Q&A With James Bow 

Mickey Mikkelson connected me with author James Bow who is a science fiction and fantasy author. James’ new novel The Sun Runners is available to read now wherever books are sold! 

Q: James, would you please give a brief description of The Sun Runners? Where did the idea for The Sun Runners come from?

A: The Sun Runners is a story about the colonies that Earth sets up across the inner solar system and what happens when Earth succumbs to the environmental catastrophe of climate change, leaving those colonies in various states of self-sufficiency or, in the case of Mercury, not. The story follows Lieutenant Adelheid Koning on Mercury at the start of the silence who has to make hard choices and face some cold equations as her world succumbs to starvation and the breakdown of order, ending up wearing a wrought-iron crown as queen of one of the latitude-towns of Mercury, constantly moving forward to keep ahead of the Sun. Fifty years later, Adelheid’s granddaughter Frieda is a princess who would rather be an engineer. Her dreams are shattered when a suspicious accident takes her left arm and part of her right hand, and her life is turned upside down when that same accident kills her mother, Queen Beatrix. Frieda is left a young and vulnerable queen, butting heads with her grandmother Adelheid, who is now dowager and regent.

When the Earth comes back and contacts Mercury after fifty years of silence, Frieda wants to end her planet’s isolation, but Adelheid is suspicious of the Earth’s motives, and wary of the other cities’ desire to accept all that the Earth is offering without question. Is it wise to hope for healing? Or are we forever defined by what we do in the dark?

I hope that’s brief enough for you.

The initial spark of The Sun Runners was the first sentence, which materialized at the start, and remained largely intact: “For as long as she could remember, Her Highness the Crown Princess Frieda Koning had wanted to be an engineer”. I just liked the idea of somebody of such standing wanting to be more down to earth, so to speak. I was also inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel 2312, which had a city on Mercury called Terminator which moved on rails to keep on the dark side of the planet, avoiding the intense light of the Sun. Exploring Frieda’s world and asking questions eventually expanded the universe to what you see in The Sun Runners, and its companion anthology Tales from the Silence.

Q: I enjoy reading fantasy and some science fiction. What do you enjoy most about writing in the science fiction & fantasy genres? What lessons & emotions do you hope readers feel after reading The Sun Runners? 

A: I like being able to do big things in science fiction and fantasy. This is why I’m a fan of Doctor Who and Star Trek; there’s no limit to the places you can go or the things you can do. It’s also an opportunity to come across various themes from different angles. The Sun Runners is about intergenerational trauma, the cost of survival, and the necessary risks of hope. It’s about learning about your privilege, even when you’re in a desperate or difficult situation, about working towards your dreams regardless of your obstacles, and the dangers and difficult responsibilities of leadership.

Q: Are you currently writing a sequel to The Sun Runners, or will the next book be another standalone novel or the beginning of a new series?

A: The Sun Runners has spawned a universe. There are human colonies on Venus, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and even scientific research stations on the Jupiter Moons when the Earth falls silent. That’s the basis for the anthology of Tales from the Silence, where I get other authors to explore those worlds. I am also working on a companion novel that explores life on Venus and Mars entitled The Cloud Riders. The book is like an interplanetary Country Mouse/City Mouse, where a Martian comes to visit Venus and has adventures, and the Venusian main character follows that Martian back to Mars, so we get to see two very different planets from her eyes. That book hasn’t been accepted for publication yet, but I’m hopeful it may see print in 2026. 

Q: If The Sun Runners were to become a movie or a series, who would be your dream cast to play the characters you created?

A: I haven’t really thought about casting Frieda. One thing I’ve found with how slowly the book industry and the movie industries move is that anybody I envision now to play a 17-year-old would, at the very least, be in their mid-to-late twenties by the time they could take on the role. I strongly suspect that if I were so lucky as to have The Sun Runners adapted for a movie or a series, the actress playing Frieda would have to be a relative unknown, and hopefully this would be her big breakout role.

I did envision Maggie Smith playing the older Adelheid, but sadly she’s passed away.