Cyborg Contact follows a cyborg ANT who travels through a wormhole to Earth on a diplomatic mission to reconnect with humans who once visited his world and bring them a warning. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Cyborg Contact is the fourth book in The Antunite Chronicles series. I originally intended the series to be a trilogy, with Antuna’s Story, The Rise and Fall of Antocracy, and Antunites Unite. The first three books were all published in 2022, and that was supposed to be the end of the story. Two things inspired me to write this much later installment. First, the political climate in the United States prompted me to write another political satire lampooning the current administration’s policies. Second, as a Metis author, I wanted to include a strong Indigenous main character in one of my novels. I had previously included quotes from Indigenous leaders and statements that reflected Indigenous lore. Still, since the stories took place on a planet and moon inhabited only by insects and insectoids, I could not include such a character. By bringing a cyborg insect from Bilaluna to Earth, my fourth book, Cyborg Contact, allowed me to achieve both these objectives.

What challenges came with writing Earth from the perspective of a nonhuman traveler?

As Cyborg Contact is a Cli-Fi story with stinging political satire, the biggest challenge was to determine just how far I and my main character could go with my intended messages. When writing a tale on another planet, the satirical elements told by aliens are metaphors, and the story’s allegorical nature softens the parody. But when you bring an alien to Earth to further spoof an administration’s political policies, lampooning can come across more as direct mockery. I tempered the ridicule by combining political satire with a highly adventurous story and by having my main character interact with multiple species on Earth, not just humans. My human-sized cyborg ANT first interacts with Earth insects, who see him as a god. Vigilantes and ICE agents later hunt him as the ultimate illegal alien. He adopts the name Dee, short for Dios, as the insects call him, and continues to meet various ant and other insect species who help him overcome obstacles he encounters along his way. But he also meets marginalized humans, particularly immigrant teens, and an Indigenous woman, who help him learn about Earth and human civilization as Dee takes a road trip from the Yucatan to the Yukon across a near-future, splintered America. Dee’s naivety and sense of wonder tone down events that might otherwise shock or enrage a more worldly individual, as he witnesses a civilization in political and environmental turmoil.

How do you hope readers respond to the environmental themes in the novel?

I hope readers will respond with urgency to the novel’s environmental themes, which illustrate the dire consequences if we do not alter current trends. And although some may see the novel as apocalyptic, the high levels of action, adventure, humor, and cross-species connections soften the story, making it not simply a tale of drought and devastation. There are hurricanes, droughts, flash floods, and forest fires, but there are also wondrous moments in lush green jungles, blue-green seas, and arctic-boreal forests. We see the magnificence that nature offers and how that beauty can be lost if not nurtured. We also see a contrast between Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, which reflects a measured stewardship of Earth’s environment, and a colonial civilization that has lost its way, both politically and in its overuse of our world’s precious resources.

Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?

I continue to be obsessed with dystopian stories that have environmental undertones. Still, after moving my Sci-Fi stories back to Earth, I plan to keep my feet grounded here while I tell my next story from a human perspective. However, the characters may spend some time at sea before they are Marooned (the working title for my new novel).
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