Welcome, friend! Yesterday, SK and I gushed about The Last Gifts of the Universe, a science fiction with a literary twist. I am very excited to bring you this interview with the author, Rory August. Check out what The Last Gifts of the Universe is about below and then read on for the interview.
The Last Gifts of the Universe
By Rory August
A dying universe.
When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilizations, a sea of lifeless gray planets and their ruins. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last civilization left in the universe, and whatever came for the others will come for them next.
A search for answers.
Scout is an Archivist tasked with scouring the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals—anything left behind that might be useful to the Home worlds and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.
A past unraveled.
Blyreena was once a friend, a soul mate, and a respected leader of her people, the Stelhari. At the end of her world, she was the last one left. She survived to give one last message, one final hope to the future: instructions on how to save the universe.
An adventure at the end of a trillion lifetimes.
With the fate of everything at stake, Scout must overcome the dangers of the Stelhari’s ruined civilization while following Blyreena’s leads to collect its artifacts. If Scout can’t deliver these groundbreaking discoveries back to the Archivists, Home might not only be the last civilization to exist, but the last to finally fall.
Content notes include profanity and death.
Hi Rory! Welcome back to Armed with A Book. I can’t believe it’s been over a year and a half since I hosted you. What have you been up to?
Hey, thanks for having me again! It’s always a pleasure to talk about my work with passionate bloggers. It’s been a busy year and a half for me! Fiction writing has had to take a backseat to a lot of ‘life stuff’ and non-fiction writing, but I’m still here, daydreaming away at new stories to tell.
I love the idea of the archivists. They are like digital archaeologists in space. Have you seen similar representations in other works or was this a brand new idea that you wanted to explore?
While I can’t personally recall coming across dedicated space archaeologists or anthropologists, I’m certain the concept exists prior to Last Gifts. I think a lot of classic sci-fi literature has explored the idea of, well, exploration, quite a bit, and there’s always going to be a cultural component of that, especially in stories that look at alien experiences and civilizations. Classic works of science fiction across various mediums as well as modern day discussions of how we interact with cultures different from our own helped pave the way for Gifts’ Archivists.
Tell me more about Stelhari culture. How long ago before Scout’s finding of the data did they exist?
Hundreds of years at least! When it came to Stelhari culture I wanted to focus on the similarities with Scout’s own, rather than all the differences. We like to think of the ‘other’ as being drastically different from ourselves much of the time, and while those differences certainly exist and can be equally important, I wanted to highlight what values both Scout’s worlds and Blyreena’s worlds shared.
As a civilization that has made leaps and bounds to explore the universe, they have advanced technology, though not everyone has access to it, as is evident through Verity Co. What were your intentions around introducing this side of the plot? It truly helped flesh out the world for me and make it more comparable to our own.
In my mind Verity Co.’s reserving of technology for the wealthy isn’t something too distinct from our own world. I think back to the height of the pandemic years ago, and how wealthy individuals had access to cutting edge, new medicines that your average person wasn’t being offered. At least in America, good medical care often comes at what – for most people – is an unreasonable expense. I’m focusing on medical technology here, but across every field there are advantages that are only afforded to the wealthy, and I felt Verity Co. was a way to add that veracity to Scout’s world – another layer of complexity and morality to grapple with amidst a dying universe.
I loved how The Last Gifts of the Universe was not a technology-heavy book. There were things happening and I was so invested in the characters that the minute details around technology and equipment did not matter. I trust it all to work and Kieran to fix it. 😀 I can sometimes get caught up in the ‘how’ of things and you navigated that really well by not letting me go there. But I can ask you: How? xD Please share some insight around world building in a science fiction, outer space, story!
This is a tough one! One angle I can come at this from is that I deeply respect my readers. Reading is an imaginative, almost collaborative experience — not a didactic one – between my words and your brain, and I think it’s good to leave some details up to a reader to fill in. So firstly, I try not to over-describe, or to create a burdensome reading experience where a reader feels they need to memorize how various tech works to truly understand a story. Because most of the time, I find that the specifics of how technology works (even McGuffins!) don’t usually impact the story all that much.
The other thing I think worked to Gifts’ advantage is that my protagonist doesn’t really know how all that technology works either. In fact, Scout self-describes themself as a person who isn’t great with tech, and that allows me to root myself in that particular perspective and describe things in the way they – a layperson – understands, and I trust that my reader knows that while the technology is detailed and complex, Scout is the one who can’t explain it. As an example, we all use our phones every day, but I imagine few among us could explain how, on a detailed level, our data is transmitted as we text, or call, or upload pictures.
Translation is key to understanding another culture and the past. Since reading Babel by R.F. Kuang, I always notice it and appreciate it when it is mentioned in stories. What are your thoughts on translation? In Scout’s case where there is no one to concur with about the translated text and if it is indeed correct, what kind of challenges do archivists face in trusting their work?
Spoilers incoming: there is a moment in the book where Scout realizes they’ve been misunderstanding a key element of Stelhari culture, and the reason is because the translator translates a Stelhari phrase into something that existed already in Scout’s (and our!) language. They note that the superimposition of Scout’s own language over Blyreena’s creates this problem, and I believe this general idea to be true – that things really can be lost and misunderstood in translation. I’m far from an expert on the subject like Kuang is, but yes, I would say that what the Archivists discover about alien cultures in Gifts is understood to be error prone – best guesses at languages and civilizations that have unfortunately long ago perished.
You described your book as literary science fiction! It’s apt. Tell me about the challenges and exhilaration of writing in this unique genre.
The interesting thing here for me is that I don’t think I ever know what genre I’m writing in as I’m writing a story. I’m a fan of sci-fi and literature and fantasy and comedy and horror – and I think all those things sneak in as they please. When the writing was done and I looked at where it had fallen, literary science fiction seemed a good fit. I’ve seen readers call it fantasy as well, which I suppose also works!
I related to Scout’s loneliness and the gravity of an archivist’s mission to find something valuable amongst all the data caches out there. They needed a tether to hold on to and Blyreena’s account was life-changing for them. Did you bring any of your personal experiences into this story? Which of the characters do you relate to the most and why?
It’s said that writers have a little bit of themselves in every character they create, and I think that’s true here. I definitely called upon some personal experiences and relationships with people in my life to generate aspects of this story, but it’s absolutely mostly fiction (I wish I had a spaceship though). Much of my political anxiety and anxiety about climate change and corporate greed made its way in; they’re topics I have a lot of things to say about right now. I’m also lucky to have something of an Ovlan in my life, and I do have a cat!
We need to talk about Pumpkin! Adored the idea of a cat in space. Did a cat in your life influence Pumpkin? Photos please. 🙂 I was constantly reminded of my two cats and even got photos of them with the book (see the review).
Yes! My cat Warden was a big inspiration for Pumpkin. I wanted the Waning Crescent –Scout’s ship – to really feel like home for them, and what feels more like home than having a big, fluffy cat around?
Would you write a follow up story about Scout and Pumpkin? What is next in store for them?
I’m not quite in a position where I can talk about any sequels or companion novels with any certainty. All I can say is I have some ideas, and I’ll see if they bear fruit!
Is there anything else you would like to add?
(Nope!) 😊
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and sharing with my readers. 🙂
Thank you again for having me and for your insightful questions! It’s been a pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining us for the interview! Find this book on Amazon, IndieStoryGeek and Goodreads. Connect with Rory on their website, X, Instagram, Goodreads and Amazon. You can read an excerpt from the book here.
Be First to Comment