Interviewing Aliette de Bodard

Hello!!

Last month I read the excellent Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard a brilliant novella exploring a murder mystery set in the fabulous Xuya universe of the far future that many of these tales are set in. Aliette kindly agreed to answer some questions on the story and what else we can look forward to reading this year - expect another review soon!

Aliette de Bodard writes speculative fiction: she has won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards and was a double Hugo finalist. Her most recent book is Fireheart Tiger (out now fromTor.com), a sapphic romantic fantasy inspired by precolonial Vietnam, where a diplomat princess must decide the fate of her country, and her own. She lives in Paris.

How do you like to book tempt Seven of Infinities?

Seven of Infinities is a space opera set in a Vietnamese-descended space empire, which features Sunless Woods, a spaceship who is also a retired thief. She's planned to enjoy said retirement but instead finds herself helping impoverished scholar Vân with a murder investigation--and falling for Vân...

You’ve mentioned the famous literary thief Lupin as an inspiration for elements of this story. How did that evolve?

Lupin was really foundational to my childhood--he's the larger than life charming thief who collects heists and dubious affairs (and heartbreak), who has a taste for theatrics that blow up in his face. He seems like a perfectly suited character for a space empire, and I wondered what he'd look like if he was a sentient starship--and if he was gender-swapped into a woman, because everything is better with sapphics.

The Xuya universe has grown over many stories. What are the benefits of having such a setting to tell stories and is there a long term masterplan where you’d like the series to head towards?

I think it's on the one hand very comforting to have a base setting where I don't have to ask myself questions about (like who's ruling, what the political and social structure is like, but also all the way down to how they measure time or weight). With every new story, I get to dig into interesting things from slightly different corners of space: this time around I was looking at social ascension, and also at things like penal codes of a Confucian empire and how they'd be very different from European-descended codes.

What is the best thing about creating a science fiction crime mystery?

Mostly it's having fun! Having a whole different canvas--space, bots, virtual spaces--makes it possible for me to take familiar bones that the reader will have expectations about, and then to satisfy those expectations in an unpredictable manner!

What else lies in store for 2021? Where can we find out more?

My novella Fireheart Tiger, a sapphic romantic fantasy set in a universe inspired by precolonial Vietnam, is out now from Tor dot com. It's Howl's Moving Castle meets The Goblin Emperor in mood: a diplomat princess faces her old lover--a sword princess who'd very much to be her current lover and more--across a negotiation table, and must decide the fate of her own country, as well as her own fate...

If you had one book (not your own) that you could get everyone to read what would it be?

I have lots of these! But recently I would recommend Nghi Vo's When the Tiger Came down the Mountain, which is about tigers, and how they can fall in love with humans--and how the stories get passed down, years down the line. It's about history and myths and about love, and very queer, and it resonated with me deeply.