Christopher admitted to being fascinated by the idea of period superheroes and to being a huge fan of comic books in general. (We’re hoping he’ll write about them for our readers here sometime soon.)
I found it a little peculiar during the reading to listen to what was so clearly a pulpy, noir novel, despite its sci-fi trappings, being read with a U.K. acccent. Because Empire State is such a completely New York story, though it takes place in an alternate, prohibition-era NYC complete with superheroes and mysterious villains and a “relatively young pocket universe [that] fights against the people who live in it.”
More than one person at the event asked about the choice of New York as a setting, given that Christopher lives in London. His response was that he really wanted to write a pulp detective novel, so for it to work it had to set it in a large American city. The superheroes come from the fact that the same prohibition era that’s featured in the book birthed the original superhero comic books.
People who read Empire State and find themselves attracted to the world may be interested in Angry Robot’s cooperative creation project, Worldbuilder. There you, too, can participate by creating art in any form in the world of Empire State and/or Prohibition-era New York.
Laura K. Curtis lives in Westchester, NY, with her husband and 3 dogs who’ve taught her how easily love can co-exist with the desire to kill. She blogs at Women of Mystery and maintains an online store at TorchSongs GlassWorks. She can also be found on Twitter and poking her nose into all sorts of trouble in various spots around the web.
The way Laura Curtis throws around terms like, ”
pulpy, noir novel, despite its sci-fi trappings” shows she’s missing the basics.