A friend of mine asked me what my inspirations for my SFF might be. I found that an interesting question to answer, as I feel what I generally like reading in SFF are not necessarily reflective of what I hope to accomplish when it comes to any one of the SFF stories I write, or even of my SFF writing in general.
“By the Will of the Gods” is a sci-fi murder mystery set in a world whose culture was not like any particular culture on Earth, while also reminiscent of several different Earth cultures. As such, although I drew from classic models in the mystery genre such as Chandler novels and Bogart films, I also was strongly influenced by mysteries from writers of Asian descent, such as the Feng Shui Detective series from Nury Vittachi, the Night Market series from Ed Lin, and the Singapore Noir book, edited by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan. When it comes to what specifically influenced the sci-fi in the story, I think Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” and Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix series come to mind and maybe the most recent wave of hard sci-fi space opera writers, such as Aliette de Bodard, Charles Stross and Alastair Reynolds, but also anime such as Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell, as well as films such as Blade Runner. (The training montage in the novelette was influenced not only by the classic “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin,” but also my own experiences in martial arts.)
The universe in which “By the Will of the Gods” is set has slightly different influences than the story itself. I’m aiming for it to remind readers of Star Trek and Babylon 5, but also to some degree of Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Iain M. Banks, Dan Simmons, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Jonathan Swift. The models I think of striving toward when it comes to my SFF writing in general will likely be Michael Chabon, Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Chandler and Victor Hugo, with maybe some Neil Gaiman and maybe some Philip K. Dick. (I do have a special place in my heart for French authors such as Hugo, Flaubert and Balzac — it would be nice for me to review their work and see what techniques of theirs I might adopt now.)
That said, each of the SFF stories I have planned are meant to stand alone and have very distinctive voices. My next story, “That Idiot Show,” will be fantasy, and is inspired in large part by Kelly Link.