I never meant to write a science-fiction novel.
In the early incarnations of The Rebellion’s Last Traitor—which was called Mount Joy at that point in a strange homage to the beautifully melancholic Pygmy Lush album Mount Hope—the book was very much dystopian. I was still at the point in my writing career where I figured it wouldn’t be worth reading if it weren’t dark, depraved, and depressing. The kernel story-idea was the same, but the setting was inspired by post-Katrina New Orleans, but really, really hot and without any rain. (Remember what I said about depressing?) That aside, I thought it was a great story about friends and family and friends who are family, with a healthy dose of revolution and betrayal mixed in. I thought it was the best thing I’d written so far.
So when I queried my now-agent with the book, I was a little taken back when she said Yeah, it’s cool, but I’m not so sure about all the dystopia. The Hunger Games already did that, and it’s a little too allegorical to the US. What do you think about making it sci-fi? (I’m paraphrasing here.)
No, I thought. I can’t. I’ve never written sci-fi before. Some of my earlier short stories were more slipstream, realism threaded through with some fantastical elements, but I don’t know the first thing about sci-fi. I—admittedly—didn’t read much sci-fi outside of Star Wars and some Richard K. Morgan. I knew it was more than future worlds and holograms and self-driving cars, but I didn’t know what contemporary sci-fi was. I don’t even have that good of an imagination.
Still, this was my chance with a great agent, so I said, Totally, I’ll definitely do that. Just, like, set it in the future and add some holograms and self-driving cars?
After a brief panic attack, I reached out to a couple friends for book recommendations. In the process of researching though, I kept coming back to the preachy part. Although the book is, at its core, a story of friendship, it’s also shot through with leftist politics—ones that are, unfortunately, incredibly prescient at the moment (but that’s a whole different essay). Getting rid of that would change the whole book, so the question became how to temper it so it didn’t read like a conversation you’d hear between freshmen who just discovered Che Guevera, but still retain the essence. The answer soon became apparent.
The thought pattern was easy: Sci-fi books have weird names, so why not change Henrik to Henraek? And since Henrik was homage to Henrik Larsson (a legendary striker for the Scottish football club Celtic FC) and his rival Walleus harkened back to the Rangers FC manager Jock Wallace, why not just move the book from an amorphous US setting to an amorphous UK setting? And, hey, doesn’t a lot of the scrappy rebels fighting an empire to take back their country resemble the Easter Uprising of 1916 and the fight for Irish independence, so why not model the rebel force’s hierarchy on that? And since you read a ton of Celtic and Nordic mythology when you were younger because you had no friends, what about pulling in the Morrigan and the legend of Cúchulainn and the Tuatha Dé Danann and and and? (But, you know, change the spellings.)
From there, it just became a sprint. The world around the characters shifted and filled in as I wrote. The buildings seemed to cant differently, the sky took on a different hue. All of the chemical burns and bombing-related deformities felt organic and part of life of this city instead of me thinking, Well, there should be some gnarly injuries because the ruling Tathadann party are obviously bad people. Life in the city presented itself to me instead of me constructing neighborhoods block by block. Even the distant cities that are only briefly mentioned, like Vårgmannskjør (guess which mythology that came from), had some sort of history to me.
Looking back, the path seems obvious; in reality, it took nearly a month of reading Wikipedia and reference books at the library and watching documentaries on YouTube. But drawing on these mythological figures imbued the book—for me, at least—with a certain sense of authenticity, some kind of otherworldliness. It’s still gritty and dirty and choked with smoke, but it’s definitely not New Orleans. Nor is it Glasgow, or Belfast. It’s Eitan City, the capital of Westhell County, the largest county in Ardu Oéann.
But most importantly, for Henraek Laersen and Walleus Blaí, it’s home.
After decades of war, the brutal Tathadann Party restored order in Eitan City by outlawing the past in order to rewrite history. Memory became a commodity – bought and sold, and experienced like a drug.
For ten years, Henraek and Walleus led a people’s rebellion, until Walleus recognized what the others couldn’t: the Struggle was doomed. He joined the Tathadann, and Henraek, hurt and angry, incited a riot that killed his own wife and son.
Now Henraek works as a Tathadann memory thief, draining citizens’ memories while mourning his family. The people call him a traitor to his face; Tathadann spies whisper he’s a traitor behind his back. Walleus protects Henraek, but Henraek knows that loyalty has its limits.
Then everything changes when Henraek harvests a memory of his wife’s death. He will do whatever it takes to learn the truth – even if it means burning Eitan City to the ground.
Nik Korpon is the author of several books, including The Soul Standard and Stay God, Sweet Angel. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children.
