We’re celebrating the launch of CROOKED V.3 by spotlighting the authors who have contributed stories!
Mark Teppo divides his time between Portland and Sumner, and he tends to navigate by local bookstore positioning. He writes historical fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, and has published more than a dozen novels. If he’s writing a mystery, he’s pretending to be Harry Bryant.
He also runs Underland Press, an independent publishing house.
Twitter: @markteppo
Instagram: @mark.teppo
Website: markteppo.com
Tell us a bit about your story “The Alshaita Uplift Job”
The Maisiverse (as Jessie and I have come to call it) is an evolving SF-nal universe where I’m building out an environment for a Leverage-style team to do some good. Or break things. It can be hard to tell the difference at times. The known galaxy is a collection of trade houses which are all backstabbing each other as they attempt to corner a portion of the galactic market. These Houses are shackled by a complex accord that everyone agreed to follow after a period of history where tyranny and cold-blooded machine intelligences ruled. Lots of opportunities for cold bureaucracy, clever machinations, and ancient tech that might swing power one way or another.
What was the inspiration behind this story?
Equal parts Frank Herbert’s Dune, Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, and John Rogers’s Leverage TV show. Costume design and architectural aesthetics by Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Philippe Druillet, because I have a soft spot for late 20th century French SF graphic novels.
If you could travel to any science fictional world, where would you go and what would you do?
I really liked the world design in Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. I wouldn’t mind taking a six-world cruise through that universe.
What are some of your favorite sci-fi crime books or stories?
I do enjoy Banks’s Culture novels, when I can get my brain wrapped around them. They always feel like small scale thrillers, until the layers get peeled back and you get a hint of the larger philosophical and existential conceits being knotted and unknotted.
On the flip side, I also have a soft spot for M. John Harrison’s The Centauri Device, because it is such a piss-take on the core “this is SF” framework that propelled much of early 20th century SF, much in the same way that Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories were meant to be a parody of Robert E. Howard’s Conan style of epic fantasy.
Also, Mick Herron is a goddamn genius. The Slough House books are staggeringly good. He’s the only writer whose next book I eagerly await.
What authors have inspired your writing?
All of the above as well as Umberto Eco, Donald Westlake (and Richard Stark), and Jack O’Connell.
What are you working on next?
I’m finishing up some special editions of my Night Office books (Lovecraftian pick your own terrible death novels), and I feel like next year might be a good time to sink into something. Maybe I’ll hop a ride on the Sparrow and see what sort of trouble Maisi and her team are going to get into . . .
CROOKED V.3
