Fate of the Helios: Over the Edge follows the crew of the Helios, who survived a catastrophic mission and are now stranded beyond familiar space, facing an enemy far stranger than anything their military prepared them to fight. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

As a whole, the story was inspired by the idea of what is the worst thing one could witness when staring into an abyss (what is eventually found in the cave). When peering down into the open ocean, or looking up into the vastness of space, it’s easy to feel insignificant, which in turn makes us lose our sense of control. This danger response, that fear of the unknown was the main catalyst of the story. There is a literal valid response to what Lieutenant Andrews finds, but much like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, discovering that your reality may not have been what you thought it was (even if that fact can’t bring you direct harm) would send most of us unable to live our lives normally, and would spiral any futures we may have sought into oblivion.

How did you develop Lieutenant Lauren Andrews and her relationship with military service, and what do Ortaga, Roth, Henderson, and the other crew members reveal about different attitudes toward service and loyalty?

Often the fate of the son, and the fate of their sons (especially in royalty) is to keep the family name alive and prospering so that ancestral legacy can continue. Andrews, as a daughter of a dying family-name has no stake in this ideology. She finds that life within protected walls holds no purpose, leaving it behind to join the UEC, which in this story is the only true established institution to rise in society. Roth and Ortaga both share similar goals having been born within the system, and simply want to do their part, not being overly drawn to the UEC but rather existing in it. Henderson however is a bureaucrat, loyal to a fault, invested to only further his interests no matter what it costs. And there’s Daniels, former resistance fighter, natural born like Andrews but coming from slums. Giving into temptations of the UEC for a better life instead of battling it, only to find that the grass isn’t greener, that only bloodshed secures power when paranoid diplomacy fails.

How does humanity’s treatment of unfamiliar civilizations reflect the novel’s larger themes, and what happens to humanity’s confidence in its own importance when characters encounter forces beyond human understanding?

I wanted the theme of mortal Godhood present throughout this story. The UEC harnessed power beyond their means, they created and exterminated artificial-life like the first-generation Helot on the book’s cover, they named their ships after Greek mythology to establish that mechanical deities loom over throughout the stars at all times, all in efforts to show that humanity’s reach into the cosmos was an accession into the dark-heavens above, and a testament of their self-proclaimed superiority. While many worlds were found with alien life (several of which were incredibly dangerous) only Sighten held a real direct threat to Earth because of their technological and biological advancements. The UEC could not tolerate their neutrality, accepting only to partner with them, conquer them, or destroy them. When Godhood has been ingrained in humanity for so long they see it as their right to decide who is allowed to exist. Ultimately their hubris was not prepared for what controls universal fate, and only a portion of the Helios crew temporarily witnessed divinity in its unthinkable true form.

What do you hope readers discover beneath the novel’s battles, technology, alien creatures, and horror?

It’s my belief that the only reason Earth and humanity will find lasting peace is from an outside threat. Recently in our world, many nations had to work together to find a solution to a pandemic only to continue with multiple wars a short time after, and even now years later we face a world of AI-doomsday speculation. In the book, planet Sighten may, or may not have been an actual threat to Earth, but their existence was enough to justify a global unification. The world of the UEC is in no way a utopian society, but rather a necessary one forced upon us. If anything I want readers to take away that in the vastness of space our warring issues on Earth are trivial in comparison to what may reach us someday. That when you go searching for answers you may not be ready for the truth, or be able to comprehend them. And lastly, our neighbors are not as different as you think, we all want to keep our families safe, we all want happiness, that our differences rarely outweigh our similarities, and that someday in the future one of our descendants could make contact with alien life, how we treat each other in the now will be a template for how we treat them. Will it be with a handshake, or will it be with a bomb?

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