Alexander Zelenyj is the author of the books Blacker Against the Deep Dark, Songs for the Lost, Experiments at 3 Billion A.M., Black Sunshine, and others. A compendium of his work, These Long Teeth of the Night: The Best Short Stories 1999-2019, was released by Fourth Horseman Press. His most recent book is Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, available in hardcover edition from Eibonvale Press and in trade paperback and digital editions from Manta Press.
Zelenyj lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada with his wife and their many animals.
Visit him online at alexanderzelenyj.com.
If you had to survive on a deserted planet with only three items from your own house, what would they be and how would you use them to survive?
If we can cheat and say that “objects” includes living creatures, I would say: 1) my dog, Daisy; 2) my semi-feral cat, Dune; and 3) my decidedly un-feral cat, Captain Janeway. Daisy, being less ferocious than she believes she is (she is a 15-lbs Dachshund-Papillon mix), is a very good guard dog, who would warn me of approaching danger. Dune, being the most ferocious animal on the planet Earth, would take over from there and eradicate any and all threats on the alien world in question. Captain Janeway would offer me comfort and solace in my plight because, like her Star Trek: Voyager namesake, she would represent a lost captain and her crew surviving a hostile universe as they try to find their way home.
If you could choose any real-life celebrity to make a cameo appearance in one of your books, who would it be and why?
The actress Mila Kunis actually does get an honourable mention-type of appearance in my weird SF-fantasy story, “Love-Goggles 1966”, from my new collection, Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator. The same story also makes mention of Kurt Russell, Lance Henriksen, Meg Ryan, and Bruce Willis. Why, you ask? It’s really rather too hard to explain. It does all make perfect sense within the context of the story, though, I promise.
If you could have any fictional pet as a companion, what would it be and why?
It would be a tie between two fictional pets:
First, K9 Mark II, from the Doctor Who television series. I would choose the second incarnation of the Doctor’s robotic canine companion because it was more sophisticated than the original version, with a heightened ability to sense danger. A human needs their (guard) dog!
Second, Blood the telepathic dog from Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and his Dog stories. Why? Because a telepathic dog.
If you had to live on a spaceship with one fictional character for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?
I would choose to be cybernetically fused to the K-ship, the White Cat, from M. John Harrison’s novel, Light. Symbiotically linked and being more than a match for any other spacefarer we might potentially encounter, we would travel through space unhindered, seeing what there is to see.
Name the strangest/weirdest place you’ve ever written. What made it so odd?
When I was a student at the University of Windsor, I would often walk home from campus to where I lived downtown and, occasionally, the muse would arrive somewhere along the thirty-minute journey. One time was more memorable than other times, when an idea arrived almost fully-formed—I took out a pen and scrap of paper from my jacket pocket and started jotting down notes as I walked. I can’t remember for sure but I suspect that particular walk took much longer than usual because by the time I arrived at my place I had the skeleton of the story written out across a number of receipts, movie ticket stubs, and other assorted scraps of paper. I fired up my laptop and started working from those notes and by the end of the night I had a first draft finished. The story was called “Blacker Against the Deep Dark”, and it would go on to be published a few times, most notably as the title story of my third collection, published by Eibonvale Press.
I’ve made “mobile notes” like this more than a few times, though on that particular occasion it worked out pretty nicely. When the muse shows up, all else must take the back seat.
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?
Transporters, for use in instantaneous delivery of life essentials: books, groceries, kitty litter, etc. More efficient and ethically sound than Amazon!
If you could time travel to any point in history, which era would you choose, and why?
The decade of the 1980s. This was the decade of my childhood and, being the nostalgic person that I am, I would revel in reliving it all (though ideally with the knowledge I have accrued as an adult). There was just so much to enthral a kid: from the barbarian-fantasy comics on the racks at the convenience store (the various Conan titles, Elfquest, Arak: Son of Thunder and Warlord, to name a few) to the magazines (Fangoria, Gore Zone, Starlog) to the countless genre movies (far too many to name, but of them all, John Carpenter’s The Thing stands at the very top of the list) to the music (whether heavy metal—Iron Maiden—or New Wave—the Cure—or rock—R.E.M.—it was a wealth of greatness) to the books, far too many to go into but it always seemed to me that the local Coles bookstore had an endless supply of titles from the new-at-the-time to those stretching back through the 1970s, ‘60s, ‘50s, etc., a treasure trove for the young spec fic fan to unearth. I still have all my Ace and Del Rey PBs that I paid for with my allowance money, and the idea of being able to go back, to walk into that bookstore again during that time, to relive the magic of seeing for the first time Frank Frazetta’s cover artwork for the Robert E. Howard Conan series, and feeling it call to me so strongly…Yes, I’d set the time machine to January 1, 1980 and live every second of the ensuing decade to its fullest.
If you were stranded on a deserted planet with only one book to read, but it turned out to be one of your own, how would you feel?
I would feel certain that life was just a great cosmic joke…and that the joke was on me!
Alexander Zelenyj’s newest book is Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, available in hardcover edition from Eibonvale Press and available for pre-order in trade paperback and eBook from Manta Press (the Manta Press editions will be published on April 24th, 2025).
You can find the author here:
Instagram: deathrayzelenyj
X: @AZelenyj
