Book Title: IN OUR STARS
Character Name: Lieutenant Selene Genji
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
My childhood was hell. My only real family was my mother, before she was murdered when I was seventeen because she was my mother. Everyone else treated me as an alien on my own world. Because in some ways I am.
What was your greatest talent?
Maybe survival. I should have died a long time ago. But I keep fighting. Is that a talent? Or is it that my mother's guidance (and that of Marcus Aurelius) has helped me maintain my humanity despite everything? And despite all of those who claim I'm not human at all?
Significant other?
I…don't know. Maybe? There was never anyone before. Not for an alloy like me. But he says it's real. Kayl says he won't leave. Impossible. But…maybe?
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I'm an alloy. Mostly human, but with some alien DNA inserted through genetic engineering before I was born. I can't hide that. Everyone knows I'm different. Those who don't fear me because of it are usually still…wary.
Where do you live?
Nowhere, really. After my mother was murdered, I dropped out of high school and joined the Unified Fleet. That was my only home (We Are One), fighting to survive and to stop those who were literally willing to destroy the Earth in order to "save" it from anyone who they didn't define as a "pure" human. Now, in 2140, Kayl and me are always on the run. Home is wherever is safe for a few moments of time.
Do you have any enemies?
Billions, before Earth was destroyed in 2180. Now, in 2140, I don't know how many. Because someone like me won't be born for decades, people in 2140 were never taught to hate someone like me. But some still just see "alien" and want me dead. They worry about what I am and who I am and what I really want to do. Just like in 2180.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
2140 is so weird. It's less than twenty years before I'll be born, but the Universal War that broke out in the 2170s isn't even imaginable to this peaceful, unworried time. They still trust in their institutions to keep the peace and prevent disasters, not knowing those are all crumbling through neglect or corruption and will soon start collapsing. I see cities full of people, and also see what will happen starting in thirty years, those same cities turned into dead fields of craters. I envy them their peace today, and get frustrated at their complacency, and don't know how to get them to listen to my warnings of what is coming if I can't, somehow, change what will be. How do you wake up so many people who are sleepwalking toward disaster? They're living a mostly happy dream, but it's going to turn into a nightmare that only I have seen.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Alloys don't have children. By choice. Pets? Why expose an innocent creature to the danger I face every day?
What do you do for a living?
In 2180, I would have said I had to kill people. As an officer in the Unified Fleet, trying to hold back the Universal War. Kill, or be killed. It didn't work. In 2140, I'm trying to save people. I'm trying to save the entire Earth. That's why I'm still alive, I think. It's not just what I do. It's why I'm still here when by all rights I should have died in 2180. I believe that.
Greatest disappointment?
Watching the planet Earth die on June 12th, 2180.
Greatest source of joy?
Discovering I was in 2140, and have a chance to change what will happen on June 12th, 2180. Even though I don't know how. And…I guess Kayl. If he is what he seems to be. We Are One.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
My life has never had room for any of that. Reading, I guess. That's always been something I could do alone, with "companions" in the books who didn't care that I was an alloy. Wait. I guess talking to the Tramontine? They're the aliens. They're…interesting. First Contact hasn't happened yet. When it happens, there'll be so many mistakes and misunderstandings. Maybe I can try to fix that?
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Have you been listening? Earth was destroyed, even though I'd been fighting to save it, even though all of us in the Unified Fleet had been fighting to save it. We all failed. I failed. Now, I'm in a position to change that, but how? I know everything tried in the 2160s and 2170s didn't work, but I don't know what most of those things were. I was a kid, not paying enough attention, and then I was fighting. Earth needs someone who knows everything that went wrong and knows what to do and I'm not that person. Marcus Aurelius tells me "if it is not right, don't do it: if it is not true, don't say it." But what is right and what is true when I'm trying to save the entire Earth and everyone on it? I'm just an alloy, not even human in a lot of peoples' eyes. Earth needs some sort of all-knowing, superhero to save it. But all it has is me.
What keeps you awake at night?
Knowing what will happen on June 12th, 2180. Watching the Earth die. Remembering the deaths of so many in the Universal War before then. Their ghosts are always with me.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Trying to change things enough to alter the fate of the Earth, even though I don't know what to do or how to do it. Or maybe my most pressing problem is staying alive, because if I'm dead I can't change anything.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I need to know what will happen! I won't be born for decades yet. If I change things, one of those things might mean I'm never born. I'm cancelled from existing. Never was. If that thing also saves the Earth, then okay, even though the idea terrifies me. But what if it doesn't? What if I cancel myself from ever being and it's not enough to change the fate of the Earth and now I'm gone and there's nothing else that can be done? How can I know? Not even the Tramontine have an answer to that.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
History that hasn't happened yet. A lot of people. Fate. Maybe the universe, which doesn't want to change things unless it has to. Maybe I'm in the way, too. I don't know. But I still have to try. I will. I have to succeed, no matter what. I will.
The Doomed Earth
Lieutenant Selene Genji has one last chance to save the Earth from destruction in this pulse-pounding science fiction adventure, from the author of the New York Times bestselling Lost Fleet series.
Earth, 2180
Genetically engineered with partly alien DNA, Lieutenant Selene Genji is different from ordinary humans. And they hate her for it. Still, she’s spent her life trying to overcome society’s prejudice by serving in the Unified Fleet while Earth’s international order collapses into war.
Genji is stationed on a ship in orbit when humanity’s factional extremism on the planet reaches a boiling point, and she witnesses the utter annihilation of Earth. When the massive forces unleashed by Earth’s death warp space and time to hurl her forty years into the past, Genji is given a chance to try to change the future and save Earth—starting with the alien first contact only she knows will soon occur.
Earth, 2140
Lieutenant Kayl Owen’s ship is on a routine patrol when a piece of spacecraft wreckage appears out of nowhere. To his shock, there is a survivor on board: Selene Genji. Once her strange heritage is discovered, though, it becomes clear that Genji is a problem Earth Guard command wants to dispose of—quietly. After learning the horrifying truth, Owen helps her escape and joins her mission.
Together, they have a chance to change the fate of an Earth doomed to die in 2180. But altering history could put Genji’s very existence in danger, and Owen wonders if a world without her is one worth saving. . . .
Science Fiction Space Opera [Ace, On Sale: May 21, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593640630 / eISBN: 9780593640654]
Jack Campbell is the pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired U.S. Navy officer. His father (LCDR Jack M. Hemry, USN ret.) is a mustang (an officer who was promoted through the enlisted ranks), so John grew up living everywhere from Pensacola, Florida to San Diego, California, including an especially memorable few year on Midway Island.
John graduated from Lyons High School in Lyons, Kansas in 1974, then attended the U.S. Naval Academy (Class of '78), where he was labeled "the un-Midshipman" by his roommates.
John speaks the remnants of Russian painstakingly pounded into him by Professor Vladimir Tolstoy (yes, he was related to that Tolstoy).
He lives in Maryland with a wife who is too good for him and three great kids. The two eldest children are diagnosed as autistic but are slowly improving with therapies, education and medications.
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