SPSFC3 Author Interview - Herman Steuernagel

What inspired the world, characters, or core concepts of your story? Was it a particular event, piece of media, or a speculative scientific idea?

 In 2022 I made the decision to enter a short story into an anthology entitled “The Dystopian Guide to the Galaxy.” I created a short story, entitled Infinity, into the compilation. Infinity was the story of a space station, orbiting the Earth, in a future where we’ve been told the Earth was destroyed due to cataclysmic wars, when in fact, the elites were keeping the fact that they were living on the Earth, while the rest of humanity worked within this station. While creating that I realized there was a much bigger story to explore, and Eclipse was born.

How did you approach the creation of your main characters? Were they modeled after real-life figures, or did they evolve organically as you explored the world of your story?

My characters usually develop organically. There are pieces of other characters who inspire mannerisms and traits of my characters, but each personality really begins to develop themselves over the course of the work. For example, Abigail Monroe is a crafty space pirate, and really presented herself as a female Jack Sparrow. Mikka Jenax has an influence from Star Trek Discovery’s Michel Burnham.

Science fiction often delves into questions of ethics, technology, and humanity. What central theme or moral question does your story grapple with, and why did you feel it was essential to explore?

Eclipse is very much a dystopian story and I wanted to explore a few themes with it. First I had in the back of my head that I wanted to explore different angles of the same events. The story is dual POV and Mikka & Django have very different world views. Especially right now in our climate we get this picture that people are divided into one of two camps, but humanity is so much more nuanced than that, and people have their reasons for believing the things that they do, whether those reasons are accurate or not, it doesn’t mean they’re coming from a place of malice.

Django’s story in particular is one where he’s presented with a series of evidence that goes against the notion that he’s believed for his entire life. He has to navigate his world in the story trying to grapple with what’s been presented to him and try and sort out his own emotions from the world around him. 

How did you approach the integration of futuristic technology or scientific concepts in your story? Did you base them on existing theories or let your imagination run wild?

The Fractured Orbit series, and Eclipse in particular, doesn’t stray too far from our planet. The entirety of the novel takes place between two locations, the space station Eclipse, and the Moon, with a bit of ship’s travel in between.
I wanted to keep the technologies of the book within the realm of possibility, so I try to offer some explanation for a lot of it. There are some technologies that are mentioned though that are currently out of the scope of what we know to be feasible – i.e. artificial gravity and force fields.
However, I did do a lot of research into off-world habitats and possible moon colonization. For example, the location of the Lunar city that I’ve developed is on the south pole, because that’s a prime candidate to set up a moon base because the sun doesn’t set, and we’d have access to solar power. (This is why India recently landed their mission there.)

Eclipse is by no means hard sci-fi, but I also really wanted to keep it out of the realm of fantasy.

The sci-fi genre provides a canvas to depict diverse cultures, species, and worlds. How have you incorporated representation and diversity in your work, and why do you think it's vital for the future of science fiction?

My novel is set in the near-future (About 200 years). While cultural differences are not a central theme in Eclipse, my cast is formed by a diverse group of characters ranging from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. The future of space exploration is going to be one shared by the global community.

Every author has a unique writing process. Can you share a bit about yours? How do you manage world-building, plot progression, and character dynamics in such a complex genre?

Every book I craft is unique in its creation.

Eclipse had a very conceptual start. I set out with a scene of someone looking out of the space station window and this image of a dead Earth flickering into a lush, green one before their eyes. This was the start of Django’s storyline.

While that story was coming to life, though, I also realized that I didn’t want to stay constraine to this hidden world trope. I really wanted to have differing perspectives, as mentioned earlier, and had this idea of a space pirate trying to make ends meet outside of this really controlled system of the space station. From that Mikka was born.

What's next for you after SPSFC? Are there any upcoming projects you can share with us?

The next instalments of Fractured Orbit will be released this year, Chimera and Resurgence. My plan is to finish the series in 2024 with two more books. I have a side project that I’ve outlined, and another project that is in the early stage of drafting, but nothing that I’ve announced just yet J