Brandon Nolta is a writer, editor, and professional curmudgeon living in the boonies of north Idaho, which is really saying something.
After earning a B.Sc. in math and an MFA in fiction, he went slightly mad. That didn’t go anywhere, so he gave it up and started working for respectable companies again, which he still does to pay for his hobbies of eating regularly and having the lights on.
His fiction and poetry have appeared in Stupefying Stories, The Centropic Oracle, New Myths, Amazing Stories, and a cacophony of other publications. His third book with Montag Press, No Refuge, escaped into the wild in November 2024, following the 2015 novel Iron and Smoke and the 2020 collection These Shadowed Stars. He is a member of the HWA, SFWA, and Codex, and belongs to a few other organizations as well, but you probably wouldn’t have heard of them.
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?
Impeccable grammar in both the written and spoken word; said hero would be invincible just about everywhere but Gotham City, which has a ridiculously high number of supervillains with post-graduate education.
If you could have any magical power, but it came with a ridiculous side effect, what would the power be and what would the side effect be?
I’d be a healer whose power extended to all ailments, whether physical or mental/psychological. I’ve become convinced that while superstrength, flight, telekinesis, and so on would be cool (and certainly look cool on the silver screen), anybody who was really interested in keeping people safe and preventing wholesale supervillain carnage would become a healer. Done right, it could become the greatest game of pay-it-forward ever known. For a ridiculous side effect, it would have to be itchy feet: not debilitating, but annoying out of all proportion, especially if the itch was centered like a centimeter into the arch of the foot, so surface scratching did no good.
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’d be miffed; I already know how the story goes, so why would I bother? I suppose I could have the pleasure of occasionally re-reading my work and enjoying a turn of phrase I’d forgotten, as long as I didn’t have to worry about cringing over a line of dialogue that rang like lead in the ear or a fact I’d gotten wrong (these things do happen, no matter how much one tries to avoid it).
If you could time travel to any point in history, which era would you choose, and why?
I’d want to visit the Library of Alexandria about 150 BCE, before it started to go downhill, and see if it was really all that. Of course, I’d need to spend a few years learning ancient Greek, Latin, and possibly Sumerian first. Failing that, I’d go to the UK in the 1975-1978 era and see if I could catch Led Zeppelin at their height.
If you had to survive in a fantasy world with only the contents of your fridge, what would be your game plan?
Probably try and find a weapon to defeat the monstrosity that would undoubtedly emerge from the fridge if transported to a magical realm. I do not clean that appliance out nearly enough.
If you could travel to any alternate universe where a different version of yourself exists, what do you think your other self would be like?
I’d like to think an alternate me would be more disciplined and hopefully more successful, or at least more productive. However, I can’t shake the idea that he (or maybe she, or they; it’s the multiverse, anything goes) would just be a lazier jerk than I already am.
If you had to choose between fighting 100 duck-sized robots or one robot-sized duck, which would you pick and why?
A robot-sized duck, without a doubt. I’ve got enough bread on hand to choke out even a large duck, and assuming the robot acts like a duck, that would give me a leg up. Of course, it depends on what kind of duck was included in its programming. If it thinks it’s a Muscovy, I’ll need a big stick; those things are mean as hell.
If you had to choose between being a time traveler or a space explorer, which would you pick and why?
Time traveler; go far enough into the future, you’ll either see the end of humanity and the rise of whatever (if anything) is next, or you’ll see humanity hit the road to the stars, at which point you can hitch a ride. Plus, who doesn’t want to go back in time and solve some mysteries? Where did Judge Crater go? What happened to the folks on board the Mary Celeste? How many crabs ate Amelia Earhart? There’s a lot of curiosity I’d like to slake.
If you could have any sci-fi gadget in real life, what would it be and what practical uses would you have for it?
I’d like Doctor Who’s psychic paper; that stuff will get you into more places than even the sonic screwdriver. I doubt I’d do anything practical with it, because that’s not how I roll, but I’d have some fun.
If aliens were to visit Earth, what do you think their first impression of humans would be?
I imagine they’d feel the same way about us as we’d feel about any household animal that kept pooping in its own bed.
If you could have scripted Stanley Kubrick’s Moon landing hoax, how would it differ from the original?
I’d have had a lunar sinkhole take out the lander and the astronauts; if we’re going to hoax it up for one of the century’s defining moments, I don’t want people asking the folks about it later and maybe cracking them under pressure. Might have to put them in witness protection for the rest of their lives, but if you’re going to do something as monumentally silly as pull a hoax for the most watched event in human history, you ought to commit to the bit.
If you were secretly an alien visitor to the Earth, why are you here?
You try changing your propulsion element outside of a gravity well, see how you like it.
Define “Science Fiction” as Damon Knight did (“What we’re pointing to when we say ‘Science Fiction'”), but without using your finger.
A narrative that uses a scientific development, process, or potential future creation to tell a story that extends or departs from known reality and/or history in a way that the story does not function without the speculative scientific element.
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As of November 6 (what timing!), my latest book, No Refuge, is available for purchase through the usual online suspects; chock full of nourishing SF, fantasy, horror, and even a crime fiction tale or two, it’s a book for the easily bored, because most of those stories are short. If you like ‘em, there’s more! If you don’t, skip to the next one! Those same usual suspects also sell my previous collection, These Shadowed Stars, and my debut novel, Iron and Smoke, a weird Western with touches of Lovecraftian cosmic horror and even a hard SF idea or two. All these are available through my Amazon page, as well as other publications I’ve managed to squirm into, but you can buy through BN.com and Bookshop.org as well.
Steve Davidson is the publisher of Amazing Stories.
Steve has been a passionate fan of science fiction since the mid-60s, before he even knew what it was called.
