Chris Gerrib is joining us today to talk about his novel, Gunmaker. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Martika Clybourne is the new legal consultant for 433 Platinum Mining LLC on Gavin Station, a torus happily spinning inside the asteroid, Eros. What was meant to be an easy job is turned upside-down when she’s called to investigate an officer killed by bullet wounds on a station with no projectile weapons.
Her investigation turns up more corruption and shady business than she thought possible for such a small colony. But when the sixteen-year-old, alleged murderer is apprehended, two sides form: the officers and company enforcers against the station workers. Martika quickly realizes her recently deceased supervisor was the only person holding this spinning station of unrest together, and it’s up to her to keep it from turning to chaos.
Come for the civil unrest and stay for the rebellion in Gunmaker by Chris Gerrib!
What’s Chris’ favorite bit?
Some novels are easy to write. This one was not. The premise of the book is in the title – somebody has to make a gun without the gimmickry of 3-D printing. My first problem was that guns are available pretty much everywhere on Earth. Even places with tough gun laws, like the UK or Hawaii, if you’re motivated enough and willing to find the right people, you can find a gun.
I had to build a very tightly-contained place. I ended up with a mining settlement on an asteroid, where everybody had to pass airport-level security just to get there and weight restrictions meant that smugglers would focus on lighter and more lucrative stuff than guns. But to want to make and use a gun (Chekhov’s Law – see gun, shoot gun), my characters needed damned good reasons for this decision. I ended up with two – revenge and justice.
Although frequently confused, these are two different motivators. Revenge is personal and can be all-consuming, hence the old saying “if you seek revenge, first dig two graves.” It is, however, the simplest for the author to write and for the reader to understand. I found, however, that it was not enough to sustain a full-length novel. I needed something deeper and broader.
Justice became that sustaining principle. That was both easier and harder. Easier in that one of the well-worn tropes of science fiction is the badly-ran space mining outpost. Harder in that the people in those outposts tend not to rebel, largely because by the time they get fed up, they rotate home. Thus I landed on my favorite character, Karin Jakobsdóttir.
I’m an American, and the corporate entity which owns the settlement is American, but Karin is from Iceland. This allowed me to bring a different perspective to the story. Now, I’m of the opinion that “My Favorite Bit” ought to be an excerpt from the book, so let me conclude with what I think is Karin’s true formal introduction – when she goes to feed the huldufólk.
Karin Jakobsdóttir regarded her daughter. Helga was three—three-and-a-half, she would have insisted—and desperately sleepy. She was also desperate not to miss anything. This combined to produce industrial-grade crankiness. “Fine,” Karin sighed. “You can come with me to feed the huldufólk. But you must be quiet and behave or they will not come.”
Promise?”
“I promise,” Helga said. She probably even meant it. It was doubtful that promise would last even halfway to the tiny set of miniature, huldufólk-sized hooches Karin had built just outside of the town.
“Let’s go,” Karin said, grabbing the plastic tote of supplies. Helga gave Karin her hand.
The station was rigged for “night” which meant only a fifth of the overhead lights were on. It resulted in dimness but not real darkness—like the “white nights” of an Icelandic summer. Karin glanced up. She missed the stars.
Even fewer people were out tonight than usual, Karin observed as they walked down the dirt path that passed for a street. When the station had been built, the metal bottom rim of the station had been lined with several centimeters of dust, a mixture of mine byproducts and regolith. That fake soil and a layer of steel were all that held the floor of the station up against the spin and kept out the vacuum of the cavern inside Eros.
Karin tried not to think of that. Where there was no water, like in the town, nothing grew on it. At least it packed down well and didn’t track into the hooches.
The town came to an abrupt end, becoming a field of soybeans. They were freshly planted, and the sprouts barely came up to Karin’s ankles. There was a work light on at one of the pole-mounted sprinklers. She drew near and saw Tony Fielder doing something with the pole. He looked up and smiled. “Out for a walk?”
“My daughter is restless,” Karin said in English. Her daughter still spoke only Icelandic and Hausa, her father’s language, as they did not wish her to have an accent in English. “Are you watering tonight?”
“Eventually,” Tony said. “It will take me most of the night to get these hooked up.”
“Ah,” Karin said. “We’ll be home well before then. But could this not be done during first shift?”
“It could, but I need the overtime,” Tony said.
“Then I shall leave you to work.”
He nodded politely and went back to his task. Karin walked on. Probably in debt up to his eyebrows.
Karin was grateful she had avoided that trap, unlike so many, including Helga’s father. When she’d been negotiating her contract, the “wealth advisor” she was working with had tried a dozen times or more to get her to borrow money and buy stock in the company. She had not, even taking a smaller signing bonus. She smiled in the darkness. Her signing bonus, paid in Euros and sitting in an Icelandic bank, was still sound. Many, even most, of the people on the Rock had seen their signing bonuses evaporate as the price of platinum had plunged.
They came to a small orchard of apple trees, which were planted in meter-high bins. At the base of one of them, Karin had built a trio of miniature hooches. The Hidden Ones of this rock would want to live as their people did. Karin and Helga sat down, resting their backs against the planter.
Almost as if turning off a light, Helga fell asleep, that deep and determined sleep only a small child could master. Karin carefully laid her daughter down on her side and took a blanket from her tote which she used to cover her. She looked up from covering her daughter to see Jane Hanford walking out of the dimness.
LINKS:
BIO:
Chris Gerrib has wanted to be a writer since he was a child riding his bicycle to the library in the small Central Illinois town where he grew up. Since then, he has spent a tour in the US Navy, got an MBA, and now has a day job with a multinational software company as a project manager. For fun, he plays golf, travels, and is a voracious reader. He lives in the Chicago suburbs and is active in his local Rotary Club. He writes both science fiction and mystery and has multiple novels out in print. You can find out more about him at https://privatemarsrocket.net/.
*Mary Robinette an affiliate of Bookshop.org and will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. This does not increase your cost; it simply helps support her work