Sue Burke’s most recent science fiction novel is Usurpation, the conclusion of the trilogy that began with Semiosis and Interference. She began writing professionally as a teenager, working for newspapers and magazines as a reporter and editor, and began writing fiction in 1995. She has published more than 40 short stories, along with essays, poetry, and translations from Spanish into English of short stories, novels, poetry, and historical works. Find out more at https://sueburke.site/
From April 26 to 28, Barnes & Noble is taking 25% off the price of all pre-orders again: dead-tree books, audiobooks, and ebooks. More information is at barnesandnoble.com.
This includes my next novel, Dual Memory, available May 16. The coupon code for checkout is PREORDER25
The author copies are here for Dual Memory! On sale May 16.
Have I mentioned that blue is my favorite color?
If you’re in Chicago, come to the launch party at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 16, at Volumes Bookcafé, 1373 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. More information is here.
Yes, there will be an audiobook for Dual Memory. How do audiobooks happen?
In this case, the book’s publisher, Tor Books, holds the rights for the audiobook. Tor, in turn, sold the rights to Dreamscape, a publisher whose projects include audiobooks.
Dreamscape then asked me a dozen questions about such things as pronunciations and preferences on accents (I had no preference). Dreamscape also asked: “It is customary for narrators to have the freedom to create these characters on their own, but … if you have a strong opinion…” My only suggestion was that one of the characters, Par Augustus, could be played for laughs.
Dreamscape suggested audiobook narrator and voice actor Andrés Santana and passed on a few samples of his past work. I loved one of them for its snarky tone because Dual Memory, as Library Journal’s review says, is rollicking. He would be fun to listen to!
And so it’s going to be Andrés. I even got to talk to him briefly, and he was charming. He had questions about the pronunciation of seventeen words in the text. I’m a writer, so I know how to spell them, but pronunciation … I did some quick research. Quidam is KWEE-dam. Cedonulle is SAY-don-ul.
And so, I bring you Andrés Santana as the voice of Antonio Moro and the narrator of Par Augustus. He’ll be a pleasure to listen to and will make the story even better than I wrote it.
My third novel, Immunity Index, is on sale during the month of April. All ebook versions are only $2.99 at all retailers.
More information and links to booksellers are at TorForge.com: eBook Deals Aplenty: April 2023!
What’s Immunity Index about?
Library Journal: [starred review] “This dystopian biothriller reads like a 21st-century version of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, crossed with George Orwell’s 1984. The clone sisters and their creator each provide alternating perspectives of a chaotic world and evince that individuals can make a difference. The story they tell is hopeful, heartbreaking, and compelling at every turn. Highly recommended for readers of dystopian science fiction or political technothrillers.”
Publishers Weekly: “Burke endows her characters with distinct personalities and conjures a frighteningly real sense of national destabilization as events spiral out of their control.”
What I like the most about C2E2, the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, is the celebration of creativity among the people who attend. Cosplay strolls down the aisles in all its glory, artists pass around inspiration, gamers revel in their enthusiasm, and writers join in the fun. Pro or amateur, we’re all fans, and we get energy from each other.
If you can’t make it to C2E2, you can still celebrate creativity on April Fool’s Day. Make something: art in any medium, a poem, a story, a meal, or don some fabulous clothing. If you see someone being creative, tell them they’re doing a great job. Nobody ever says or hears that often enough.
If you’re at C2E2, come see me Saturday, April 1, from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. in Room S403-B. I’ll be on the panel Imagining Tomorrow: World Building in Science Fiction. From The Time Machine to The Left Hand of Darkness, science fiction has given us some of the most enduring stories of all time. We’ll discuss our approach to imagining the worlds of tomorrow and some of the science fiction stories that inspired us. Veronica Roth, Sylvain Neuvel, Sue Burke, and J. S. Dewes, moderated by John Jackson Miller.
We know from previous years at C2E2 that aspiring writers come to panels to learn, and we’ll do our best to help you.
After that, I’ll be in the Celebrity Autographing Area from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the panel signing for Imagining Tomorrow: World Building in Science Fiction. You don’t have to buy something or want an autograph to say hi. Let’s talk about creativity. What are you up to?
Water is life. So say plants, at least.…We grow. The sensation is pleasurable, in fact jubilant.… Spring is the most impatient, exciting, exultant season. We celebrate life.… We have rain, we have peace, we have life. We grow.
— From Semiosis, page 282 hardcover
My next novel, Dual Memory, comes out May 16. The publisher has posted Chapter 1 on its blog. It’s short, 1200 words, and ready for you to read here.
Find out how Antonio Moro came to have no job, no friends, no family, no money, no clothes, and an incomplete idea of where he was and what to do next.
My husband jokes that my fiction often has a high body count. It’s true, and I’m sorry about all the people I kill. One particular death made me cry as I wrote it. Right now, I’m drafting Usurpation, the third book in the Semiosis trilogy, and like the others in the series, there’s a lot of violence and death.
Why do I kill so many people and sentient entities in my writing? I’ve wondered about that. A common piece of writing advice is to “write what you know.” In some ways, I think you can’t avoid writing what you know.
I have never known peace. Personally, I’ve lead a quiet, relatively violence-free life. I’ve only had to hide from gunfire once, and I’ve heard a few terrorist bombs, but from a safe distance. But the wider world has always been a bloodbath. (Graph: Our World in Data, deaths in state-based conflicts, World, 1946 to 2020)
Right now, there are ongoing wars, genocides, insurgencies, armed conflicts, random violence like American mass shootings, murderous governments, and civil disorders. In addition, natural and human-caused disasters wreak enormous death and injury.
Some people don’t like to watch the news, and I can’t blame them.
When I watch the news, I more often get angry than sad or depressed. I’m angry because so much of this suffering doesn’t have to happen: it is a choice. We can choose otherwise. There are always alternatives.
Sometimes people choose well. Peace breaks out, fighting subsides, victims get aid and succor, and people learn how to do better. There is hope. In my writing, it might be a rough trip, but I try to find a way toward hope.
In the novel Semiosis, Chapter 3 ends as Higgins says:
“I would go out to share some truffle with Pitman soon, and I would sing him a sad song about fear and hope, failure and healing, about sweet and fresh sap in leaves evergreen with grief. Maybe I could teach the pack to coo along. Music the Pax way. Cross-species communication. They never did that on Earth. Singing fippolions. Dancing fippokats. Helpful, talkative plants with a sophisticated appreciation of abstract ideas. Good times. They can happen. Wait and see.”
Here are the words to that song. Feel free to set them to music.
Grief Evergreen (Higgins’s Song)
People will die, and I knew that yesterday.
People will cry, and I know that now today.
I would have been fine just knowing that yesterday.
I didn’t want to learn I was right today.
(Chorus)
Fresh sap in the leaves evergreen,
clean and new every season,
grief evergreen.
–
The ache of a soul that lived a night too long,
the one that brought sorrow and failure and wrong,
the one I saw coming. I knew all along
I couldn’t stop it. I wish I were that strong.
(Repeat chorus)
Life is a song, and time never stops breathing.
I can’t be quiet, I can’t refuse to sing.
I can’t stop sunrise, and I can’t stop the spring.
It hurts more to keep silent. I have to sing.
(Repeat chorus)
Here’s the cover for my next novel, Dual Memory, available May 16 (but you can pre-order now).
I love the art by Mike Heath—the combination of organic and inorganic minds tells you a lot about the novel. The colors and motif suggest a frigid island with waves whipped by stormy winds. Under the stars, someone and something are thinking together.
The art was delayed because at first my editor at Tor suggested using art from an AI, since there is an aspiring artificial intelligence artist in the book. Then problems with AI art were revealed, and it didn’t seem like such a good idea. So the process started over with a human artist.
A review by Library Journal sums up the novel well, I think:
Antonio Moro, climate change refugee, undercover mercenary, and self-taught artist, teams up with a chatty rogue AI with ADHD and a whole lot of attitude in this cli-fi techno-thriller. After the “Anthropocene Tip,” the economies and social networks of Earth are collapsing. The Arctic island of Thule, bastion of the wealthy and almost militantly neutral Sovereign Practitioners Association of medical oligarchs, is under attack by global pirates. Antonio and the sophisticated band of machine intelligences led by his AI will bend the laws of humans and robotics to save themselves—and save the islanders from their own selfish consequences as well. A story of human greed wrapped in a thriller, fronted by a confused and frequently petrified human who sees all too clearly that the machines are already running the world and that the best thing he can do is to strap in for a wild ride.
VERDICT This rollicking thriller from Burke moves at a fast pace but manages to maintain its focus on the true threats of climate change and human hubris, all the while keeping readers riveted and entertained.
“Rollicking thriller.” I love that, too. Who doesn’t want to rollick?
Semiosis