Yaroslav Barsukov is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and everything in between. His debut novella, Tower of Mud and Straw, was shortlisted for the Nebula Award. His short fiction appeared in Galaxy’s Edge (edited by the great, late Mike Resnick), Nature, and StarShipSofa, among others.

A graduate of both the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the Vienna University of Technology, he’s left one empire only to settle in another. He now lives in Vienna, Austria, and speaks Russian in the morning, German by day, and English by night.

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Welcome to the Hive, Yaroslav. Congratulations on your new novel, Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory! Can you tell us more about it? What can readers expect?

Thank you so much, Nils! Happy to be here!

Sleeping Worlds is a 300-page serving of fantasy with a noir topping, sprinkled with sci-fi elements. A bit of China Miéville, a bit of Ted Chiang, maybe a bit of Roger Zelazny. The novel was inspired by my own Nebula-nominated novella, Tower of Mud and Straw; and seeing as the novella has predicted the Russo-Ukrainian war down to a couple of months, I can wager Sleeping Worlds contains some visions of the future, too.

Your novel seamlessly blends together fantasy, sci-fi and political thriller in such clever ways. Was this an elaborate plan from the beginning or did the genres naturally blend as you began writing?

First of all, thank you! Second, if I were to answer the question truthfully, you’d probably think I’m crazy … Ah, what the heck, let’s do it anyway. See, I don’t feel like I’m inventing imaginary worlds. I never sit down at the keyboard before I know exactly what I’m going to write—this holds true for the novel’s outline, a chapter, a scene, even a paragraph. I focus, block out the external noise as much as possible, and the solution comes to me. Sometimes it happens immediately, sometimes in an hour. Sometimes, after a few days. But it’s always accompanied by this unmistakable feeling of a “click,” as if a jigsaw piece has slid into place.

Could it be that these stories really happened somewhere, and I’m just here to write them down? Some believed Lovecraft’s prose was real on a certain level.

Of course, this method of working isn’t new. I studied with the great guitarist Robert Fripp, the godfather of progressive rock and longtime David Bowie collaborator, and Fripp has this idea that silence in music is more important than whatever comes at either end of it. When you listen, the music happens. For those who subscribe to this philosophy, any true act of creativity is inherently passive.

Another way to answer the question is, hey, I simply happen to love all three: fantasy, sci-fi, AND political thrillers 🙂 Ultimately, what flows from your pen must resonate with your sensibilities as a reader.

One of my most favourite parts of Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory is that it uses a non-linear narrative structure as we explore memories, dreams, grief and regret in a fragmented way. Was this somewhat of a challenge to plot out? Were there any difficulties you had to overcome?

It wasn’t so much difficult to plot it out as it was to come up with enough material for the structure to work. The primary narrative thread is always rooted in the present, and for the past, I was interested in reflections and parallels—fragments that underline and enrich whatever is happening here and now. Some of these fragments came ready-made, right with the outline. For the rest, I had to strain a bit to “see” them.

You keep asking yourself, do I have enough of these secondary bits and pieces? Are they spread evenly across the narrative? When was the last time we saw this or that character—do we need more of her in between?

Shea Ashcroft, your main character, faces a lot of challenges in his political career as well as dealing with his own personal inner turmoil. Can you tell us what inspired his character and what drives him?

Regret and the pull of the past are prevalent themes in my work. Besides Sleeping Worlds and the novella that inspired it, I’ve published a bunch of short stories over the course of 2015—2019, and I think maybe a half of them are about that? I mostly live in the past. I dream of the river bank and the bridge my Dad and I used to cycle to. I read old gaming magazines from the 90s, watch old movies, play remakes of the games I used to play. I have this early YouTuber syndrome, even though I never was a YouTuber. Did you know they made a terrific remake of Riven? I digress. There’s a lot of me in Shea; even his political aspirations were modelled after my own fruitless attempts to build a successful career as a software engineer.

There’s a scene early in the novel where Shea has to word-fence with a group of politicians; it’s a long conversation, but I remember writing it in about ten minutes. I’m a slow writer, that kind of speed is a little unusual for me. So I’m sitting there thinking, What the hell? And then I realize that I just had one of those meetings—the other day at work.

And your other characters, Brielle and Lena. What inspired both of their personalities? 

Lena is a twist on the noir archetype of femme fatale, and as for Brielle, she’s partly modelled on my late grandmother. It was a tough lot for Grandma, growing up in Siberia in a family of ten. She’d always been the brightest, the most gifted, but her father had initially denied her the chance to attend college so that she could help raise her siblings. He later reversed his decision based on a single conversation. A single conversation, defining an entire life—can you imagine this?

Ok, here’s a question just for fun. Which of your characters would you choose to spend a day with and what would you do? 

Aidan! We’re both emigres, so I’d love to compare notes. “Look at me—I’m a Dumian. I’ll always remain a Dumian”—I think this line resonates strongly with all of us who had to leave behind our respective motherlands.

Aidan and I would probably head to the nearest pub. I’m ethnic Russian, and Aidan’s home country is based on the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, so he can hold his liquor. I’ll just need to make sure the dude doesn’t spike my drink.

Your novel actually began as a novella titled Tower of Mud and Straw. What made you want to develop it into a full length novel? Would you say your original novella has extensively changed?

Tower was always supposed to be part one of a larger work. I know a lot of people love saying such things in retrospect (probably crossing their fingers behind their backs), but here’s an excerpt from the outline I sent to B. Morris Allen, Tower’s editor and publisher, in December 2019: “Should a sequel be written, the hero would flee to [spoilers redacted] to escape prosecution for [spoilers redacted].”

Sadly, we never got to that sequel! Shortly after we’d received the Nebula nod, Morris folded his book-publishing operation. I was heartbroken. We were kindred spirits—he’s a beautiful writer in his own right. This year, he also pulled the plug on his magazine Metaphorosis. Such is our life; beauty has but a day and maybe a night. There’s still a part of me that wonders what could’ve been had we not parted ways …

As I mentioned before, an extended version of the novella now serves as the novel’s first half. 30% longer than the original, it’s a Director’s Cut—or The Final Cut, if we go by Sir Ridley’s terminology (man, I love Ridley Scott!). Tower was originally serialized, i.e., published as a series of novelette-sized chunks in four issues of Morris’s Metaphorosis Magazine. It was great fun—I felt like I was writing a TV show—but this approach also imposed severe restrictions on the structure. It had to be a maximum of four parts, each no longer than 10,000 words. I recall scribbling the outline for Part III in my yellow notebook, trying to figure out how many words I can spare for each scene. I guess TV writers and producers face the same hurdles …

Obviously, with the novel, there were no more limits!

One of the most fascinating aspects of your novel is the Owenbeg tower. How did its creation come about? Did you make sketches to fully visualise its structure? 

I work more with feeling and atmosphere than with precise descriptions. The appearance of structures and places in my stories is not so important to me as long as I can convey the impression they leave in my characters’ minds. As Chekhov once said, “you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star.” I don’t know why artists aren’t jealous of us writers—we have metaphors and epithets, shortcuts directly to the reader’s imagination.

As for inspiration, the Owenbeg Tower was born when I saw this picture by Chris Cold, called “Towers in Snow”:

Is this really a tower? Who knows. But it leaves the same impression the Tower in the novel is supposed to (“something vast, something dark, a stretch of an evening sky pasted onto midday”).

And those tiny orange dots—do you see now where the novel’s “flickers of tinder and embers of the little worlds” come from?

You’ve previously mentioned that a 3D print model of the tower which you had made is the same one used by the artist in the cover of your book. Can you tell us more about this? Were you heavily involved with the design process of the cover?

The illustration was done by a wonderful Indian artist called Dany VS from my sketch. I worked closely with him to ensure the dreamlike feel would translate from the page to the cover. I think he did a marvellous job: There’s a sunset, only it’s not really a sunset; the birds’ silhouettes are all twisted, and the left side of the tower looks incomplete, a mirror, a distortion.

A lot of art nowadays is digital: the scene is first 3D-rendered, with the artist painting over finer details afterwards. That was Dany’s approach here, too. The model that started it all is really beautiful, and I had 100 copies 3D-printed. Some of the people reading this have ‘em!

What’s next for you, Yaroslav? Can you tell us a little something about your current work(s) in progress? Have you any upcoming projects which you can share?

I’ve got a sequel to Sleeping Worlds outlined. After that ending, I’ll have to switch main characters—the continuation, should we ever get to it, will be from Brielle’s POV. The Woman in the Pomegranate Garden. Very often, sequels try to bring in completely new elements to push the story forward: an enemy twice as dangerous as the one that came before, an even bigger threat. I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in giving the world, say, ten years and seeing how it evolves naturally. Musketeers Twenty Years After, anyone?

We’ll just have to wait and see how well the book does. For now, I’m halfway through another novel; a different universe but the same undefinable mixture of genres—science fantasy / noir / just the right touch of Lovecraftian horror. The tentative title is “The Mandolin Teacher”; it’s about a mammoth railway bridge leading to a different world, an injured musician who’s forced to work as a music teacher, his quest to get his dexterity back, and his unexpected role in the larger, sinister events leading back to the death of the previous Emperor.

Are you planning anything fun to celebrate your new release? Do you have any upcoming virtual events our readers may be interested in?

Russians only know one way to celebrate 🙂 But yeah, there will be a virtual launch party on November 12 on the FanFiAddict’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@fanfiaddict ). I’d love to see y’all there!

Finally, what is the one thing you hope readers take away from your writing?

That there’s no inevitable reality except the one we choose willingly, through inaction, and that there’s always a way to change what is to come!

Thank you so much for joining us today!

Thank you so much for the wonderful questions, Nils—it was a pleasure!

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory is out 12th November – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org