In Conversation: On A River Called Time: A Novel & The Ninth Metal

Benjamin Percy is the author of three story collections; Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction; and five novels – The Unfamiliar Garden, The Dark Net, The Dead Lands: A Novel, Red Moon: A Novel, The Wilding: A Novel, and, most recently, The Ninth Metal (Mariner). He also writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire, where he is a contributing editor; GQ; Time; Men’s Journal; The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times; and The Paris Review. In The Ninth Metal, what begins as a celestial marvel becomes a planetary crisis. A meteor shower brings to Earth a new metal – an “omnimetal” that possesses world-changing properties as an energy source and a weapon – to Northfall, Minnesota. Soon, the town’s iron-ore dynastic family finds itself in a cutthroat war for the mineral rights and mining operations, as foreign leaders, competing corporations, and the U.S. government all vie for control. It’s a high-stakes, modern-day gold rush. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, praised it as “Wildly entertaining and highly original mélange of northern Minnesota lore and slam-bang near-future SF action … Percy’s dead-on local color, strong central characters, and well-integrated flashbacks into the making of a modern samurai will delight and entertain both comics fans and serious science fiction readers.”

Courttia Newland is the author of seven novels, including The Gospel According to Cane. He has won the Roland Rees Bursary for playwriting, and co-written two episodes of the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe. In A River Called Time: A Novel (Akashic Books), a massive structure known as the Ark dominates the city center of Dinium – an alternative London – that promised a utopian existence. But although it was built to save the lives of the many, it rapidly became a refuge for the elite. The story, said Kirkus, “is an ambitiously imagined book that, by removing the European lens on African cultures, creates a new reality that allows us to question how we view our own.” Cosmogramma (Akashic Books), Newland’s first collection of speculative fiction, imagines an alternate future as lived by the African diaspora. Kill parties roam post-apocalyptic streets; a matriarchal race of creatures depends on interbreeding with mortals to survive; and mysterious seeds grow into the likeness of people in their vicinity. Publishers Weekly noted that “Newland easily engages readers with complex world-building, well-shaded characters, and stories as entertaining as they are meaningful. It’s no small feat to so immediately and repeatedly appeal to readers’ hearts and minds, and Newland’s mastery of short-format storytelling is sure to impress. Speculative fiction fans won’t be able to put this down.”

Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, including The Ecstatic, Big Machine: A Novel, The Devil in Silver: A Novel, and The Changeling, and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the creator and writer of two comic books series, Destroyer and Eve.