E.S. Raye

With Gas Giant Gambit out now, as well as several of my short stories, including the sci-fi/noir “The Stuff Legends are Made of” in RARE, and my followup novel Shallow Trenches/Open Skies well into its initial draft, (not to mention a larger audience as of late) perhaps it’s time to give you readers an idea of what you can expect from the “worlds of E.S. Raye.”

Blended Genres

I can’t truly say I do this with every story–sometimes a single genre is best for what I’m trying to say, other times (especially when writing flash fiction), there simply isn’t the room to justify it.

That said, I love mashing up genres.

Gas Giant Gambit is a sci-fi/western, heavy on the western aesthetic. “The Stuff Legends are Made Of” is a sci-fi/noir, heavy on the dark and gritty noir side. Some of my favorite movies, books and video games (especially the Dead Space series and Alien: Isolation) are blended genres.

I can’t say for sure what draws me to this, but I think it’s the fun of being able to play in more than one sandbox at the same time. It keeps things fresh and exciting. And (I hope) it keeps readers wondering from which genre the next trope or gag will come from.

Clearly, I have a preference for blending other genres with sci-fi. I won’t deny that. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to experiment with others in the future.

Western/horror sounds like fun…

Tropes

One of the challenges of writing blended genres is the tropes and structures. You have to know them inside and out for both genres. The better you know them, the better you can utilize them, either incredibly overtly, like I do in Gas Giant Gambit, or so subtly the audience barely notices.

A great example of the latter is the 1981 Sean Connery movie, Outland. For those unfamiliar, it’s the story of a federal marshal, played by Connery, on a mining station on Jupiter’s moon Io. The look and feel of the movie is very representative of hard science-fiction of the era. If you picture the ship from Alien, you’re pretty close to the aesthetic.

But the story itself–as well as the themes and tropes it utilizes–are hard western. The lone lawman against a corrupt gang. Running shootouts that span the whole town. Bounty hunters and hired guns. It’s literally High Noon in space. But few audiences noticed at the time.

Instead, they were too focused on the sci-fi setting and occasional overt sci-fi trope, like airlocks failing, characters “going EVA,” and botanical gardens for food and oxygen.

Like this, you’ll find a lot of fun tropes from varying genres in my work.

Trope-Subversions

And as much as I like using tropes pulled from various genres, I love subverting them even more. One example from Gas Giant Gambit (without giving away too many details) involves the classic sci-fi trope of shooting a locked door’s control panel to open it.

Protagonist Gus and her friends are trying to break into a secured room. Gus has the panel off the door and is trying to hack the electronics, but they are quickly running out of time. Out of frustration, another character pulls their laser gun and shoots into the panel.

But instead of the door opening as it would on countless TV shows, they’ve fried the electronics entirely. The panel no longer has control of the door one way or the other. Getting through it seems impossible now.

This is a tiny example, but it’s this sort of thing that I love playing with and you’ll find throughout my work.

Themes

Admittedly, most of the prose I write is science fiction (although, most of the screenwriting I’ve done is horror), but no matter the genre or the format in which I’m working, I always try to make sure it’s saying something.

There must always be a point to the story, some central meaning. And then, of course, little spin-offs and things tangential to that central theme. All these things dictate the story.

There’s a quote from my favorite book series, The Dark Tower by Stephen King that goes, “All things serve the Beam.”

I like to say, “All things serve the Theme,” because it drives every character’s actions and the events they lead to.

Character Driven

And, to me, something that goes part and parcel with a strong theme, is character driven action. Despite the incredible circumstances or settings of my stories, they are all about people. It’s those people’s thoughts, actions, and desires that drive the plot forward, not the circumstances or setting.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a special place in my heart for (especially classic) sci-fi tales that are all about the fantastic setting–Larry Niven’s Ringworld series immediately comes to mind. But that’s not my writing. If I wrote Ringworld, it would have been about survival, and how the different characters’ beliefs and motivations create conflict and threaten that survival, instead of the “Oooo” and “Aaah” of it all as it is.

Diverse Casts

One thing I strive for in every story I write is a diverse cast of characters–in gender, ethnicity, and identity.

Gas Giant Gambit, for example, features characters from many portions of many identity spectrums, including people of color, LGBTQ+, differently-abled, and more.

Thanks to my fascination with history, creating a diverse cast isn’t always easy at first glance. My current work in progress, Shallow Trenches/Open Skies, takes place in Belgium in 1917–the Western Front of World War I.

A cursory understanding of that conflict might lead one to believe it was very white and very male. And that’s not that far off from the truth.

However.

A little digging provides opportunities. Black pilots flying for the British Royal Flying Corps. Indian infantryman fighting in the trenches. And in every war since the dawn of armed conflict, women: nurses and soldiers–both in disguise and in the open.

Many of my stories–including several I have planned for the future–either take place in a historical era or are heavily inspired by one. In both cases, I love to showcase people who have been forgotten by history because of their identities.

I won’t claim to always get it right; I am not a member of many of these communities. But I do my best and am always learning to do better. Anything I get right is thanks to advice and information given to me, anything I get wrong is my mistake and responsibility.

Swashbuckling Adventure

Finally, my writing features a lot of idealized adventure. By that I mean there tends to be a lot of fun action, like Star Wars–and not a ton of hyper-gritty realism, like the gory violence of, say, Starship Troopers (there is some gritty-realism, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story).

While my characters deal with serious topics and must overcome harsh, perhaps even gritty and real obstacles, my writing rarely steers into edgy darkness.

Well, at least when it comes to my science fiction. My horror on the other hand…

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I’m sure there are even more commonalities among my stories that I’m not consciously aware of, but these are the things I do on purpose.

And you can’t stop me.