Strange Boat
1. What inspired you to write
your book?
I’m fascinated with space travel, specifically with Elon
Musk’s Mars One Mission, which is ahead of its time. I grew up on Star Wars and always loved the
giant ships that served as homes for members of both the Rebel Alliance and the
Empire. I came across a worn book by Gerard O’Neill, The High Frontier, in which he wrote about human
colonies in space. I love that book. It was written in 1976, so it was ahead of
its time by even today’s standards. I thought—this would make a terrific plot
for a book. Now how to set it in 2016?
2. What is it about?
Strange Boat is the story of Danders Wake, a man who grew up in
Manhattan’s high society, and who has become discouraged with the world’s
problems, and the fundraisers that attempt to solve the problems but do
nothing. He begins to siphon all the money from charities into one pursuit:
raising money to build a backup planet before we ruin this one. It’s a book about
survival.
3. What do you hope will be the
everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book?
That we’re all in this together, whether ‘this’ represents
our political system, our country, or our planet. I also hope it might inspire
people to pay more attention to our ventures into outer space. As it was when
we set our sights on the Moon Landing, I believe every space launch should be a
nationally televised affair, like Monday Night Football, with everyone
crouching in front of the television to watch human beings sit on top of
rockets and blast off into the galaxy.
4. What advice do you have for
writers?
Write every day, even if it’s a journal entry. Read
constantly. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t begrudge other writers their
success. Learn how they did it, and then do it.
5. Where do you think the book
publishing industry is heading?
Before 1990, when no one carried around the internet in
their pockets, we all read newspapers. But while there are fewer newspapers
today, I think people are reading more because the internet is filled with new
and interesting forms of storytelling, and reading is a hobby that becomes more
exciting with practice. I think people are reading more today, and I think
we’ll always have a love for books.
6. What challenges did you have
in writing your book?
The concept of building an artificial planet in low earth
orbit lies at the heart of the plot. And while the engineering is the easy
part, obtaining the materials to construct such a civilization is difficult. We
would have to have the technology to travel to the asteroid belt, mine the
asteroids for product, and then transport it back to the work site. Our world
is decades away from doing this, so it was a struggle to make it a meaningful
concept in 2016.
Also, much of the plot is why we need a new world. We have
plenty of land that isn’t being used, but rather, our propensity to destroy
ourselves—global warming, terrorism, nuclear annihilation—suggest we need a
backup planet for humans to live o in case we end up destroying our
civilization. The reasoning for how this might happen can be seen in our daily
news headlines, which are terrifying, and working these into the book meant an
ever-changing plot.
7. If people can only buy one
book this month, why should it be yours?
Strange Boat is a fun
book about survival, about our strange little planet, and how we have to take
better care of it, and each other. There is also who a linebacker having sex
with performance-enhancing virgins to gain an advantage over other athletes on
the football field, so it’s the only book like that out there.
For more
information, please consult: http://jonmethven.com/
and reach out via twitter: @jonmethven.
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