Posted on August 22, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi
The room is unimaginably large – and for some people it’s a feature, not a bug. AZ Rozkills understands this and that the desire for space in more than one sense of the term is something that motivates the story behind Space Station X.
AZ ROZKILLS:
I’ll be honest, what motivated me to wade into the absolute madness of writing an entire novel was the desire for more lesbian science fiction, but that alone doesn’t produce good results. When I wrote Space Station X, as someone who doesn’t have “literary” or “author” or “writing” anywhere on her list of past accolades (outside of neglected academia), I needed to draw from some very deeply personal experiences and simply find a way to put these experiences. on the page. Therefore, without even realizing it, the big idea of my whole story is “What makes people run away?”
I’m sure many people are no strangers to wanderlust and the idea that picking up and disappearing is the solution to all your problems. It’s something that I personally was allowed to drive myself across the country in my twenties. I guarantee that at some point, if it were possible, I would absolutely have taken a rocket ship to the edge of the universe to feel like I had left everything far enough behind. Part of that desire was depression, part of it was discovering what it really meant to share the world with other people, and part of it was just being young and stupid instead of actually seeing my mistakes in the eyes and learn from them.
At its core, my book has two characters who are clearly in each other’s orbit. But they have also, amazingly, chosen for their own reasons to isolate themselves in an incredibly hostile situation. I’ve had people ask me, “what’s space station X like? Why should I visit there?” and the answer is “oh you do not would like to visit there.” And that’s the point. It’s a desolate and lonely place with little changing from day to day, and a fine line between feeling like your own fortress of solitude and feeling oppressive and suffocating from the realization that by the time someone comes to save you, your screams will have long since stopped echoing through the room.
So why do naked want to stay at that station longer than they absolutely need to? Jax, the main character, thinks she has a pretty good reason, and she’s been there for over a decade. I really had to pull myself away from my own insistence on disappearing thousands of miles further and further from what I originally called home. I had to pull myself away from that feeling of “I deserve this. It’s atonement for my mistakes, and if I can make it work, so far from something I recognize, maybe I’m worth something after all.” ”
It’s pretty grim. But when I was 23, I felt it was true. I felt ostracized and excommunicated from social groups I had once been close to, and I thought I should run. So I took jobs and signed up for classes that took me from one coastline to the next until everyone I loved was 3 time zones and a 6 hour flight away. And then I went and made the same mistakes again.
The thing is, I’m sure a lot of people in the queer community can relate to some of this, but what I had to realize, wrapped up in my own self-loathing, was that some people I met with similar stories had far more pressing reasons to feel the same way I did. The rejection and ostracism they had experienced that forced them to flee their families was very raw and really, compared to what I realized in my case, were simply bad friendships blown out of proportion. In short, I realized that I was unbearable. Then I realized my reasons are my reasons and that’s okay with me. So I made my characters experience this as well.
Jax has her reasons for feeling justified in her isolation. She puts her own suffering on a pedestal and uses it as an excuse for her poor social behavior. She does it because I did it. I spent years believing I was a victim of some pretty awful interactions with acquaintances I thought I could trust. And I had to contend with the fact that in my equal rejection of them, I pushed away almost everyone else who might actually have cared for me. Which is a lot like how Jax pushes Saunders away.
But what about Saunders? She represents my lighter side, who I want could have been through all these experiences, but she also represents the people I met who gave me perspective. Saunders has what many people would consider a very real reason why she’s on this shitty can of a space station, millions of miles from any other sign of humanity. And it’s almost a wonder she even has patience with Jax and her self-absorbed, insufferable actions. But in my own sprint across the nation, mirrored by Jax’s sprint across the galaxy, I also found people who cared enough about me not to belittle my seemingly young reasons for running. In fact, I met people who still gave me credibility for my reasons. Which I appreciated years later when I finally matured enough to gain that perspective.
So while I may have set out to simply do my part to add to the hopefully growing pile of lesbian-centric science fiction horror, I think I ended up writing a personal examination of who I was when I was younger and how I dealt with issues like romantic rejection, loss of trust in my friendships and personal ability to assess my place in a community. The good news is that I think I’ve come full circle, back to a place where I can be open and understand that my reasons and someone else’s reasons are still worthwhile as long as it makes our lives more viable .
Therefore, it’s only fair to assume that while Jax and Saunders both have deeply personal reasons for willingly consuming themselves in the darkest corner of the galaxy, they’re still good reasons. As long as they are willing to ultimately learn from them and make their own lives and those they care about better.
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