In this episode of Futureverse, Molly Wood and Ramanan Raghavendran sit down with acclaimed author Sam J. Miller. They explore themes of dystopia, activism, and the intersection of technology and nature while reflecting on the realities of marginalized communities, the impact of AI governance, and the hopeful resilience of people in the face of adversity.
Time stamps and the full transcript are below. This episode is also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Show Notes
01:49 Exploring Qaanaaq: A Floating City of Refugees
04:23 Dystopia vs. Reality: The Intersection of Fiction and Activism
06:03 Character Perspectives: The Four Lenses of Qaanaaq
16:23 Climate Change and Floating Cities
21:00 Immigration and Climate Crisis
24:53 Resilience of the Marginalized
27:13 Hope Amidst Despair: The Power of Community
28:47 AI's Role in Society: A Cautionary Tale
Sam (00:00): It's always been a dystopia for somebody and a utopia for somebody else. Those two things have been true forever.
Molly (00:07): Welcome back to Furtureverse. A podcast centered around climate fiction and how it helps us imagine our way forward through climate uncertainty. I'm Molly Wood.
Ramanan (00:16): And I'm Ramanan Raghavendran. When we think about the climate crisis, it's important we consider that its causes and effects are messy. Affected and affected by societal trends, politics, power balances, consumption habits, cultural traditions, social justice, and so many other factors. An author who has really done an amazing job capturing this in his fiction is Sam J. Miller, our author for today's episode.
Molly (00:43): Sam is, I think what you'd call a genre blending author of four novels and a basket of short stories with themes that include social justice, queer identity, and because he's on this podcast, speculative climate futures. His books have been called “Must Reads” and “Bests of the Year” by USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, and NPR, just to name a few. They've also been banned in Florida and stolen by AI - high praise across the board. His work has won the Nebula, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Subjective Chaos kind of awards.
Ramanan (01:15): Today we're going to talk to Sam about his second novel, the award-winning Blackfish City. The story takes place in a future where climate change has led to drastic sea level rise and societal breakdown. And the more innovative remnants of humanity have responded by building amazingly advanced ocean cities inhabited by a diverse array of characters. The book begins with a mysterious woman accompanied by a killer whale and a polar bear approaching the imagined Arctic city of Qaanaaq.
Ramanan (01:49): Sam, so for those listeners who haven't read Blackfish City, could you give us an introduction to the city of Qaanaaq? What is it like to live there?
Sam (01:58): Sure. Qaanaaq is a floating city in the Arctic, constructed after rising sea levels have forced hundreds of millions of people into refugee status. And after Arctic melt has opened up the Arctic for resource exploitation. So it's sort of a booming frontier. And so it's full of refugees and gnarly technology and wild inequality, and one day a woman rolls up with a polar bear and a killer whale on a mission.
Molly (02:28): And chaos ensues. We don't want to spoil it, but chaos ensues. I actually earlier described this book to Ramanan as kind of, there's post-apocalyptic, and then this feels post-post-apocalyptic. Like, apocalypse has already happened, but there's still room for more. And I wonder how much of it.
Sam (02:30): Chaos ensues. I like that.
Molly (02:55): Thanks. You know, I like to keep things really, really cheerful. But I wonder how you do…there was this part of me reading this book that thought we'll get into sort of the themes of the city and the way it operates, but it does feel a little bit like human's gonna human.
Sam (03:06): Yeah, this is my sort of anti-dystopia because I, you know, people want to, like talk about dystopia as a genre, right? And it is, I mean, it is a genre. But to me, the challenge with thinking about a dystopia is that, you know, there are people living right now in conditions that are dystopian, that many others would consider dystopian, right?
Whatever sort of nightmare, poverty or oppression or marginalization or affliction you can imagine in a dystopian future, there are people who are living that right now, just as there are people who are living in whatever kind of utopian technological comfort and wealth and privilege that you can imagine. And that's been true.
Those two things have been true forever, right? There have always been, it's always been a dystopia for somebody and a utopia for somebody else.
And so Blackfish City is really my sort of attempt to, you know, grapple with the reality of dystopia. And what do we mean when we say dystopia? Like, why do we talk about this like a genre, like a separate thing, when in fact it's sort of like, you know, it's just a way of seeing the world and it's a reality for lots of folks now and at every imaginable point in the future.
Ramanan (04:23): So on that topic, you know, the utopian and dystopian elements are present today. You know, aside from your writing, you're a social organizer, and you advocate for change in New York City's policies on housing and homelessness. And I lived in New York City for 23 years, you know, including during some pretty grim periods. And so some of this is visible to me. How do these two sides of your life interact, influence each other? I mean, you touched on it in the response you just gave, but say more.
Sam (04:53): Sure, yeah, I've been a writer forever, but I feel like I've also been an activist forever. And I feel like who I am as a writer is really inseparable from my work as a would-be social change agent. And that sort of changing narratives and changing stories and how people understand the world is sort of like how storytelling fits into activism and organizing.
So I don't know that they fit together particularly well, but they're both there. They're both on the table. And yeah, I've been so privileged by the work that I do, by the community organizing and activism that I do to meet so many people from so many different backgrounds, and to work closely with homeless people for 15 years was just a transformative, incredible experience.
And to sort of hear people's stories and learn from their narratives of resistance and see their power and their determination for a better world has become 100 % of who I am. So, I can't imagine what I would be without that experience. Definitely a much worse writer, looking at what I was writing before versus what I'm writing now.
Molly (06:03): Talk a little more, if you wouldn't mind, about the other kinds of themes and issues that these characters interact with. And if you had to draw, like, I got a little bit of Neil Stevenson and a little bit of William Gibson and a lot of activism, but if you had to draw from some kind of, or identify some main sources of inspiration, what tied those threads together for you?
Sam (06:25): Yeah, I mean, a big part of it is that, you know, thinking about housing and how housing works and how sort of real estate and the housing market undergirds so much of the so many of the problems that we see around the world, right? And that spending so many years trying to fight for social change in New York and really coming up against repeatedly the sort of like extraordinary limits on a politician's ability to create change, right?
The extent to which like real estate was really calling the shots, the way that money calls the shots, the way that we would like have dozens and dozens of meetings with politicians and, you know, over the course of years, move them to introduce legislation that would be extraordinarily difficult to pass, to try to like change policies to make it easier for people to get and keep housing. And then the legislation passed after 10 years, and then nothing happened, right?
It's just like that: money really is the motor that drives this planet, this capitalist system. So a lot of the things that I sort of explored, like this idea that AI is the governing mechanism for this city, right? Sort of is coming from that place of like, after like hundreds of meetings with politicians, I don't actually think that politicians have a ton of...power to do much, right?
I mean, certainly at the New York City level, we could talk about world leaders separately. It wasn't really what I was exploring here. But yeah, just that idea that the struggle to keep housing is so fundamental to who we are as residents of cities and that people, even though they are dramatically disempowered by those dynamics and even though they're living really difficult lives as a result of the realities of the housing market, they're still freaking awesome and amazing, and they're still gonna fight back in interesting ways, and they're still gonna build really cool things that are really inspiring. Yeah, money bad. People awesome.
Molly (08:26): Mm-hmm. I know I do. I'd like that the bad guys here are effectively landlords, shareholders, and AI. Quite relatable as a triad. Yep.
Sam (08:39): Yeah.
Ramanan (08:41): Yes. So I want to just continue poking around the book just for our audience. So, we learn about Qaanaaq you know, and our audience is interested as much in the art and science of fiction writing. So we learn about Qaanaaq from the perspectives of four very different protagonists who lead very different lifestyles in this pretty stratified city. What led you to that? You know, what led you to think, OK, these are the four lenses I'm going to bring to this discussion, or is it something very organic?
Sam (09:14): You know, this is sort of like in writing, we talk a lot about like outliners versus pantsers, like people who like do the rigorous outline versus the people who are sort of like, I don't actually understand the origin of the pantsing, but the people who are just by the seat of their pants, that's it. Yeah, and so I'm sort of like one pant leg on, right? I'm like hopping around the room. Some of it is outline, some of it is like I have a general sense of things.
Often, I know where I want, like I want to know the first sentence and the last sentence of the project so that I know what the overall character arc is, but very little in between. So yeah, I started off with this woman riding a killer whale, and she was sort of my entree into the city, and yeah, things sort of developed organically around that.
Ramanan (09:59): I understand you're a huge fan of killer whales. So it's really a killer whale with someone attached.
Sam (10:06): Yes, exactly. I would show you my killer whale tattoo, but your listeners can't see it anyway. But yeah, I love killer whales. I love animals. Animals are often protagonists or people in my books. And so, yeah, these characters organically sort of evolved around this sort of central figure. And there's like a, you know, they are related. They are connected to her in ways that the book sort of uncovers as we go.
Molly (10:32): Yeah, it's probably some other, some sci-fi sprinkled in there, but the most sci-fi kind of fantastical element is this nano bonding, like the idea that there are humans who were able to through technology bond with animals and then those humans themselves were hunted to extinction. Where did that? I'm just obsessed with that. And I want it even though I sometimes feel like I'm nano-bonded to my dog already in terms of our ongoing power struggle. Yeah, it's…
Sam (10:58): Thank you. Yeah, mean, I think I mean, you know, the short answer is Philip Pullman and the Golden Compass. And the idea of people as having externalized souls in the form of animals, and wanting to. Yeah, exactly.
Molly (11:01): Maybe I want less of that, but…
Ramanan (11:16): I mean, the idea of a familiar, right, which is...
Sam (11:20): Wanting to sort of like take a science fiction look at that as opposed to a fantasy look at it as we saw in Philip Pullman. If you ever want to rip something off, you should just switch genres. Suddenly, it's wildly original. But also, yeah, just recognizing that like humans and animals are incredibly interconnected. And the fun for me with speculative fiction is always to sort of take the magic and the amazingness that I see in the world and use science and technology and magic to sort of tell those stories differently. So yeah, let's use technology to talk about how we could bond with our animal friends to talk about how we already are bonded with them.
Molly (12:01): Then it will be like kind of evil also anyway, it was delightful. That was a lovely, well, well done pull from Philip Pullman. Then let's let's sort of I'm so no, no. Yeah. And I just turned it into an awful pun because that's how I roll, whether I want to or not. Okay. So let's then also talk about the kind of control system in this book…
Sam (12:04): Thank you. Sorry. That wasn't a delay. That was me being slow to get a joke.
Molly (12:29): Because a hallmark of dystopia, which you are upending here, is the evil authoritarian government. In this case, we have a kind of accidentally evil, disinterested AI form of governance. So, talk about the idea of getting rid of a government and then just giving us the libertarian dream that so many of those around us in Silicon Valley would like to be living. How does that work out for us?
Sam (12:58): Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. But it's also, again, like, you know, not dramatically different from where we are now. You know, I have spent enough time with politicians to sort of feel like that they're not steering the ship. So that the sort of history of the last 50 years, I feel like 60 years in the United States is making it harder for people to affect change, right, and taking the power away from things like nonviolent protest and, you know, making it harder for people to just sort of engage with the levers of power. And that includes things like, you know, the Citizens United decision taking, you know, you know, giving money a big leg up over humans when it comes to putting politicians in office.
So, yeah, this is just me flipping the dial all the way up to be like, yep, you know, F-. F, even the pretense of democracy, where this is full-scale money running the show, and surprise, surprise, it's a nightmare.
Ramanan (14:01): I want to jump in here and explore another item in the book that was resonant for various reasons. You know, having lived in New York City in the late 80s and 90s. So, a big theme is the strange disease called the breaks and the lack of any kind of acknowledgement or action from those in power. And there's obvious parallels here. You, you've been, you've spoken to it in other interviews about the connection with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Say some more about what led you to weave that into this puzzle.
Sam (14:37): Yeah, I think that for queer people of a certain age who, you know, I was born in 1979. I sort of like came of age sexually right around the time that AIDS ceased to be a death sentence and became a manageable chronic condition. But my sort of early understandings of sexuality and queer identity were intricately connected with this idea that sex was dangerous, was fatal.
And so to have sort of witnessed not only that disease, but the complete government inaction, the idea that, you know, the president of the United States oversaw an epidemic for five years before the word AIDS was even said in his presence publicly. And when it was said, it was in a homophobic joke by Bob Hope.
So, yeah, I think that that sort of trauma is really hard to let go of. And the idea that a lot of young people don't fully understand what that felt like and what that looked like and what it meant is an ongoing source of difficulty, I think, for a lot of queer people of my generation who not only lost a complete generation of elders and folks who could have sort of guided them and, you know, you know, that this sort of like very chill genocide was unfolding and then it stopped and then everyone was kind of like, so that didn't happen.
And there's not a ton of like cultural reference for that. So yeah, that's sort of at the root of both explicitly HIV AIDS turning up in a lot of my fiction, but also a sort of like fixation with metaphors and analogies for it in speculative fiction.
Ramanan (16:23): Thank you. Thank you for that. And it was, you know, was moving when I read it and moving now. So we want to turn to climate, which is the theoretical agenda behind our podcast. Floating cities. What led to that notion as humanity's response to drastic climate change?
Sam (16:44): Awesome. Yeah, I mean, one thing was sort of like understanding how different the world is and how different it could be and sort of like traveling to Iceland and seeing how much geothermal energy powers their economy and how little fossil fuel they consume. Not none, but compared to like a society like the United States, just, you know, so much less because the natural resources are so different. So, wanting to sort of talk about-
I'm always grappling between hope and despair in my speculative fiction. I want to talk about the things that are horrible, but I also want to talk about the things that give me hope and inspiration. So what if we could harness geothermal energy better? What if we could harness the motion of the waves better so that we could have these gnarly, poorly understood by me, but hopefully comprehensible to the reader, giant batteries in the ocean underneath Qaanaaq that are powered by the incredible surges of energy through the waves and that can in turn, power the city.
There's methane powering a lot of the lights. so thinking about like waste management as like a source of methane that could be used instead of a pollutant, a source of light or power. So a lot of my fantasies about technological solutions to the energy crisis and renewable, sustainable, non-carbon-based, non-fossil fuel-based are here. They're just being used in the service of me imagining a somewhat hell-hole-ish corner of the future.
Molly (18:20): Hmm. Where, how, what was the research process like for that?
Sam (18:25): You know, I'll be honest, I'm really bad at research. I have to stop, you know, because once I research, I get really into it. And then suddenly I'm not writing a short story or a novel, I'm writing a Wikipedia page because I want to share all the cool stuff that I'm like, did you know this? I think you should know this.
Molly (18:45): Yeah. Did you know you could just like capture the methane and blah, blah, blah? Yeah. Cause it's delightful. The descriptions are wonderful.
Sam (18:54): Yeah, yeah, so…Thank you. Thank you. So it is a lot of me trying to do research and then pull back and forget as much as possible. And there's a William Gibson quote where he talks about the research process for Neuromancer. And he says how the research that he actually did, the details that are informed by research that he actually did are the ones that hold up the worst.
The ones where he let his imagination run wild are the ones that still really resonate, right? Because he was trying to describe a modem and the physical reality of a modem which today is not something that's you know, not a part of the internet experience the way it was in when he was writing. So that's sort of been my, well, if William Gibson can do it, so can I. I do enjoy research, but I enjoy it too much. So I try to stop myself.
Molly (19:43): I want to ask you about immigration before I go there. I do have to say I grew up in a household. My mom worked with runaway and homeless youth and actually was doing HIV AIDS education really, really early. And I had this weird high school experience of doing HIV AIDS education on Native American reservations with kids who were high-risk populations.
I, the descriptions in your book, like it was, it was to your point such a painful flashback that I found myself like devastated, like weirdly emotional and upset that you were not describing fiction, which is pretty outrageous and yet also still completely happening. But I couldn't let it go without acknowledging that because I was just like, I just sort of would have had a moment where I was like, why am I crying? And I'm like, I think I know why.
Sam (20:35): Well, A, I'm sorry for making you cry, even though that is my job. And thank you, thank you. B, I'm glad it resonated. And C, thank you for your work. Because, as someone who was an at-risk teen and in a program for at-risk teens in the 90s, I appreciate that. I didn't have anyone at my high school to do those workshops, but I'm glad you were. I'm glad folks could do that.
Molly (20:39): That's your job. Good job. We'll talk after about all that. I'm going to turn to no less of a weepy topic, actually. This is also a book about immigrants. And one thing that we know all too well and are staring down the barrel of is that the climate crisis will create migration and a migration crisis on a scale we've probably never seen before. And you have created a city of refugees, including refugees from countries who like to see themselves as likely winners here.
Molly (21:00): Talk about how you see, you know, I think the importance of creating a city of refugees, but also kind of a stick in the eye and in the poking the eye of the rich people, if you will.
Sam (21:46): Yeah, I did immigration activism and organizing a long time ago you know; it's an issue that I think about a lot. And the thing that really sort of like one of the first real interesting lessons that I learned through that work is that the, for example, we think about immigration to the United States from Central America and Mexico specifically, right?
So much of that immigration is our fault, right? It is the consequence of American, is the consequence of NAFTA and, you know, American actions and sort of the influence of American money across Latin America. Colonialism in general, right, has created the conditions for mass migration from the global south to the global north. And yet, you know, folks, as a consequence of our actions come here and are subject to the sort of brutality and oppression and horrible rhetoric.
Because people here don't understand that, right? People here have been lied to. People here have had this narrative sort of switched in their heads of like, you know, things were great until these people started coming. And so, you know, that's, I anticipate I believe that, you know, everyone who sort of like buys into an oppressive narrative and uses it even accidentally or unintentionally to oppress others will eventually be the victim of oppression. That's just the way these cycles work.
And it is the reality that as climate change continues to devastate and as economies shift and change and the balance of power in the world changes and the United States is different, you know, is different in its role, people in the United States will be migrating.
People in the United States will be, people in the sort of like developed world will be impacted by climate change too, as much as they don't want to think that they are. Actually, before I wrote Blackfish City, I wrote a short story called Calved about a sort of someone from New York who was displaced by rising sea levels and who has settled in this city called Qaanaaq, which later became the setting for Blackfish City. And then that was really specifically about that narrative of like Americans who oppress immigrants will eventually become oppressed immigrants. So yeah, that's real.
Molly (24:05): It also points to, you know, we spoke to Naomi Oreskes for this podcast also who wrote about the collapse of Western civilization. And it's again, a far, far flung future, but she's writing from the perspective of like a Chinese archeologist or historian. And that book does a similar thing to I think what you have done, which is point to the fundamental instability of the United States and the democracy that we think we have, which I think is interesting and prescient.
Sam (24:37): I don't know if it's prescient so much as constant.
Molly (24:38): Like the US, like, what does it fall? Like multiple, maybe not right. But the US, like falls or collapses multiple times in your book.
Sam (24:50): Yeah.
Molly (24:50): Yep. Okay, moving on.
Ramanan (24:53): And no, mean, look, you're in the business of telling us what the future might hold, and the future might hold those things, right? And I mean, along those lines are related in some ways is the idea that, I mean, we already know that the most marginalized in society are going to be the most vulnerable to climate change. And the novel obviously touches on that. Separate from what the book says and that imagined scenario, what is the future you see for the marginalized?
Sam (25:27): I mean, one thing that I, I mean, I can't believe it's been this long and I haven't talked about Octavia Butler yet, but Octavia Butler is my favorite science fiction novelist and a huge influence. And I think the thing that Octavia Butler really understood and that I think a lot of science fiction has, under her influence, learned is that the people who are the most marginalized, the people who have been struggling to survive, have skills and powers and talents that will actually make them in many ways better able to navigate the coming catastrophes, right?
That while they might not have the resources to build a bunker and go hide like the ultra rich, they will certainly have the experience of, for example, community interconnectedness and sharing and turning to one another in a time of crisis that the suburban middle class will not and will therefore struggle in some heretofore unanticipated ways.
So I do think that while it is a definite reality that as always throughout history, the marginalized will continue to be marginalized by change, but they will also benefit from it, or if not benefit from it, their experience and their strength and their resilience, they will be resilient in ways that privileged folks have not been forced to be. So, I do hold a lot of space in my heart for a future where it is not a continuation of the nightmare. It is an inversion of the nightmare. Not that anyone should be marginalized or oppressed, but that the future without oppression and marginalization is much harder for me to imagine.
Molly (27:13): Right. And the people in your story will be able to, as she would say, shape change as a result of their lived experiences. And on that note, I mean, Blackfish City, we've talked a lot about some bummer themes, but it is ultimately a hopeful story. Right. What take-home message would you like people to get from this?
Sam (27:19): Yes. Yeah, it's just that people are amazing. People are awesome and will, if given the power and the resources, and maybe the resources are killer whales and polar bears and nanotechnology, and maybe the resources are just like a good bowl of noodles and a place to sit down and talk, people will find the solutions. And if they're not prevented from enacting them, if they're not disempowered and oppressed, then they will...pull us out of the sort of downward death spiral where we currently are.
That not only are people awesome, but people have power and you, the reader, have power and should, you know, there are lessons that I've learned from like queer found family and from, you know, activism and organizing and building things together and holding each other up that have helped me find hope and power in a disempowering and hopeless moment. And I hope that that is something that readers of Blackfish City and all of my work can benefit from or can take something away from.
Molly (28:47): I want to ask you about some prescience in this case, AI. So Blackfish City was published in 2018, and Qaanaaq is, even at that time, already governed by AI, which solves and creates problems almost in equal measure. Do you think…how are you feeling now? You saw that one coming. And if you fast forward to today, do you think that we get there way even before Blackfish City?
Sam (29:16): I mean, I was careful in Blackfish City as I am in most of my work, to not put a date on things because that's the surest way to, like, have people go, like, haha, you were wrong. So yes, I didn't…one thing that I didn't see was that AI would be so environmentally destructive and and have such a sudden and dramatic climate impact.
I, you know, as much as I was suspicious of it and assumed that, like most technology, would be used by the powerful to oppress the powerless. I did have some semblance of like, you know, naive techno-optimism. The techno-optimism is so hard to purge from our system. And so I did sort of like fail to grapple with it's just how bad it could be. you know, yeah, I...
I'm definitely more scared now than I was. in Blackfish City, I focused on how it would put politicians out of a job, but I didn't really grapple with how it would put everyone out of a job, or at least that it would aspire to, that capital would invest so heavily in how could we find new ways to optimize efficiency by having AI do the jobs that are currently being done by humans.
Ramanan (30:45): So we're going to move to finish up with a couple of questions that we always ask because we love the work, and so we want more. And so we want to know, are you going to revisit Qaanaaq or some other place in the speculative future world you've created? What's next here?
Molly (31:03): Is there a universe?
Sam (31:04): There is a universe. All of my work takes place in a shared universe. there's references to all of my, all across my work, there are references to other, to other pieces, right? I mentioned my short story, Calved, which is, which took place in Qaanaaq, which I wrote years before I wrote Blackfish City. I don't. I don't have plans to write a sequel, but I've written other things that sort of like, you know,
Ramanan (31:08): In a shared universe.
Sam (31:32): …drive by Qaanaaq or sort of, I actually wrote a sort of prequel in that it was sort of about how some of the technologies that are at play and shaping Blackfish City came to be, but it ultimately wasn't successful and I didn't continue that project. I definitely, I don't see where it's gonna happen now, but I would not be at all surprised if any of these characters and this place popped up again later.
I do have a novel coming up that will be released by Simon & Schuster in October called Red Star Hustle, which is my first trip to outer space. Been writing science fiction for decades and never really traveled there before. So yeah, that's the next thing that's definitely coming out and other things that are here and there connected to Blackfish City.
Ramanan (32:23): That's awesome. That's awesome.
Molly (32:24): Is this gonna be a movie? Qaanaaq is so visceral, and it's described so well. Like we didn't even really touch on the kind of anonymous storyteller who was talking about the city and giving us this sort of layer, and like getting people fired up about like the hype person for Qaanaaq. But the descriptions are so vivid. Like, has anybody called you about making a movie yet? Do we know anybody? How can we help?
Sam (32:39): Well, yeah, I do have a film and television agent who's working on it and has taken calls and fielded meetings and assures me that people are super interested. But Hollywood is a terrifying beast. Publishing is a terrifying beast, but I understand it and my place in it, and Hollywood, less so. So yes, if you know anyone or anyone's listening and think that that should be a movie, you know, holler. But as of now, there's no meaningful project that I'm aware of moving forward.
Ramanan (33:23): Well, if anyone's listening with any connectivity to film and TV, hit the phones, read the book, hit the phones, because this is just, this is built for the screen in some ways. Sam, we always ask this question of our guests, which is, what do you think in the same genre, in let's call it science fiction, writ large, what should we be reading? It could be a legend, it could be someone new. What would you suggest we go out and read?
Sam (33:49): So how much time do we have? I'll try to stick to the highlights. I think that anyone who's not reading Ted Chiang is not a real science fiction fan. I think that's the best science fiction writer working now. And Story of Your Life, which became the movie Arrival, is my favorite short story in English. Bite me, James Joyce’s The Dead. I do like that story, but it's not as good as Ted Chiang. So Ted Chiang definitely...
I'm a big fan of Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rebecca Roanhorse. I'm a big horror fan as well. So Stephen Graham Jones, Nathan Balangrude, Paul Tremblay, Hailey Piper. Yeah, I could go on and on, but those are, those are.
Molly (34:37): Is there anybody who particularly inspired you around climate? Certainly we've mentioned Octavia and Stan, our homies.
Sam (34:44): I mean, I'm not gonna pretend like I didn't read Paolo Bacigalupi The Wind-Up Girl before I wrote this book because I did and I see it's fingerprints all over Blackfish City. So yeah, Paolo Bacci Galupi's The Wind-Up Girl. But the less clockable because, again, I stole from a different genre. One of my favorite queer novels is called The Swimming Pool Library, which is a sort of very banal slice of life gay novel from the
Molly (34:52): Right, the water wars, yep.
Sam (35:14): …from London from the 1980s. And the plot line about Phil and in Blackfish City is like a direct ripoff of the primary storyline from that. But again, because it's a different genre, I trusted that people, I've copped to this in multiple interviews, so I'm not trying to get away with anything. But yeah, the swimming pool library is a great encapsulation of the queer world of London immediately before the AIDS crisis. And I can't recommend that highly enough.
Ramanan (35:51): Amazing. Sam, there was a lot of material there for our listeners to go read and for us to go read. And I just want to thank you for joining us. We loved learning about the mind behind the complex, fascinating city of Qaanaaq and the characters of the book. Blackfish City, just to remind everyone, is the book, and we're excited to see what you come up with next.
Sam (36:12): Thank you so much for having me. And I'm going to say this, you can cut it out. Maybe it's off topic, but I'm really starstruck right now because Molly Wood, I realized as soon as I heard your voice that I was watching your CNET video podcast. Like my husband and I would watch it religiously, probably 2000, I don't even know what year, 2007, 2008. And yeah, you were amazing. And that was a great video podcast. And I learned so much from it.
Molly (36:12): Yeah, thank you so much for the time. Yeah. My God.
Sam (36:42): Wow, I was like, wait, Molly. So, thank you for your work.
Molly (36:46): That is so awesome. That's so nice. Thank you. You made my day, honestly, because your book blew my mind.
Ramanan (36:54): We're gonna leave that in.
Sam (36:56): Do it. Do it. Thanks, y'all.
Molly (36:58): Okay, if we have to.
Ramanan (37:00): Alright, gotta say this, just so we're complete, you can find Blackfish City and Sam's other works in bookstores and online. He is active on his website, samjmiller.com, and on social media. And with that, we're done.
Thank you for listening. Please email us at futureverse@substack.com with any suggestions or ideas. And visit futureverse.earth for the full transcript of this podcast and other information.
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