News & Press from The Future Fire: June 2017

Tuesday 27 June 2017

Interview with Joyce Chng, author of Starfang

We’re delighted to welcome back to TFF an old friend Joyce Chng (we published her story “Lotus” in We See a Different Frontier, the hauntingly beautiful “The Lessons of the Moon” in Accessing the Future, a poem “Lessons of the Sun” in TFF-X, and a mini-sequel to “Lotus” here as part of our ten year celebration). Her latest novel, Starfang: Rise of the Clan is now out from Fox Spirit Books, and Joyce joins us to talk about this book and her other work.

Joyce Chng is Singaporean. She writes science fiction, YA and things in between. She can be found at @jolantru and A Wolf's Tale.

Is a clan captain going to sacrifice everything for her clan? Tasked by her parents to kill Yeung Leung, powerful rival clan leader of the Amber Eyes, Captain Francesca Min Yue sets out across the galaxy to hunt her prey, only to be thrown into a web of political intrigue spreading across the stars. Is Yeung Leung collaborating with the reptilian shishini and playing a bigger game with the galaxy as a price? Is Francesca’s clan at stake? Welcome to Starfang: Rise of the Clan, where merchants and starship captains are also wolves.

TFF: In one line, can you tell us what Starfang is about?

Joyce Chng: Starfang is about werewolves in space, clan wars, and a female captain’s loyalty to her pack and clan. It is also a space opera with alien races and starship battles.

TFF: I thought most mashups of scifi and fantasy tropes had been done, but Werewolves in Space may be a new one on me. Where did the inspiration for Starfang come from?

JC: The inspiration for Starfang came from watching cargo ships. I like taking my daughters to this jetty and small beach. It faces out into a small channel whereby large cargo ships ply through.

One day it just struck me: why don’t I just write a space opera… with ships and werewolves? I have always liked the idea of space ports and stations. Plus the fact that Singapore has always been a port city. Imagine the type of stories that arise from this.

TFF: Do you already know where the rest of the Starfang series will go, or are you still making it up as you go? Any sneak previews for us?

JC: The other two books have been written!

Sneak preview from the second book: captain goes on a hunt for her hunted enemy:

The arrival of a Clan warship was normally a joyous occasion, as a tour of duty would take months up to a year. Its return would be followed with feasting and hunting. But for Starfang, there was no joy, no feasting. The warship was in mourning, the loss of an important member of the pack still keenly felt. An emptiness echoed on the bridge. Starfang was now in hunting mode, a predator on the trail of an elusive prey. Even a refit and refuel above Noah’s Ark would mean a delay. I itched to move on, to continue the hunt, the kill.

Francesca, illustrated by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

TFF: Your previous trilogy, the Jan Xu series, was also a werewolf-themed story (and your blog is named A Wolf’s Tale!)—what is so important or attractive about wolves, for you?

JC: I love wolves. I love that pack and loyalty to family are part of wolf social structure.

TFF: Clan, pack and family seems to be crucial to this book and many of your other stories. Can you tell us more about the relationship between the individual and community in your work?

JC: I feel that the individual is part of their community, part of an intricate web that ties them together. What the individual does bears consequence to their family and community. In my other stories, I also explore the depth of family, both blood and found. My first YA web story Oysters, Pearls & Magic explores the important of family and how it ties the protagonist, first to her blood kin and then to her found family. Ultimately, she still returns to where she was born. The same goes for her daughter in Path of Kindness where, after years of wandering, she returns to her mother in the village.

In Starfang and in the Jan Xu series, clan, pack and family are part of the story, part of the protagonist’s identity. Captain Francesca’s ties to her family and her pack are deep and thick, sometimes even stronger than galactic politics.

TFF: The first two Starfang novels were originally serialized on your blog, before being polished and edited up for print publication. How does this change the way you sell or market the novel now?

JC: In a way, it doesn’t really change how I sell or market the novel. Serialization is one of the ways authors and writers can use to reach their audiences. For people who read my work and follow me on social media, they get to read the stories as they are written and uploaded on my Wattpad and Patreon.

TFF: What are you working on next? What can your fans look forward to?

JC: A couple of short stories, and a sword fantasy series.

TFF: And what about supporters of your Patreon—what bonus materials are they getting access to these days?

JC: They get poems and new stories that have been not published before in sff venues. Likewise, they get to read installments from an ongoing space opera I am writing. The space opera is inspired by Admiral Zheng He, a Chinese Muslim explorer who visited Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century.

Thanks so much for joining us, Joyce! Best of luck with Starfang (Amzn) and the rest of the novels.

Monday 12 June 2017

Recommend: women in noir/crime

Noir is a genre of fiction too often plagued with sexist stereotypes. If you are tired of plots where women characters are either manipulative femmes fatales or naive girls in need of protection, and you would like to read a good crime story without rolling your eyes every other page… maybe this month’s recommendations can be of some help! TFF authors, editors and reviewers have shared quite different examples: from more traditional noir to contamination with other genres; from novels to comics; from the darkest stories for adult readers to humorous YA series. Feel free to join us in compiling this list, adding in the comments all the noir stories with women and/or by women that you have read and enjoyed! Mainstream or obscure, we want them all!

Petra Kuppers (website)

My choice of noir is Gail Simone’s graphic novel with illustrators Jon Davis-Hunt and Quinton Winter, Clean Room: Immaculate Conception (DC Comics, 2016). It’s got all the ingredients of a good noir: a besieged and heart-wounded hero (journalist Chloe Pierce), a scintillating set of beautifully realized locations (scenes are set in Germany, Norway, various points in the US), and an equally wounded and enigmatic femme fatale (Astrid Mueller, head of a cult-like organization). Members of Astrid’s organization visit the clean room, where they face their fears. They might end up killing themselves, as Chloe’s fiancee did, or, later in the story, a Hollywood action hero. Add to that mix intriguing monsters, skin gore, torture and self-mutilation, lots of nudity and sex, and more twists and turns than one can shake a stick at. The psychological tension runs high and makes this a brilliant read, with two powerful women leads, one black, one white, none of whom need rescuing, although both have an intriguing bunch of henchpeople (including a group in Chloe’s camp that reminds me of Mulder’s nerds in the X Files). Queer narratives complicate the story, releasing us from scenarios where there is only ever one ‘other.’

Valeria Vitale (TFF, blog)

The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith is a story that shows all the landmarks of the noir genre: a hardened former police officer, a corrupt aristocracy that flirts with criminal organisations, shady middlemen that love money too much, a fascinating client that are bound to bring troubles, and a city, Atlanta, that is, as in many noir, a crucial component of the plot. At the same time, Griffith’s novel eludes easy categorizations and keeps surprising the reader, choosing unexpected turns, changing pace and focus. What makes this story so interesting to me is not (only) that most of the main characters are women, but that this scenario is not treated as something exceptional: the novel unravels smoothly without anyone being disconcerted by the fact that, yes, women can be dark and dangerous too and, yes, they also make very good detectives.

The Blue Place portrays a number of relationships between women that are beautifully diverse and complex, and feed the plot without falling into stereotypes or being used as simple triggers: flirt and courtship, romantic involvement, friendship, solidarity, family bonds. They all feel real and profoundly human and make this story exceptionally engaging.

Cait Coker (TFF)

Jacqueline Carey's novels Santa Olivia (2009) and Saints Astray (2011) are unlikely to be read as noir, but I would argue that they are closer to that genre than to conventional dystopia, as noir is characterized through its ethical ambiguity and fatalism, and dystopia through omnipresent degradation. In Carey's world, there is a valid escape to be had from the shitty not-too-distant future southwest US, where a queer Hispanic teen named Loup is torn between revenge for her dead brother and escaping to a better life for herself and her girlfriend Pilar. The outer world, including Mexico and Europe, has rebounded after a devastating pandemic in a way that the isolationist US has not. Loup's and Pilar's journey evolves beyond a quest for survival to one of discovery of this outside world, from tourist beaches to fashion and pop music.

Their saga concludes with their search for social justice for their home, still under martial law, and for equal rights for genetically modified humans, both of which are impeded by the complex oligarchy of the US government and military, as in this case being born, for Loup, is a crime of itself.

Jessica Campbell (web page)

Robin Stevens’s ongoing book series Murder Most Unladylike is one of those things that’s tailor-made for those of us who like the aesthetics of classic English fiction but also like progressive politics (see also Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries). The books, intended for children and teens but very readable for adults, feature Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells, budding detectives at a girls’ boarding school in 1930s England. Daisy comes from the British gentry, while Hazel is from Hong Kong; they become friends and form their own detective society. The mysteries are interesting, and they frequently evoke the likes of Agatha Christie with titles like Arsenic for Tea and settings like a manor house and the Orient Express. Hazel’s first-person narration subtly invites readers into her experience as an Asian girl in a very Caucasian society. Then there’s her experience as a smart but quiet person who has to learn to assert herself with the brash Daisy. These are good things for kids to read about, and Stevens’s prose is never didactic. I was encouraged to read these books by a friend and her middle-school-aged son – and I’d be hard pressed to pinpoint which of them encouraged them more strongly!

Please let us know in the comments your favorite women in noir and crime—you'll be adding to my reading list!