Feathered Quill Book Reviews

 #Authorinterview with William Burke

Today, Feathered Quill reviewer Ephantus Muriuki  is talking with William Burke, author of Doomsday Planet.

FQ: First off, huge congrats on the book! From the start, there’s this creeping sense that reality is slipping, like things aren’t what they seem, even before the real chaos begins. Was that slow-burn unease always part of your plan, or did it just kind of happen as the story came together?

BURKE: I intentionally opened the book with two simultaneous, but seemingly disconnected events. One being Reno’s dropping into orbit around the moon, and the other, Hugo Visser’s earthbound presentation of his new VR/AI technology. Both events quickly fly off the rails due to alien intervention. Neither character knows why they’ve been selected by two opposing races of aliens, neither of which seems trustworthy. Reno is (literally) naked and afraid, experiencing things that would give most of us a psychotic meltdown, while Visser is given the red-carpet treatment. During the first draft process, I realized the opening chapters were weird and slightly off-putting. Most smart writers would have restructured things, but I decided to lean into that weirdness, partially because I love when writers give us an ‘ah-ha’ moment of realization. I hope I delivered that moment before the chaos begins.

FQ: The idea of a “Doomsday Planet” feels very big and heavy. Were you drawing from anything in the real world when building that world like climate, tech collapse, or a war?

BURKE: Absolutely. Once upon a time, the list of global issues I lost sleep over could fit on a single sheet of paper, double-spaced. Now, they could fill a Stephen King-sized book. I could rant like an old man chasing neighborhood kids off his lawn, but instead I’ll share a quote from Gustav Meyrink’s novel The Golem. “Power without compassion is tyranny.” Our current captains of business and government have graduated from amassing wealth to seizing power and influence with no compassion for those less powerful or fortunate. Doomsday Planet’s Hugo Visser exemplifies that; he’s a man willing to sell off his species to gain absolute power. Visser is the ultimate tech mogul, controlling space travel, media, and electric vehicles. He feeds the public instant gratification via social media, overnight delivery, lightning-fast Google searches, and online porn. It’s a diet that’s all candy without meat or substance, and that addiction to immediate gratification becomes the alien’s primary weapon against us.

If I were to make a historical comparison, the Zagan aliens are King Ludwig, Earth is the Congo, and Visser is Kurtz… I know Kurtz was fictional, but you get it. Strangely enough, these days, many people reading Heart of Darkness for the first time might consider Marlow to be too woke, and Kurtz to be a visionary businessman… and that, well, sucks.

Let me add that Doomsday Planet also features Vikings fighting robots riding dinosaurs with laser cannons bolted to them, so all that social commentary is delivered in shiny pulp wrapping paper.

And readers, after all my ranting about instant online gratification, please mention my book on social media so I can amass untold wealth. My hypocrisy is boundless.

FQ: What really stuck with me was how much the story explores identity not just Reno, but all these people pulled out of time, forced to fight without any of the roles or structures they knew. Was that theme always in your head, or did it grow out of the characters themselves?

BURKE: I wanted to explore the concept of a literal ‘man out of time,’ though I don’t mean to imply a specific gender. Each person’s reaction to this brave new world is unique. Torsten, his band of warriors, and Olga are all swept into an entirely new reality and then immediately thrown into battle. Reno lived in our technological, modern world, but was never at home there. He can pilot a lunar shuttle craft, but probably refuses to own a cellular phone. Oddly enough, Torsten, who died in AD 899, adjusts easily because to him, technology is just another word for magic, which he accepts as fact. Prehistoric animals are dragons, and a high-tech rifle is just a bow and arrow for untrained idiots. As for battle, well, if there weren’t a war, he’d probably start one. As a WW2 pilot, Olga witnessed the horrors of an invasion and feels she has no choice but to do what is right.

FQ: Some of those Arena scenes are so raw and intense. I imagine they weren’t easy to write but more so I was wondering- were they kind of cathartic or satisfying to write?

BURKE: Honestly, I do it to myself every time—by that I mean creating a finale that involves interlocking action seen from multiple perspectives, including the enemy’s point of view. I’m a fan of history, including historical fiction like Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels, which brilliantly depict the sprawl and confusion of battle. In Doomsday Planet, we simultaneously have the Zagan attack on the encampment, the Viking defense, Reno and Olga’s assault on the Zagan base, and the enslaved Daric staging a Spartacus-like revolt. Oh, wait, during that, Pi and Junior were also caught up in a space battle. What was I thinking? Creating that chaotic tapestry and getting it all to intersect was a genuine challenge and very satisfying… when it was finished. The process was grueling, but it’s cathartic to write something so daunting and complete it.

FQ: Now that the book is out, is there a particular scene or moment that still lingers in your mind, something that keeps coming back to you for whatever reason?

BURKE: It was the scene depicting the night before the great battle, where campfire revelry masks their collective dread. Even the tentacled alien, Junior, winds up dancing with the Viking women. It’s also when the ghosts haunting Reno are exorcised. Up to that point, he suffered from a condition Olga calls Toska—a Russian word with no simple translation, alluding to a kind of spiritual anguish and malaise. It took Nabokov several pages to define that single word, and he still didn’t think its meaning was accurately conveyed. On that same night, Olga honors her past and present by naming her biplane, Nadezhda, after a lost comrade. She also sagely summarizes the cultural and philosophical differences between her and Reno, stating, “Americans expect too much, while Russians accept too little.” They wind up holding hands under a brilliant alien Aurora Borealis, which is about all the romance this book has time for. It’s a quiet scene that sticks in my mind. Maybe I have something to learn from it, though I probably won’t.

FQ: Reno’s arc is such a slow rebuild. I found him sarcastic and rough, but I could feel something shifting in him over time. What was the toughest part about writing someone who doesn’t even know if he deserves a second chance?

BURKE: Reno was influenced by the 1970s pulp literature I grew up reading, much to my family’s chagrin. His name was partially a homage to Remo Williams, the reluctant hero of The Destroyer novels, and also to Major Marcus Reno, the real-life cavalry officer who didn’t get all his troops killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and was reviled for surviving. My fictional Marcus Reno spent a lifetime pioneering space exploration, only to become a forgotten footnote in its history. He watched Visser’s corporation transform space exploration into space exploitation and retreated to a lonely vigil piloting a lunar shuttle for the man he loathes. If that’s not self-inflicted punishment, I don’t know what is. He is sarcastic and bitter, but deep down, his moral compass still finds true north.

The challenge was to ensure readers caught a glimpse of a diamond beneath his gruff exterior by demonstrating that he instinctively does what’s right. He risks his life trying to rescue the astronauts from the Chinese lunar base. The fact that his corporate space company bosses ordered him not to attempt a rescue only strengthens his resolve.

At the opening of the book, he is a living fossil who feels the world has marched on without him, and not for the better. But once he finds renewed purpose as a leader, he opens himself to a surrogate family and rejoins the human race. The real turning point was the scene where he goes on a hunting trip with the Vikings and rediscovers the camaraderie that he’d lost but secretly yearned for.

FQ: There’s a lot of grief simmering under the action. How did you balance that emotional weight without letting it stall the pace of the story?

BURKE: I think we’re all defined by our scars, both inner and outer, and by the ghosts that travel with us. But those dark places in our soul are where potential greatness hides. From Greek myths to Viking sagas, all heroes must endure crippling loss and sadness before rising to a challenge. So, thanks to Homer, the recipe was already there. Thanks, Homer! The story’s eccentric time-tripping nature meant that each central character’s introduction was also their death scene. The emotional adjustment would have been very different if these characters had been plucked from the past in the prime of life. They would have felt violated, like hostages. The grim reality that nothing was lying ahead made their losses less emotionally crippling.

But the pacing was tricky. While I wanted to delve deeper into their psyches, I kept reminding myself that Doomsday Planet is, to an extent, pulp sci-fi, meaning the characters’ spiritual recovery and growth had to occur within scenes that drove the action forward, and (hopefully) ended with something blowing up. But those limitations were secretly a blessing. There are about 25,000 words of emotional scenes I had to slash or reincorporate in some truncated form. Reno was existing more than living, so the adventure renewed him. Olga, though only eighteen, had experienced enough death for a dozen lifetimes, including losing her family. Once she was assured that the Nazis had been defeated, meaning all those sacrifices hadn’t been in vain, she embraced her new destiny in the cosmos. The villainous Hugo Visser’s Kafkaesque metamorphosis (no spoilers) should have been tragic, but instead allowed him to find peace and happiness.

FQ: Pi was fascinating to me, kind of helpful but deeply unsettling. Was that blurry line between savior and manipulator something you aimed for from the start?

BURKE: I think a character that tinkers with time, life, and death is an unsettling concept. Pi is like a colonial era missionary, in that while his intentions may be sincere, the repercussions can be tragic for those “less evolved” creatures he manipulates. And, like a missionary, he doesn’t fully understand the culture he is interacting with, and often bungles the job. For example, any supply sergeant knows not to store all of the company’s foodstuffs in one location. Yet, despite his super intellect, Pi does precisely that, and as a result, his recruits nearly starve. His species thrives on being psychically linked to others of their kind, but he’s traveled far beyond such contact… so maybe that isolation has driven him a little bonkers.

As the story progressed, I chose to create Junior, his clone/alter ego, who travels with the humans to the surface. Junior’s interactions with humans challenge the preconceived notions he inherited from Pi. After mere days of human contact, Junior becomes a far more evolved creature than his father. If the Doomsday Planet saga continues, that personal growth might put the two very much at odds. Hey, I’d better write that one down!

FQ: The story plays a lot with free will, as in, how much of what the characters do is their choice vs what they’re being guided toward. Did writing this make you think any differently about control even in real life?

BURKE: I did reflect on that to a degree. We can all choose our destiny, but the modern world has certainly made that into sailing against the wind; you can still do it, but the constant zig-zagging it requires will consume your time and energy. The book’s secondary thread is that the diversity of the group, who are all from different cultures and eras, becomes their strength. That unity of purpose above personal differences is a superpower. These days, people willingly close themselves off, only interacting online with those who already share their beliefs, allowing those beliefs to become twisted. Intelligent discourse has been reduced to incoherent shouting matches and awkward Thanksgiving dinners. It inspired me to get out and widen my social contacts… by that I mean actual social contacts, not social media nonsense. And folks, please mention my book on your social media. My hypocrisy once again rears its pointy head.

FQ: That ending really walks the line between huge cosmic stakes and something very personal. Did you always know where you wanted it to land, or did it shift as you went deeper into the story?

BURKE: It evolved during the writing process. The more I wrote, the more attached to the characters I became, and I wanted to revisit them. As a result, many characters survive (I’m not saying which), leaving openings for more stories. Their experiences have changed every character, and they are about to become the lords of an entirely new planet. If the saga continues, I’ll be introducing actual historical characters into the mix, including Ueno Tsuruhime, who led a band of female samurai during Japan’s 16th century, Sengoku Period. Ancient Vikings interacting with a platoon of female samurai is a recipe for fun. Olga believes in a Marxist/Leninist classless society, so her relationship with a samurai leader who considers peasants to be little better than animals will be… precarious. Other alien species will take a sudden interest in Earth, and might even be capable of time travel. Oh, the places we’ll go… if the book catches on.

Thanks for conducting the interview, and thanks to those reading this for supporting my writing.