Novel foundations: Iain M Banks, Kim Stanley Robinson, Sara Collins and more...

Books that inspired Tales from the Triverse

More than any other type of influence, novels are the trickiest one to pick out. Every book I‘ve ever read sloshes around in my brain, influencing my own writing in subtle and undefinable ways.

In the early days of my writing, in the 2010s, I would sometimes find myself too easily swayed by the story I happened to be reading at any given time. This is the benefit of writing a lot of words: at some point, a unique style emerges and works as a shield of sorts between you and other influences. Reading is always useful, always informative and can inspire new approaches, but a strong stylistic core makes it easier to learn without merely copying.

Television foundations: The Wire, Babylon 5, The Expanse, She-Ra

And if you’re new to Tales from the Triverse and want to know more, this is the place to go:

Tales from the Triverse story index

Starting with the two big ones:

Mars Trilogy, 2312, Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

As a teenager I became entirely obsessed with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, an epic that seemed inexplicably large in scope and imagination. At university those epic sci-fi interests shifted to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy of Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars.

Big, chunky tomes, these chronicle the colonisation of Mars in minute detail, spanning hundreds of years and with an enormous central cast of characters. I read them on-and-off over about three years, no hurrying, and by the end I felt as if I had visited Mars myself.

KSR tends to employ a third person, heavily subjective viewpoint in his writing, with large sections of the books following a specific character. This is the same structure I employed in The Mechanical Crown, back in 2016. I went a different route for Triverse, opting for a much looser style that switches between viewpoints much more quickly, including within a single chapter.

My favourite KSR novel is Galileo’s Dream, an absolute tour-de-force that tells a brilliant story that interweaves science, fantasy and biography via some fiendishly clever narrative tricks. Less relevant to Triverse, though.

2312 and Red Moon are more overtly political, and his interweaving of modern and future politics with advanced science has never been more effective. He paints a picture in 2312 of an advanced, liberal, highly tolerant and dispersed society, which reminded me tangentially of how Iain M Banks deals with politics and society in his Culture novels. As such —

Iain M Banks’ Culture novels

I came to Banks’ work very late, after he had died. Each book I read is one less I have left, and the knowledge that there is a finite number makes them all the more precious.

Banks’ skill is in taking high concept elements which would be highly pulpy in anyone else’s hands, and then melding them with deeply clever observations of society and politics. Consider Phlebas at times could sound like a Star Wars film if you described the plot, but has a vastly different sensibility.

The Culture novels — the ones I’ve read, at least — seem to depict a post-capitalist abundance utopia in which people endeavour to find other ways to compete with one another. Player of Games explores this and is endlessly imaginative. Use of Weapons is devious in its use of narrators. The world building is simultaneously subtle and grand and there’s always a sense of an entire galaxy of detail just out of view, around the corner — but Banks is never distracted by lore, always remaining focused on the story and characters.

The megaships of Tales from the Triverse are, of course, a very direct nod to the Culture ships, even down to the amusing/lightly threatening names. If any of the Max-Earth stuff resonated with you in Triverse, make sure you go read Banks. He is, of course, a much better writer than I am, and his vision of a far future society is breathtaking.

The less obvious inspirations

The sci-fi writers I’ve mentioned already are the obvious direct influences. Perhaps more important, and more useful, are the less obvious inspirations. The writers who expanded my understanding of what is possible in and out of speculative fiction.

These are books I was reading at the time of early Triverse development, around 2019-2021, which were outside of my typical reading comfort zone (by which I mean: they didn’t have spaceships). This is the importance of reading outside of your chosen and preferred genres: I’ve learned so much from reading outside of science fiction; staying within your comfort zone can limit your toolkit as a writer.

To pick at a few:

Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

This is perhaps a less obvious inspiration. There are no direct connections between Triverse and Kavalier & Clay. The key learning I took from Chabon’s book is that pulp adventure and literary eloquence don’t need to be mutually exclusive. It’s a beautiful story which is absolutely full of apparent tangents, unafraid to go diving down sub-plots and upending its setting and structure.

There’s a patience and a detail to it, and I happened to read it around the time I was in early development on Triverse. I’d just finished No Adults Allowed, a short and precise novella aimed at younger readers which is defined by its pace and lack of fat. The Mechanical Crown is long and epic but also propulsive and somewhat relentless. Kavalier & Clay was useful in demonstrating a different approach. Indirectly, it impacted subtly on the structure of Triverse.

The Wolf Road by Richard Lambert

It is without any exaggeration to say that this book had me in tears by page 2. I remain jealous of Richard’s ability to do that, without resorting to histrionics or cynical manipulation. What follows from that opening chapter is similarly remarkable and gripping, following a teenage boy dealing with unimaginable trauma.

That opening, though, was a challenge, in a way. My stories tend to be long, and here is Richard Lambert creating an emotional punch in a few hundred words and a couple of pages. That efficiency, that poise, has been a continual inspiration — you can see me grappling with it in stories such as ‘Work Parties’.

Work parties

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

When I was younger I had a very silly and reductive understanding of genre. I was a Science Fiction Reader, because I was a Serious Person. I specifically did not read fantasy because it was silly and made-up.

I got over myself in my twenties, fortunately. It is still very easy to put borders around genres in ways that are unhelpful. Discussions about what a genre is or isn’t tend to leave me cold, because it rarely helps anyone write a better book. Washington Black is a case in point, a book which resolutely refuses to be nailed down. It exists as historical fiction, as fantasy, as magic realism, as a million other things, and refuses to be pinned.

And it’s all the better for it. That playful unpredictability is something I wanted to bring to Triverse, albeit in a rather less subtle fashion.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

I read this book back when I was producing The Writing Life podcast, in preparation for interviewing Sara. One of the great benefits of working on that podcast was that I inevitably ended up reading books that I otherwise might never have considered.

Frannie Langton is one of those. Much like Kavalier & Clay, the prose quality at times caused me to have to sit back, put the book down and take a deep breath before continuing. That sense that every sentence counts and has something to contribute.

As someone whose earlier serials were more pulpy, more fast-paced and easy to read, a lot of the books I’ve just mentioned were about me unlearning some habits and figuring out how to slow down. Tales from the Triverse has entire chapters in which ‘nothing happens’, because the focus is on the characters rather than the plot.

In fact, much of my writing journey from the very beginning has been about continually downgrading the importance of plot. The less I focus on it, the better my writing, and the more engaging my stories, I sense.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

There’s a lot of genre wrong-footing at play in The Essex Serpent. There are times when it appears to be one thing, before shifting into something quite different. It’s also set at a precise time which feels anachronistic and fantastical: a pre-technology age, and yet the London underground already exists. The entire story takes place at a tipping point in history, and yet that’s not especially important to the story and characters — it’s a background detail, but what a background detail.

This book also contains what may possibly be the most exciting single chapter I’ve ever read, where I was very literally on the edge of my seat while reading. And, again, it’s full of turns of phrase and literary flair that makes me intake sharply and have to suppress intense jealousy.

The inspiration here is less to do with specific ideas, stories, genres or settings and more to do with the core quality of the writing. It’s useful to have a target, an aspiration, a mountain to climb — even if I’m unlikely to ever reach the summit.

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Meanwhile.

Thanks for reading!

This coming weekend there’s an exciting mini-festival of live author readings taking place across Substack, organised by he wonderful Erica Drayton. Full details and schedule are here:

I’m reading from Tales from the Triverse at 11am EST on Saturday 17th, which I believe is 4pm UK time. Hopefully see you there! And do check out all the other authors taking part: this is going to be a fabulous way to add to your reading pile.

This popped up in my feed and is an example of a very different time on the internet:

Back when people happily shared knowledge without demanding likes/subscribes/follows/etc.

Some interesting discussion here around publishing fiction via newsletter/Substack, which leads into a chat about serial fiction:

I wrote about my big move from Wattpad to Substack in more detail back in 2023:

Right, I’ll park it there for today. Have good weeks, everyone!