Where did the idea for Six Wakes come from?
Ha. I considered making up something literary, but I’ll tell the truth. I was playing an iPad spaceship game called FTL [Faster Than Light], where your ship either had a medbay or cloning bay. The cloning bay would bring back your dead crew. I kept thinking that the concept was interesting, that you would use cloning not for multiplying yourself, but for immortality. Then I figured it would be a convenient way to drive a generation starship. And it went on from there.
Your last two books took place in well-known locations (New York and New Orleans), but this one is set in deep space. How was the experience of writing these locations different or the same?
It’s all research, really. I research important points, history, and people from New Orleans and New York, and I research what happens to wounds in zero gravity.
What defines personhood is a major theme in Six Wakes. What drew you to focus on that?
It’s the philosophical concept of Theseus’s ship: If you take one board from the boat and replace it, is it still Theseus’s ship? What about two? What if you replace every single piece of the boat with something else? People are dismayed with the concept that the Star Trek transporter beam kills you in one area and awakens a clone on the other side. I think as this kind of tech becomes more and more possible, we have to decide how much we’re going to allow it to change ourselves and how we view the self and the soul.
I’m glad I’m not religious. I wouldn’t want to wrestle with the problems one of the characters in Six Wakes faces.
If you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, which would it be and what would you do?
Hard to say, because the characters have so many past selves. I would say I’d hang with Hiro from a few decades ago, but probably not now? IAN at full operating power would be interesting. I’d like to discuss ethics with Maria and the doc. I guess that doesn’t answer your question, but there you go.
Lastly, we have to ask: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
You caught me at a bad time—I just got home from a lot of travel. So all I can think is that I’d love to be able to teleport. That’s magically teleport, not die-then-be-cloned-on-the-other-side teleport.
The dream of flying is wonderful, but thinking logically, being able to just fly wouldn’t be a lot of fun. I think of it as driving with your head out a car window all the time. Wind, temperature issues, weather, birds, all of those could make flight miserable. This is why I guess that most flying heroes also have one of those minor powers to not be bothered by the elements, like how the Flash doesn’t burn away all his shoes and clothes due to friction. It’s all in the details.
introducing
If you enjoyed
SIX WAKES,
look out for
BEHIND THE THRONE
The Indranan War: Book 1
by K. B. Wagers
Hail Bristol has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire.
When she is dragged back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir, she finds that trading her ship for a palace is her most dangerous move yet.
1
Hail. Get up.
The voice cut through the nausea, sounding too much like my father. I suppose it made sense in some twisted way. If I were dead, it wasn’t completely illogical to be hearing the voice of a man who’d been shot in front of me twenty-one years ago.
The bitter tang of blood filled my mouth and nose when I inhaled, rusted iron and the awful smell of death. The stale air of a carrion house screamed of the violence that had taken place in my cargo bay, violence I couldn’t remember through the pounding of my head.
Hail, get up now.
Whoever’s voice was in my head, it was enough to make me move, or at least try to. I scrambled to my feet, pain stealing what grace the gods had gifted me. My boots—gorgeous red-black Holycon IVs I’d borrowed from a dead raider six months prior—slipped on the blood-slick metal. I went down hard, cracking my already abused face on the deck, and the world grayed out for a moment.
More pain flared when I tried to flop over onto my back and failed. All right. So—not dead. Because even now at my most cynical, I didn’t believe for an instant the gods let you still feel pain after you died. It just didn’t seem proper.
“Look at this mess.”
This voice was outside my head, which made it infinitely more dangerous. I froze facedown in what smelled like someone else’s guts.
Judging by the events filtering back into my brain, I suspected the guts belonged to my navigator. A vague memory of trying to strangle her with her own intestines flashed before my eyes. Memz had been a tough bitch. She’d landed a few good punches before I’d given up and broken her neck.
“Weekly saints preserve us.”
I heard several other curses from behind me, but the high, lilting call for the saints to my left was what caught my attention. It was edged with a Farian accent, and that was enough to keep me from moving.
Farians. An alien race who could kill or heal with a touch. The only thing that kept them from ruling the universe was some strange religious code enforced with a fanaticism privately envied by most governments. They had seven saints, one for each day of the week. It was the Thursday one, I think, who abhorred violence.
According to Farian scripture, he’d set an edict on their power. It was to be used for healing, not death. Killing people with their power drove Farians crazy. I’d never seen it firsthand, but the vids I’d seen had given me nightmares: grief-stricken, screaming Farians held down by their own comrades as an executioner put them out of their misery.
Not moving was a good idea. Anathema or not, there was always a chance this Farian was ghost-shit insane, and I didn’t have a gun.
“You claimed to sense a life sign, Sergeant.” A female voice several octaves lower than the Farian’s didn’t so much ask the question as pick up a previous conversation.
“Did, Cap. In this room. Only one,” the lilting voice replied. “That’s as close as I can pinpoint it.”
“Fine. Fan out and check through this”—the owner of the voice paused, but I resisted the urge to lift my head and see if she was looking around the cargo hold—“rubble,” she finished finally. “Sergeant Terass says one of these poor sods is alive. Figure out which one.”
I kept my eyes closed, counting the footsteps as my unwelcome guests fanned out around me. There were five people total, all moving with military precision. They were probably fucking mercs come to claim my ship. I hadn’t been able to figure out whom Portis—my bastard of a first officer—thought he was going to sell Sophie to when he started his little mutiny.
You mean when you killed him.