Malka Older: Perspective Shift

“I honestly didn’t realize until halfway into The Mimicking of Known Successes that it’s actually a postapocalyptic story. There’s a lot that’s melan­choly in it, and this terrible yearning for an Earth that these characters have never known, and for nature, and all these things they know they’re missing because they still have all this literature and art from Earth. But at the same time, they got a pretty sweet setup – it’s not that bad where they’re living, and they have a lot of good things going on. They have really rich lives: friends and concerts and academic research in a comfortable setting. They’ve got little cities that are interest­ing, and that people can go to see for fun. It’s kind of that contradiction of something that I really wanted to make really cozy and sweet, but it’s got this doom, too; this melancholy base note under it. Fortunately, by the time I figured that out, I was already very in the story and I was comfortable with things. I didn’t get too depressed in early 2021 trying to finish writing this. It was really a comforting thing for me to write, and I hope it becomes that for people reading it, too.

“I did consciously base it on Sherlock Holmes, to an extent, but more, really, on Sherlock Holmes reboots, because those are like catnip for me. I see Sherlock retellings and I’m like, ‘Yes, smash that button.’ I was really analyzing why that is, beyond the standard murder-mystery thing that I already mentioned. In addition to imprinting a little bit, young, on the Laurie King & Mary Russell Sherlock Holmes series – the first three books especially are really great – it also has a lot to do with the dynamic of a duo that’s working together, who have brains that work in very different ways. And yet, they come to a way of working together that makes sense for both of them.

Read the full interview with Malka Older in the May 2024 issue of Locus.