Interview with Alex White, author of Star Trek DS9: Revenant
Born in Mississippi and having spent most of their life in the American South, Alex White is an author known for their creativity and ability to explore complex themes through fiction. With a career that includes the Starmetal Symphony trilogy and The Salvagers trilogy, they have also written official novels for the Alien franchise (The Cold Forge, Into Charybdis) and Star Trek: DS9 (Revenant). In addition to writing, Alex is dedicated to music composition, calligraphy, and creating challenging, subversive fiction. In this interview, we discuss their influences, creative process, and the challenges of writing for major science fiction franchises.
Alex, thanks for being available for this interview with Apenas um Trekker. What are your influences and how did you start your writing career?
I suppose if you go far enough back in my DNA, you’ll find my childhood books of Shel Silverstein poems. His playfulness and art with words invited me to write poems of my own, and from there, short stories. In grade school, I read lots of books about dinosaurs and Greek myths, but also enjoyed Watership Down, A Cricket in Times Square and other novels. Middle and high school saw me reading a ton of tie-in novels–Alien, Predator, Star Trek, Star Wars, Forgotten Realms and every other speculative fiction property under the sun. I liked those books a lot, because I saw authors playing with ideas that remixed the originals significantly. High school gave me my mid-century American lit education, and I’ll confess to enjoying a lot of it. One of my favorite things is marrying literary stylings to pop culture sensibilities and taking books way too seriously, so both the tie-ins and the Kerouac were good ingredients.
As for how I entered publishing, it’s a long haul. I started writing novels in 2005 and finished my fifth book in 2014, which is the one that finally made it to publication in 2016 as Every Mountain Made Low. That’s a bit more dry, but hopefully gives you a timeline.
How do you come up with your stories and characters? Do you have a specific writing routine?
I write the things I need to write, which can be a problem. I can’t simply sit down and say, “I want to write a pirate book. I’ll come up with some pirates.” I need a real world problem or concern that hurts me or my friends and loved ones. I have to have something to say, or what’s the point of even spending time on a story? I require characters who have real problems in addition to the fantastical stuff.
My stories are carefully diagrammed and prototyped from the beginning. I never start writing until I know how the book will end–and I never truly follow the plan I made! I absolutely will not start working without that research in place.
My writing routine involves music and a goal. I love headphones.
Your original trilogy, The Salvagers Series, was a huge hit. Many fans hope it gets adapted into a movie or streaming series. What do you think about that?
I agree with them, and I recommend that they spread the word far and wide so that it happens someday! I’ve always wanted to write for television and film, so it would be a natural transition for me. My style is deliberately cinematic.
I’m reading A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe and you’ve already become one of my favorite authors. But I first discovered your work through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Revenant. How did Star Trek become part of your life and who are your favorite series/characters?
My sister and I started watching The Original Series late one night on television, and we enjoyed making fun of it. After two episodes, we weren’t joking anymore, but totally engrossed. Deep Space Nine debuted at the perfect moment for me, offering a grittier alternative to the cleanliness of The Next Generation.
My favorite characters are obviously Jadzia Dax and Kira Nerys, but I really enjoy the Lower Decks crew. I would love to write those fine folks!
One of the things I love most about Revenant — besides how well you captured the characters’ voices — is the exploration of the politics and injustices of the Trill Symbiosis system. What was it like diving into the mind of Jadzia Dax and the Trill society? Can we draw any parallels to current societal issues?
You can’t write about the Trill with any seriousness without seeing the cracks in what they’re doing with the Joined. While it appears benevolent, there is a state organization choosing who gets to be prized as part of the Trill cultural memory, and who is excluded. Curzon Dax proved that the system was fully corruptible, and how could it be anything else?
I see this as being really similar to the American educational system, which canonizes so-called “Western” cultural contributions while minimizing the involvement of everyone who fails to match the narratives of power. I was raised in the American South, where I was given a propagandist education that lionized slavers and whitewashed our history.
Revenant’s truly heavy topic is this, however: If you want something more than anything else in the world, and a predator understands that about you, they can subvert your will. We see this behavior in film and television, in publishing, in corporate life, in academia, and more, and it makes me sick. I think of the creators who sleep with their starstruck fans, of agents and editors who target aspiring authors, and I want to warn people. Everyone in Revenant is used for their ambition–Jadzia, Joran, Curzon and even the villain are tricked by predators who take advantage and consume them.
Revenant exists because I felt that Deep Space Nine didn’t go far enough litigating what Curzon did to Jadzia. I think those issues are pretty timeless, sadly.
What are you working on next?
I’m happy to say I have two projects on sale in December. Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye is the follow up to August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, and it changes the whole game. If you love humor and heart, glam rock, jazz, giant robots and aliens, you need to check that out! The second project is Alien: Rogue Incursion–the first ever VR survival horror for the Alien franchise. I’ve never played a VR game that scary before, and I can’t wait to see the reactions to my writing. This represents my first foray into larger media, and it won’t be my last. I hope to be working in film in the next few years!
Learn more about Alex White by visiting their website: http://www.alexrwhite.com/
