Mur Lafferty is a writer, podcaster, and editor. Her works include the longest-running writing podcast (I Should Be Writing, est 2005), the novelization of Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick nominated Six Wakes. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she roots for the Bulls and tries to keep a sourdough starter alive. (She is a sourdough hipster because she was baking before the plague came and made it cool.)
Her next book Chaos Terminal, the second book of the Midsolar Murders, will come out on November 7, 2023.
If you were to create a superhero that had a weakness for something totally unexpected, like pickles or bubble wrap, what would it be and why?
My superhero would be weak when exposed to the chips in credit cards, and he always has to pay cash or check. And that suit doesn’t leave room for pockets. The way to defeat him would be to slap a stick with the “tap the chip” symbol on it, and anyone could bring him down with a credit card.
If you had to choose between being a cyborg or a hologram, which would you pick and why?
Hologram. Yeah, you can’t touch anything and you’re limited to the display of your… home? like a genie! And you can literally be turned off. But no one can harm or even capture you, and since this is my world, I’d say you have connection to all the computer files on the same server. Ah, hell, maybe the cyborg is better. But things would go wrong, and chafe, and I’d need rebooting, and I’d probably have the kind of parts that ONLY the dealer can replace, at a premium, and they have a waiting list anyway… Yeah, hologram.
If you were to write a story featuring yourself as the main character, what kind of adventure would you embark on?
I would be the person whose job it was to fill all the crates and barrels in fantasy games. A lot of stealth, and I hope no action. The adventure would be to not get eaten by bears and make sure i beat the hero to the chest to fill it, and make sure no one else opens it on accident, or if they had been mauled by bears. Only the hero gets that potion!
If you had to choose one of your books to be turned into a cheesy made-for-TV movie, which one would it be and who would you want to play the lead roles?
Shambling Guide to New York City, because I am amused by the idea of making Robert Pattinson play another vampire. Valerie Bertinelli must be Granny Good Mae because she must be in every TV movie. It’s the law. Zoe would be played by an actress almost but not quite as pretty as Kirsten Dunst. (it is a TV movie after all)
Which trope of science fiction (phasers, transporters, time machines, much more) would you like to see put into our own reality? And how would you use it in a mundane way?
Probably teleportation. I’d use it to go downstairs and get a drink when I’m writing. Or go to the grocery store in my slippers. Essentially I would use teleportation to be a big slob.
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