Jul 22

Jul 22 R.S. Penney

Author R.S. Penney

Biography

Rich Penney grew up in Southern Ontario, in the city of Stoney Creek. Though he didn't know it at the time, he was a writer at the tender age of seven, acting out elaborate stories with his action figures. He discovered a love of science-fiction and fantasy with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Within six months of reading those series, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

An alumnus of Saltfleet District High School and McMaster University, Rich was known as a bit of an odd duck throughout his teenage years. With a goofball sense of humor and an intense hatred for social hierarchies, he was the sort of young man who made waves everywhere he went, pissing off bullies and making friends with all sorts of geeks.

Rich began building the world for the Justice Keepers Saga at the age of 16. His initial plan was to pen a fantasy epic, but he scrapped that when he realized that he had no interest in writing long journeys by horseback. At age 18, he reworked the Keepers Saga into something like what you see today, designing each of the worlds in his series and fleshing out the characters of Jack, Anna and Harry.

Throughout his twenties, Rich bounced from job to job to job, dabbling in a little bit of everything while he honed his skills as a writer. Rich has been a bank teller, a classroom teacher, a sales clerk and a software tester, just to name a few. He never really felt at home in any of these positions, but it was a case of failing eyesight that coaxed him into pursuing his dream of writing a series of science fiction novels.

In 2013, Rich was diagnosed with keratoconus, a condition in which his corneas slowly warp and his vision slowly degrades. Much of this damage has been corrected through surgery, but he still lives with periodic bursts of dizziness and headaches. The loss of much of his vision caused Rich to briefly sink into a depression, a depression he overcame, in part, thanks to time spent writing Symbiosis.

Rich is an activist and a futurist, an advocate of global sustainability and a proponent of social justice. He has given talks in Toronto, Athens and Brisbane, covering a wide variety of topics from environmental sustainability to social equality.

Rich credits Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, J. Michael Stracynski and Joss Whedon as being some of his biggest influences. Whenever possible, he works to give new authors a chance to showcase their writing.

Rich's blog is best summarized with one sentence. “The conventional wisdom is often wrong. He was always the sort of person to be most skeptical of the ideas that everyone else took for granted, the ideas that no one ever questioned. Nine times in ten, he will choose the devil he doesn't know over the safe and familiar path.

On top of all that, he's a total scatterbrain with a unique talent for losing small knickknacks and important pieces of paper. He tends to buck authority, and the older he gets, the less willing he is to apologize for that.

Rich is brave, clever, kind, headstrong, disorganized, forgetful, a bit of screw up, an expert in pissing off people who can ruin his life, and one hell of a friend.

In The Blog

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Bibliography

Author’s note: Relativity

As always, spoilers follow, so read at your own peril.

Relativity is one of my favourite books in the series to date; I started it with a lot of sadness in my heart and finished with a sense of empowerment. The book is meant to explore the clash between Leyria's more progressive politics and the social problems that exist here on Earth. Usually when an author explores culture shock, it's from the perspective of a protagonist who feels familiar to us finding themself in a society that is very alien from a modern-day, Western point of view. This book was meant to do the opposite. Let us see our own world through an alien's eyes. Admittedly, this is something that shows up more often in science fiction, but I think it's a trope worth pursuing.

The book lets us see modern Western culture through the eyes of someone who didn't grow up here. We get to watch Anna struggle with sexist cops who don't want to listen to her, with a small town that sees her as a foreign interloper looking to impose her liberal values on them.

It's easy to look back on our ancestors from four or five hundred years ago and think “Torturing people for heresy? That's barbaric.”. I don't think most people realize that one day our great-great-grandchildren are going to look back on us and think the same thing. We live in a time where a therapist can be shot by police officers simply because his patient happened to be carrying a toy truck. And if we're honest with ourselves, I think it's clear that this happened because the therapist in question is black.

I had actually finished writing Relativity by the time those events made headlines last summer, but the point still stands. Science fiction is supposed to make us examine ourselves. And that was one thing I set out to do in writing a book about racist cops going after a young black man who had the misfortune of coming into contact with alien technology.

I have to admit there was a bit of catharsis in the original plan. The idea of Anna leaping to this boy's rescue – a noble protector, an exemplar of what a police officer should be – was somewhat appealing, but about three chapters in, I realized that Anna couldn't be the one to save this boy. Anna is white. And if this story was to have the kind of impact I wanted, the boy had to be saved by a person of colour.

This was a point in the series where I was really straining to find ways to bring Harry into the main narrative. I loved his character in the first book, and he served as such a nice counterpoint to the other characters. This was especially true for Jack. Jack is known for his distrust of authority. So, by being an authority figure who is truly worthy of trust, Harry demonstrates that while Jack may have a point, his views are not without some amount of bias. The problem was that Harry had no special abilities.

Jack and Anna are Justice Keepers with the ability to Bend space-time. Ben is a technical genius who can make all sorts of gadgets to get himself out of a tough situation. Keli is a telepath with the power to make her enemies see illusions. But what about Harry? He was meant to be an ordinary Earth cop, but while that presented a nice contrast, it made it very difficult to justify putting Harry in situations where he would have to go up against robots, cyborgs and criminals with futuristic weapons. Suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far before it snaps.

However, as a black man and a police officer himself, Harry was the right person to save this young man from racist cops who shoot first and ask questions later. And he did it without any special abilities. He did it simply by appealing to their humanity. To me, that's important.

This book was also an opportunity to see some of the other populated worlds in the galaxy, something that will become more common as the series goes on. We get our first peek at Leyria, and Jack was the right character for this subplot. As a Canadian boy, he's a natural fish out of water when he lands on a foreign planet. This book also marks a major step forward in Jack's personal development.

And if all this good stuff wasn't enough, the book features one of the best sword fights you'll ever read. Yup, that's right. A sword fight. In the words of Joss Whedon, “Two things that matter most to me: emotional resonance and rocket launchers.” All that meaty sci-fi needs a little lighthearted fun to relieve the tension.

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