For our first 'Solaris presents', we are delighted to welcome two of our authors - multi award-winner Premee Mohamed and Hugo nominated Matt Wallace - to discuss writing conflict in SciFi and Fantasy!

Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the Beneath the Rising series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues.

The Empires of Varkal and Med’ariz have always been at war.

Alefret, the founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance, was bombed and maimed by his own government, locked up in a secret prison and tortured by a ‘visionary’ scientist. But now they’re offering him a chance of freedom.

Ordered to infiltrate one of Med’ariz’s flying cities, obeying the bloodthirsty zealot Qhudur, he must find fellow anti-war activists in the enemy’s population and provoke them into an uprising against their rulers.

He should refuse to serve the warmongers, but what if he could end this pointless war once and for all? Is that worth compromising his own morals and the principles of his fellow resistance members?

Matt Wallace is the Hugo nominated author of Rencor: Life in Grudge City and the Sin du Jour series, and he won a Hugo Award alongside Mur Lafferty for the fancast Ditch Diggers. He’s also penned more than a hundred short stories in addition to writing for film and television. In his youth, he traveled the world as a professional wrestler and unarmed combat and self-defense instructor before retiring to write full-time. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Nikki.

The Savages are the greatest weapon the Empire ever forged.

They are the ones no one will miss: the poor, the criminal, the indigent. Snatched from the street by the city guard, they are thrown in their thousands at the Empire’s enemies. If they live, they fight again. If they die, there are always more to take their place.

And most citizens have never heard of them. Everyone in Crache has their needs met; who would the guards seize? Crache has no enemies and fights in no wars; why would it need an army?

Evie is a warrior, charged by a grieving wife to find a lost husband, a man who holds the key to exposing the pressgangs. A man Evie herself once loved.

But to find him, she must join him among the missing. To be marked in her blood, to fight in the Empire’s wars, and to find her purpose. To become a Savage.

Solaris presents: A War of Words - Premee Mohamed and Matt Wallace