Continue reading →

In a clear, light tone, she said, “I know who you are, Haimey Dz. You used to be a revolutionary.” – Ancestral Night, by Elizabeth Bear

March 2019 was a banner month for Bid Idea Space Opera, and it kicked off with Elizabeth Bear’s return to her White Space universe with a new series.  Haimey Dz is chief engineer on a salvage tug that search “scars” in space/time for places where ships didn’t quite make the transition from normal to ftl “Whitespace.”  The tug, with an indentured AI named Singer and a devil may care pilot to round out the crew, has been coming up short on the resource obligation credits that pass for cash in this universe for too many runs when the story opens with them hoping the next find will be their big hit. Continue reading →

Elizabeth Bear is the author of “dozens of novels; over a hundred short stories; and a number of essays, nonfiction, and opinion pieces” and has won numerous awards including the Campbell, Hugo, Locus, and Sturgeon awards.

By Ernest Lilley

Ernest Lilley: You’ve written a significant (something of an understatement) amount of both fantasy and science fiction, can you talk about the difference in how you have to approach them? Does the technology in fantasy have to be as consistent as in science fiction?

Elizabeth Bear: I actually approach them in exactly the same way, in terms of consistency of worldbuilding. All that’s different is the foundation of the rules that the universe works by.

Fantasy is in no way less rigorous than science fiction, nor is science fiction necessarily more rigorous than fantasy. Certainly, there are examples of both that don’t have consistent physical laws or rigorous causality. Continue reading →