What enamoured you to science fiction and fantasy rather than other genres?

My parents were both librarians and loved books, and my mother especially loved science fiction and fantasy, so much so that she would read to me from her collection before bedtime. So, I got to experience the likes of Clifford Simak, Issac Asimov and J.R.R. Tolkien really early. Also, my parents started watching Doctor Who on TVOntaro starting in 1978 when I was six, and I quickly became a fan of that program and have remained so all my life. So, I was exposed early, and I never grew out of it.

How does writing for young adults/new adults differ from other age groups?

Officially, the key thing that makes a YA novel a YA novel is that it has a YA protagonist, usually between 12 and 16 years old. Unofficially, there are other conventions that separate YA from “adult” literature, although that’s not to denigrate, infantilize or oversimplify YA, as they can have stories which are as hard-hitting as anything in adult literature.

Now, I don’t usually set out to write a YA novel. I’m just writing what I like to read, and I like to read a lot of science fiction, fantasy and YA. I feel that there’s a clarity to YA fiction that appeals to me, and the coming of age story is a powerful storyline that many of us can come back to again and again.

I did do an entire article talking up YA fiction for the literary journal, The New Quarterly, and you can see it here: https://bowjamesbow.ca/2006/11/24/fairy-tales-in-1.shtml

With environmental catastrophe becoming more of a reality, what do you hope to achieve with your stories?

Mostly that they are read and enjoyed and/or appreciated. Fiction and literature can change the world, but I’m not the kind of person who can take on that task. I guess, by starting my book with some of the same environmental catastrophes that we may be facing in our future, I’m offering some hope that there is an afterward that we can survive. A lot of our life is like that: it’s full of some heavy tragedy and, while we never fully overcome it, often we do survive it, and there is an afterward that we can live in.

What can science fiction teach our future generations?

I think the best thing science fiction teaches future generations is that there is a future. It may be challenging. It may be harsh, but it exists in our imaginations, and if we can imagine making it better, so can they.

Was the joint launch of The Sun Runners and Tales from the Silence always your plan?

Yes. I started writing The Sun Runners ten years ago with a single image: a crown princess in some future colony who would rather be an engineer. And in the early stages of my writing, I tend to throw many things at the wall and see what sticks. I ask myself a lot of questions and try to find the most interesting answer. Who is this crown princess? Why does she want to be an engineer, and why can’t she be? What world is she living in? (It’s Mercury) Is her world isolated? Why is it isolated? What happened to the Earth to make it isolated?

From this, not only did a story build up, but so did a universe. After all, Mercury would not be the first world we’d colonize, so what’s happening on Venus, Mars, the Moon, or the Asteroid Belt? So, while I worked on The Sun Runners, I also explored ideas that became an in-progress potential companion novel set on Venus and Mars called The Cloud Riders. I ended up with a novella entitled The Phases of Jupiter, and the idea for another novella set on Earth entitled The Fall of McMurdo.

Going through the publication process of any story is hard, and I didn’t want to wait on various magazines to get my short stories published, and two short stories is not enough to fill out a collection. So, in 2023, as I reached out to my current publisher, Shadowpaw Press, I thought about submitting an anthology of short stories set in the universe of The Sun Runners, and I reached out to authors I knew in the science fiction and YA communities I belonged to, inviting them to play in my sandbox, so to speak. Everybody I talked to was supportive, and ten authors submitted stories, and I was able to take that to Shadowpaw Press and offer the anthology as something that could support the publication and promotion of The Sun Runners. The publisher agreed, and the rest is history.

Were there any great surprises in the stories from contributing authors that you did not expect?

That’s the fun of putting together any anthology: getting different people together and seeing how their submissions resonate or build on each other. I’d edited and published fan fiction magazines in my high school and university days, so this was a return to that fun time.

The authors were all receptive to the general timeline I offered them, and read through my drafts of The Sun Runners and the unpublished Cloud Riders, and there were no serious clashes of continuity. I think the nature of this universe: the whole inner solar system across a fifty-year stretch of time, is big enough that you can be off in your own corner writing without interfering with the other submissions.

But there were delightful surprises: little plot points or details that filled out the universe, expanded on the cultures of the colonies we were working with, and which required a few minor alterations to The Cloud Riders, which I was very happy to accommodate.

How has your ‘day job’ affected the narratives you write?

It hasn’t, yet. My day job is being the communications officer for a charitable land trust protecting lands from development. It believes strongly in building a sustainable world, which is a cause I believed in well before I joined. I write press releases, produce social media posts and edit their biannual newsletter, and am very happy to have a writing day job that pays the bills, but I haven’t based a story on my experience there, or characters on any coworkers there. Not yet, anyway.

There is a short story in Tales from the Silence which borrowed heavily from my father’s experience in the provincial civil service, so I guess somebody else’s day job affected the narrative here. I’ve had over fifty years of living and reading, so there’s plenty of things out there that I can pull in for a narrative if I need it.

Where does your inspiration come from?

Typically, it comes from things I’ve read or things I’ve watched on TV or facts I pick up on social media. It also comes from long drives in the car, where I’m able to spend some time to myself thinking about things that might be interesting to write about. When my wife is asked about where she gets her ideas, she jokes “oh, from the Idea Store down the street.” There is no one set place to be inspired. In my case, I’m sometimes driving around when inspiration hits me. Other times I’m lying in bed. Any time my brain has some quiet time to think, something may appear.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a new draft of the companion novel to The Sun Runners entitled The Cloud Riders, which is set on Venus and Mars early in the Earth’s silence. It’s a sort of interplanetary Country Mouse/City Mouse where characters from both planets end up following each other to their respective planet and we get to compare and contrast their lives and cultures, all while solving a murder mystery. It hasn’t been accepted for publication, yet, but I’m hopeful that it may see print in 2026.

Where can readers find you?

My home page is https://bowjamesbow.ca/ and I’m on Facebook as “jamesbow” and on Bluesky as jamesbow@bowjamesbow.ca. The Sun Runners and Tales from the Silence can be ordered at any bookstore, and I hope you’ll support the independent bookstores near you. The books are also available for sale in print and ePub form at Shadowpaw Press at https://shadowpawpress.com

Bio

James Bow writes science fiction and fantasy for both kids and adults. He’s been a fan of science fiction since his family introduced him to Doctor Who on TV Ontario in 1978, and his mother read him classic sci-fi and fantasy from such authors as Clifford Simak and J.R.R. Tolkien. James won the 2017 Prix Aurora Award for best YA Novel in Canada for Icarus Down.

By day, James is a communications officer for a charitable land trust protecting lands from development in Waterloo Region and Wellington County. He also loves trains and streetcars.

He lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with his two kids, and his spouse/fellow writer/partner-in-crime, Erin Bow. You can find him online at jamesbow.ca.

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