Unexpected Questions With Nick Mamatas

The book would be the least of my problems! A deserted planet?! That means that at one point the planet did have a population, and it left. What level of technology allowed for that evacuation—or mass kidnapping? What did they eat? Can I eat it? What am I wearing? Will I have a planet full of silver lamé jumpsuits in various sizes to choose from? Were they spider-people and will I have four extra sleeves flapping in the wind? Are there skyscrapers? Nuclear power plants with nobody to maintain them? Did the evacuees take all their deadly diseases with them? My book! You ask me about my book!!

I’d choose Sabbath, which indeed was a work-for-hire novel I wrote in the hope that some TV network or film studio would be interested in the associated, if very obscure, intellectual property. It is about an 11th century knight, inexplicably named Hexen Sabbath, who is brought to the present by a self-proclaimed angel to kill the personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins. I think a cheesy 70s Movie of the Week would be great: Jack Black as Sabbath; Natasha Lyonne as his love interest, the art gallery owner Jennifer Zelenova; Jay Pharoah doing his Donald Trump impression as the sin of Pride; and the angel Abathar would be Marty Feldman, back from the dead thanks to the power of CGI.

Not a joke answer: the wonderful TWA Hotel inside JFK airport. It’s the former TWA Flight Center with its amazing Eero Saarinen design, updated but still retrofuturistic. Five hundred rooms including Howard Hughes suites, perfect location (inside the airport so travel is easy) conference rooms, a nice gym, and an airplane to hang out in for cocktails. It’s not big enough for a Worldcon or anything, but a Lunacon/HELIOsphere-sized New Yorkish con would be great for it!

Le Voyage dans la Lune, with Terry Gilliam in his prime, or Wes Anderson, and without a single adaptation toward anything we’ve learned of either science or filmmaking since 1902, except of course synchronized sound and color. Same sets, same tech, same costume, same goofy story, highly, exquisitely stylized wide shots retaining the sense of a proscenium, but with Jason Schwartzman or Adam Driver in it.

Yes, years ago I was dinged for file sharing by the RIAA and had to negotiate a settlement. I wrote about this in an article called “Meet John Doe” for the Village Voice back in 2005. Anyway, one reason my friend, a lawyer, was able to negotiate a very low settlement was that he explained to the RIAA’s legal beagle that his client, me, was a writer, and of course had no money.

Thanks for reading! I’ve published a lot of short stories this past year, including “That City You Visit in Dreams Sometimes” in the special horror issue of McSweeney’s. (#71, guest-edited by Brian Evenson). But if you want something for free, dear readers, you can listen to Margaret Killjoy read my short story “The Flair” on Cool Zone Media Book Club at this link. The second day of 2024 saw my first publication of the year: “Empty Your Cup, or Dry It?” appears in Weird World War III: China, edited by Sean Patrick Hazlett.