Humans are Humans, Whatever Earth We’re On: An Exclusive Guest Post From Everina Maxwell, Author of Winter’s Orbit — Our January Speculative Fiction Pick
Paperback $18.99
Winter's Orbit
Winter's Orbit
In Stock Online
Paperback $18.99
Court politics, galactic treaties, murder, slow-burn romance — Maxwell’s lush world-building, lovable characters, and well-paced action make this debut a joy to read. With an ending that will leave you smiling ear to ear, this propulsive LGBTQIA space opera is pure feel-good speculative fiction. Here, Everina Maxwell rhapsodizes about space operas as a genre — the high drama, glamour and pageantry, and all the stars along the way.
Court politics, galactic treaties, murder, slow-burn romance — Maxwell’s lush world-building, lovable characters, and well-paced action make this debut a joy to read. With an ending that will leave you smiling ear to ear, this propulsive LGBTQIA space opera is pure feel-good speculative fiction. Here, Everina Maxwell rhapsodizes about space operas as a genre — the high drama, glamour and pageantry, and all the stars along the way.
A political marriage. A desperate envoy with a tragic past. A tenuous bargain struck with the royal family while conspiracies threaten behind the scenes.
Familiar? Of course. These are all elements you’d find in a lavish historical novel — or an epic fantasy. Great events happen, but human fragility, human desire, human quirks are important to us. We want to see the people behind the events because we know that’s where every drama starts.
Now take that same court intrigue and add a few more things. Mass media. A press office. Politics affecting the future of billions of people played out over fast networks like the ones we use today.
Space opera, as a genre, is humans on a grand scale. It starts with the great what-if of science fiction: what if humans didn’t change when we left Earth, not fundamentally? What if we had the same great loves and tragedies, the same intrigues and pettiness and wonders, but against the backdrop of another planet?
In Winter’s Orbit, a royal court bustles with pageantry but is also deeply concerned with media management and office politics. Snow glitters through the windows from a planet that isn’t Earth. Our main character is Prince Kiem, a reformed playboy who’s trying to convince everyone he’s responsible now — and the Emperor, an elderly lady, is his disapproving grandmother. When Kiem is engaged, one of the reasons he’s chosen is because his preferences are flexible, and the envoy is also a man. And why not? When your society is advanced enough that the gender of the Emperor doesn’t matter, and children can be created outside the womb, what does it matter who you love?
Space opera gives us high-drama, high-colour kinds of stories that are grounded in human feeling, well, the emotions humans have always felt. If you’re going to rescue a loved one, it doesn’t matter if you take a white horse, a stolen motorcycle, or a spaceship — the important thing is the quest you’re on, the challenges you overcome, and the way the world stops when you and your loved one meet again. But space opera also gives you options for glamour and ceremony, shiny technology, and a society on the scale of galaxies.
As well as all that, it gives you the opportunity to say: what if society were a little different, and the genders were equal, and you could love who you wanted to love? What would that look like, in a planet a little different from our own?
Because ultimately, humans are human, and we’ve been telling stories about how we live and love since the beginning of history. You can start your quest and take a horse or a motorcycle — but the spaceship will get you there sooner, and you might see the light of the stars along the way.
