This week I am delighted to be having a slice of cake with author Scott Tarbet.
When he is not submerged in one of his created worlds, which he finds nearly as fascinating as the real one, he sings opera professionally and slow-smokes thousands of pounds of authentic Texas-style barbeque. He was married in full Elizabethan regalia, loves Steampunk and cosplay conventions of all flavors. He makes his home in the mountains of Utah.
What kind of stories do you write?
I write stories, mostly set in our world or a slightly tweaked version. I particularly like creating stories that extend current societal and scientific trends into the near future and projecting their impacts.
I also enjoy creating stories that return to a historical inflection point in the past and imagining what would happen if there were some tweak that changed the history.
Can you describe your writing why?
I’m an inveterate storyteller, child and product of
storytellers. My father was a Cold War missile man, technical writer and editor,
extremely methodical and hard science-oriented in his story concepts. My mother
lived in wonder of the world around her and created stories that fueled
idealized versions of her reality.
The Prologue of A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk:
From one end of the sprawling London metropolis to the other, over palaces and hovels, elegant townhouses, rundown wharfs and warehouses, the micromechs fluttered.
They rode the summer breeze through every open window, swooped down chimneys, crept in at every crack and crevice. Their multifaceted eyes searched and their ears recorded. Their tiny feet carried them silently across the ceilings of peopled rooms. Mingling with the insects of high summer, they went unnoticed and unremarked, even in the infrequent pools of gaslight through which they flashed on whirring, iridescent wings.
In her private dirigible Ganesh, moored with other private and public airships in the Victoria Air Terminus that soared above sprawling Victoria Station, their “queen” waited patiently for their reports, the portal open to admit the summer breeze and her fluttering charges returning from the city below. They flitted around her brilliant crimson-and-gold sari like the dragonflies and hummingbirds and other flying beings they had once been, surrounding her like a dazzling bloom in the Indian jungle.
One by one, their leaders—Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mote, and Mustardseed—flitted past and whispered their negative reports into her ear: no sign of the half-man, the huge dazzlingly black mech who had stolen the automaton, Jubal, and fled India for England. But the queen was calmly confident.
The night was young, the breezes were light, and the micromechs were spreading methodically from the airship across the city from south to north, from west to east. The massive black mech they sought would inevitably be found.
Why the mech and his master had stolen her precious automaton, the queen could only guess. But the machine’s true value was more than they could possibly know, far more precious than the massive blue diamonds at his heart and in his eyes. She must recover him before the thief or his master stumbled over his true worth.
The storm clouds of aggression and war loomed. The queens crafted their response. Their plan must not be thwarted. The automaton must be retrieved.
Tell us about your latest project
Synopsis of The Brigham:
Dr. Celia Algyre’s genome and personality left the dying Earth in the company of humanity’s best minds, stored in the memory of their self-aware starship AI, the Brigham, while her 78-year-old body remained behind. The mission: to seed the quadrant of the galaxy with reprinted, personality-implanted copies of the Pioneers’ teenaged selves, and ensure the continuation of the human race.
Now the deadly competition for the final colony is upon them. They must fight each other, the ship, and the environment, for survival. The thirteenth colony is the final opportunity is literally do or die. To win is to live, to lose is oblivion.
But the Brigham, beyond their control, changes the mission. The first giant step: a near light speed change of course toward the galactic center—and eight thousand years into humanity’s future.
Conflict splits the Pioneers as the entire cohort is unexpectedly “awakened” for this final colony. Is the “best of humanity” expressed by ensuring the survival of the species, or the individual?
On the planet’s surface, Celia and the Pioneers are nearing the end of all supplies and all hope when they begin to realize they are being monitored by some entity of advanced technology and no apparent desire to communicate. This realization kicks off a new round of speculation, conflict, and, eventually, genocidal infighting. Intervention comes from a completely unexpected source, along with the sweeping realization that an optimistic long-term future for humanity is neither assured nor, perhaps, desirable.
The opening chapter of The Brigham took second in the annual League of Utah Writers first chapter contest.
What is your favourite cake?
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, hands down, no contest. Second place: Black Forest. Dang. Now I’m hungry.
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