to bat to the point that they would lose their job over something like a discrimination waiver in a severance agreement where it's, we're going to put you out on the street today with $0 or we can give you six months of severance, but you have to waive all causes of discrimination. So if you, if you find out later that we fired you because of who you are, and we said horrible epithets every single day on recorded channels, it doesn't matter. You've waived that right to that so that you got six more months having a house. And every single HR person will have you sign that document, except Tammy.

Sara Dixon: Not Tammy. We work for the government. It's totally different. Different ballgame.

Daniel Pewewardy: Totally different ballgame.

Alex White: But you probably, you probably don't have to... yeah, they probably don't have those in civil service. And that, I don't know, but I do know that in every corporate job, that's what I see the severance clauses look like. And, you know, and so I think that in Alien, the system is about protecting the system at the expense of the people inside and the, you know, it's maximum extraction of revenue. Versus in Star Trek, the assumption is revenue doesn't matter because everybody has as much money as they need, because they have replicators and teleportation technology, and so you don't really need anything else because you have all of those things. And so there's, it's very hard to say, "Well, I have this, this super rare thing that makes me more powerful than you."

Now, admittedly, Star Trek always leaves out capital equipment and land. And you know, if you have a sprawling intergalactic civilization with travel times, that means that some real estate is better than other real estate, right? And so who gets that? But at the same time, the base assumption of Star Trek is the system is trying to help you. You have a disability, if you have no money, if you have something like that, it is always there to catch you so that you can be your very best. And I, that sounds like a great place to live honestly, like even if you're probably going to die in a horrible warp core accident --

Sara Dixon: It's fine.

Alex White: You'll be comfortable most of your life. And which is more than I can say for planet Earth.

Daniel Pewewardy: Honestly, working at the Library's kind of like Star Trek compared to like working for --

Sara Dixon: I mean, yes.

Alex White: I've found libraries to be a hotbed of free thinking, well cared for people.

Daniel Pewewardy: Yeah, it's, like, the worst was I've had to get in front of a tribunal, and like -- [LAUGHS]

Sara Dixon: You have?

Daniel Pewewardy: I don't know --

Sara Dixon: I was like, when did you have to do that? Yeah, so that's... but I like how you have explained kind of the difference in the motivations, I guess, in the universe.

Alex White: I wasn't sure, I hope that answered your question.

Sara Dixon: No, I liked it, yeah.

Alex White: Because everything about the behavior of the people who lives in those societies ends up sort of getting dictated by that.

Sara Dixon: That makes sense.

Daniel Pewewardy: What's -- sorry, oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Alex White: What I was gonna say is like an Ardent's world, for example, where being, you know, flamboyantly non-binary is not a big thing and no one cares about it, they, that frees them up to be all kinds of bombastically fabulously loud in a lot of situations where maybe, you know, a modern day story that took place with a character like that being called before a military tribunal might not have gone that well.

Sara Dixon: Mm-hmm.

Daniel Pewewardy: My brother is a very corporate guy, and he doesn't like sci-fi, but I was telling him about Cold Forge, and he's like, "I actually kind of want to read it." And I would, I would tell him. I told him about without spoiler, I told him about, like, about some of the stuff that was happening and how he would approach it. Like, and he was like, yeah, no, I get why that happened. Like, no, totally.

Alex White: My Alien books are really a critique of my corporate life. [LAUGHTER]

It's like a critique of my corporate life with a big trans metaphor running through the middle of it.

Daniel Pewewardy: But when I would talk to him, because that's like, he doesn't like sci-fi, but he likes corporate intrigue and all that stuff. And he's like, big fans of movies like Steve Jobs and The Founder and stuff. So it's like, he's like, like, he hasn't started reading it yet, but he's like, actually he wants to get, he's getting, I'm getting him closer to getting into the Alien universe.

Alex White: Yeah, I think, I think it will be very accessible for someone like him.

Daniel Pewewardy: What's funner to write in: Star Trek or Aliens? Like, I mean...

Alex White: Okay, so here's the thing is, like, I find that Star Trek is very inspiring to write in, and Alien is very cathartic to write. Most of my problems would be solved by a Star Trek universe. And so when I write in that, it's oftentimes easier to be optimistic, and most of my problems are well reflected in the Alien universe. And so as I write in that, it's, I'm saying things that I need to say. And one of the things that I think is really funny is like, again, people sort of pooh-pooh tie-in novels. They think that they're not as good as real books. But for me, I don't have two modes. I need to find something that is vitally relevant to my life in order to write a book. And so those Alien books for me are really, really close to home. And yeah.

Sara Dixon: Bet that would be cathartic then.

Daniel Pewewardy: Knowing your corporate background, it all makes sense, because I was... that's so, that, yeah, that's why you, a lot of people say that Cold Forge is one of the best Alien novels out there. It's on several lists, and that's why I read it. I just, that's it, you, you have these, you're the perfect person to represent that world in a literary form.

Alex White: Yes, and I --

Daniel Pewewardy: GOATs, GOATs.

Alex White: And I am often, I'm often, often called to consult because of this. They, they really like how very, very corporate I am compared to a lot of other writers.

Sara Dixon: I am going to probably skip -- we were going to ask you about Neil deGrasse Tyson and ruining science fiction. But I guess I think we kind of already covered it with your story at Dragon Con, because you do break the rules of physics to move the story forward, right?

Alex White: Sure. And, you know, when I look at movies like Interstellar where they take off from a planet, the first time with a rocket pack in order to escape orbit, and then two other times without a rocket pack, I think hard science fiction doesn't fail to break the rules. Hard science fiction is an aesthetic, I'm really sorry to say. It's not real.

Sara Dixon: You didn't offend me. It's okay. I'm all right.

Alex White: Oh no, I know. I just said it, and it's that, that bomb is out there, and if you have somebody who disagrees, I'm sure they'll let me know.

Daniel Pewewardy: I'll forward the --

Sara Dixon: It would get us some comments, generate some heat for the podcast. So that's fine. It's all fine.

Alex White: Headline: hard science fiction isn't real, it's only an aesthetic.

Daniel Pewewardy: I'm tagging every sci-fi author we've had on the show. Like, hey, check this out. Alex has some opinions.

Sara Dixon: Got some opinions. So like, what's next for you? Have, have you finished the sequel yet? Because we can expect a trilogy for August, right?

Alex White: Yes, I have. I have finished the, I have finished the sequel. It's called Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye, and it comes out this December. You can pre-order it.

Sara Dixon: Awesome.

Alex White: And you know, not to say, like, if you think you know where the series is going to go, I assure you you don't.

Sara Dixon: Great.

Alex White: I cannot wait to see the reaction to this. This is probably the most complicated, most interesting book that I've written in a long time. You know, and I, of course, you always want to, as an author, you always want to feel that your latest work is your best. But again, it's another way to just really, really bring home a lot of the human emotions while adding in a lot of truly bizarre science fictional elements. And once again, it's sort of that playful mix of actually true science with fun ideas and breaking the rules where it counts.

Sara Dixon: Cool. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about, any future projects?

Alex White: You know, all I can say is you should stay tuned in and around the San Diego Comic Con time.

Sara Dixon: Okay.

Alex White: Because, you know, yes, I am doing all kinds of things, not just books.

Sara Dixon: Okay. Cool.

Daniel Pewewardy: Oh yay. I can't wait. One last question: can you recommend three books that you're reading now or recently enjoyed, set in space?

Alex White: Sure, so --

Sara Dixon: They don't have to be all of those things, they can just be like one of those things. You get to choose.

Alex White: Sure. So what I'm going to say is there's, I'm going to recommend three books that are in their own ways, odysseys. And science fiction odysseys, so that way we can... and they are set in space, though you could say that our current story is set in space. You know, literally every story is set in space. We're all in space.

Sara Dixon: [CHUCKLING] Every book is set in space.

In a space, okay, right?

Alex White: I love that famous Jane Eyre science fiction, you know, just really this place on planet Earth.

Daniel Pewewardy: Humans. Terrans.

Alex White: First off, I want to recommend Ten Low by Stark Holborn. This is sort of, you know, it's a bit bleak and Mad Max, and yet it's also very vibrant and exciting, and there's a sequel. Stark Holborn is an incredibly creative writer and and really good at sort of this mind-bending effect that takes place throughout the entire book. I loved the book. I thought I had a ton of attitude, a lot of good representation, and just a really interesting and compelling dynamic between the two main characters. So strong recommend there.

The next one is The Space between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, and that's about a multiverse hopping person. Humanity discovers the multiverse, and the very first thing we decided to do is colonize the rest of it, of course. And it's really exceptional, and it's a good discussion about the, you know, the gap between, you know, the powerful and privileged and the ones who are used. And Those Beyond the Wall I think is the sequel, which just came out, or is coming out soon, I'm not sure. And so again, Micaiah Johnson, incredibly interesting, incisive writer. You should follow her to the ends of the earth.

And then lastly, Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen. This one is just a real sensory delight. Essa is neurodivergent, and the main character notices things and lives in a very interesting and exciting sort of synesthetic landscape in a lot of cases. So Essa by day is also a sound designer in a lot of Hollywood stuff. And so you get to see a lot of that expertise about sensory manipulation coming through in the prose. And I just find, I just find them so fascinating.

Sara Dixon: Great.

Daniel Pewewardy: Thank you so much.

Sara Dixon: Thank you so much, and thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Alex White: Oh yeah, and I just wanted to add one more thing.

Sara Dixon: Oh yes, please do.

Alex White: Since you asked me for three books, I just wanted to say, first of all that I do read books, but that I actually have a lot of difficulty reading and consume stories in all kinds of manners because of it as a result. You know, if a book can get me all the way to the end, it's a huge recommendation for me because I abandoned most of them. But I listen and I check out DVDs and watch movies and that kind of stuff, and I know that the library is there to support all of that. So if you're, if you're, you have different abilities with regards to reading, I'm sure the library has stories for you.

Daniel Pewewardy: I'm only, I'm all audiobooks. Like, 100% like, that's the only way I'm able to read, and --

Alex White: You've heard it here on the reading podcast.

Sara Dixon: I mean, you know, it just, I think whatever format you need, like, find it. We will help you if you need with that. But, like, yeah, absolutely. Everybody can find the format that works for them and then go from there.

Daniel Pewewardy: Graphic novels, big fan, too. Actually, the other, the other time I was trying to get a book done, I got to graphic novel adaptation Kiersten White's Hide, and I was able to, like, get it done before the interview. So that helped a lot.

Alex White: Fantastic, yeah. And, I mean, like, you know, it is, it's always funny, because it's like, a secret shame as a writer that it's like, very hard to read. But, you know, and I do, but again, I just want for everybody who listens to this and they think, "Gosh, you know, I don't have three books to recommend or something like that," I bet you have three stories to recommend.

Sara Dixon: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for saying that and reminding all of us that it is important. Because some -- I think, I think we take it for granted sometimes just because we're in it every day. But absolutely.

Alex White: So much, so much of sort of the propaganda around libraries is read, you know, and I do, I think it's important there, it's in the name library, like, you know, it's, it's where the books are, but at the same time, it's also where there are so many other stories as well. And so, yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad that y'all are so cross media here.

Sara Dixon: Yeah, absolutely. But we want to make sure that we are respectful of your time as well. And so we are going to wrap up this episode, but we just really appreciate you coming on today and speaking with us and really diving into science fiction and all of that it can include.

Alex White: Yeah, thank you so much.

Sara Dixon: So we're gonna do our cheesy little exit that I feel like I always have to explain. So just hop in where you want to. But this has been another episode of Read.

Daniel Pewewardy: Return.

All three, together: Repeat!

Daniel Pewewardy: Have a good one.

Sara Dixon: Yay! All right.

Daniel Pewewardy: Thank you.

VOICEOVER: Did you know that the Wichita Public Library offers a large selection of digital magazines for free? They are easy to access and are now available to you on the Libby app. You can download Libby from your phone or tablet's app store, sign in with your Wichita Public Library card, and start browsing immediately. Magazines can be found under the guide section on Libby and include popular magazine titles about news and politics, cooking, celebrity news, healthy living, and more. For additional information on Libby, please visit wichita.overdrive.com.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: I just want to say that was a really, I feel like that was a really deep, we went places we haven't gotten in a lot of episodes. And I really want to thank Alex again for giving us their time and exploring some possible very personal issues for them. And I just that was a really great interview, personally, and I enjoyed it a lot. Kind of talking about a book about giant robots, I didn't think we were gonna go there.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: I know. Sometimes, you know, you just think, "Oh, it's just giant robots." But Alex really shared a lot, and I can see how it would be a very personal book for them. Like, and how cathartic that must be to just, like, explore these worlds. But anyway, yeah, I loved it. I thought it was great.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: Yeah, so thank you again, and yeah, a list of the books discussed in today's episode can be found in the accompanying show notes. To request any of the books heard about on today's episode, visit wichitalibrary.org or call us at (316) 261-8500.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: Once again, we just want to thank Alex White for joining us for today's recording. This has been a production of the Wichita Public Library, and a big thanks goes out to our production crew and podcast team.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: To participate in the ReadICT Reading Challenge, please visit wichitalibrary.org/readict. Stay connected with other ReadICT participants on the ReadICT challenge Facebook page. Find out what's trending near you, post book reviews, look for local and virtual events, and share book humor with like-minded folk. To join the group, search #ReadICT challenge on Facebook and click join.

Sara Dixon, voiceover: And don't forget to log your books and the reading tracker app Beanstack. Each month that you log a book in the challenge, you are eligible to win fun prizes, like, you know, fun socks, cutesy little book humor things. If you need any assistance with that, signing up or logging books, give us a call, reach us on chat, or stop by your nearest branch.

Daniel Pewewardy, voiceover: You can follow this podcast through the Spotify app or stream episodes on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on, whether that be Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts or YouTube, make sure to let your friends know if you liked what you heard today, share, and we appreciate all the you know, like, like and subscribes that we get. So thank you so much, and you've been listening to Read. Return. Repeat.

Daniel and Sara together: Bye!