Interview with Mike Chen, Author - Of Sorcery and Science
Welcome to YAOTL, Mike! Please tell us a bit about Of Sorcery and Science.
Thank you! This is my YA debut, and it's about
a high school junior named Andy Lao, who prior to the book got sucked into a
portal into a fantasy realm, where he learned to cast magic and save the land
as the Chosen One of legend. But then he comes home to find that no time
passed, nothing has changed, and no one believes him. When the book opens, Andy
decides he's fed up and wants to find a way back to the portal – which he does,
except there's a teen girl in full armor with a massive sword standing in it.
And she says she is the Chosen One, and he is the destroyer of magic.
Together, they decide to put aside their differences and use real-world science
to solve the mystery of dying magic in the fantasy realm.
What made you want to explore the idea of math and physics being the actual solution to a magic problem, rather than magic just being a non-scientific reason behind the unexplainable?
So pulling that over to the this book, I'd often thought that if I ever found myself in a magical realm, that would be the first thing that I would try to analyze. In some ways, in-universe fantasy realms treats magic with some science aspects – there's usually some type of stats associated with it, and sometimes you need reagants to cast. So this book is me exploring a little bit of that bridge between magic and science.
This is your first YA novel after years of writing some adult SF/horror. What did you have to change about your process? Were there some specific pacing or voice issues?
Yes, definitely. My first lesson in this was actually with my first middle grade project, which was a short story in the anthology YOU ARE HERE: CONNECTING FLIGHTS. When I turned in my draft for that, my editor Anne Hoppe told me she loved the story, but my voice was YA, not MG. She helped me identify the differences, which really focuses on the level of interiority in the prose. Basically, I had to grasp that the younger the audience, the more immediate/surface the emotions and the less the interior reflection – because their brains aren't quite there developmentally yet. And in the YA space, it's almost there, but also a battle with emotions, which can be much more powerful when thinking through problems.
I will say that breaking down perspective and voice for age groups helped me understand my growing daughter better. She just turned 12.
The book flips the Chosen One trope on its head a bit. What made you gravitate toward it?
I'd been thinking about this a bit, because in most Chosen One narratives, they usually offer some kind of twist to it. One of the things I really thought about a lot was how social media algorithms tend to make us feel like the main character/Chosen One, like with the pressure to post a response to every event that happens. But what that does is make us less empathetic to other people's experiences and communities at large, and snapping out of it requires conscious choice and curation. So my short take for readers is “There are no Chosen Ones, collective action and community are what matter.”
Tips you can give for constructing your own
fantasy realm?
I've given a few seminars on worldbuilding and one of my top tips is that it's okay to reverse-engineer your worldbuilding for what your plot or scene need. As in, if your plot needs a certain constraint, it's okay to reverse-engineer that into your worldbuilding with a little bit of justification. The trick to good worldbuilding is consistency rather than intricacy. Inconsistent worldbuilding takes the reader out of the story, but they'll go along with even the most bonkers thing as long as it feels justified and consistent (see: most vampire fiction).
As a reader, I love humor. Reviewers have
pointed out the humor and heart in your book, saying it gives Stranger Things
vibes. How do you balance comedy against genuinely difficult topics like
parental disappointment and self-worth?
I think they keep each other in check. It’s something an author decides from the beginning in what kind of tone they want to strike. I knew that this book would be like the inverse of an epic fantasy, and I love the inherent ridiculousness of fantasy tropes in the real world. So there’s natural comedy in that, and then when you get in the character’s head, recognizing that grounds it even further. At the same time, if you’re going to have them call out those kinds of absurdities, it’s also important for them to be grounded in their feelings and ideas. And since the whole theme of this book is “finding your path when you’re between two worlds” having direct confrontations with those emotions was very important.
On a personal note, I first came into contact with your work when I listened to the Light Years from Home audiobook (which I loved). Between Light Years from Home's family-in-crisis framework and Of Sorcery and Science's parent-child tension, you seem to keep returning to strained family bonds. What makes you keep coming back to exploring the family dynamic?
Conflict makes for interesting reading! And with that, there's often no greater personal conflict in someone's life than with their family of origin. You're kind of forced into it, after all, and the long-term nature of causes people to grow closer or split apart. I think a big part of it too is that it has taken me decades of therapy to start to grasp my own family bonds, so playing scenes out is my own brain testing out “what if” scenarios with what is said or unsaid between family members.
There’s something about writing YA…it tends to bring out more autobiographical writing, for some reason. Did writing for a YA audience change how autobiographical you were willing to get?
I think a big part of it is hindsight. When you're writing adult, you can get inspiration from your life and some things might work laterally or allegorically. But when you're writing for a younger age group, you can draw on your specific feelings you remember. Having spent my teen years in the 90s, there's clearly a big difference in the context of how kids live today. There's different societal pressures and technological capabilities. At the same time, there's that universal sense of wanting to find oneself and orient toward a future, even if you don't know how you'll get there. And for me, as a child of immigrants, I think the experience of feeling a cultural disconnect still exists, even if modern teens have phones.
What’s next?
After this, I get to debut in yet another new
genre – this time, adult horror, with THE HAUNTING OF SANTO DOMINGO STREET in
February. I will return to kidlit a few months after that with my first book
for Choose Your Own Adventure entitled YOUR PARENTS ARE JEWEL THIEVES.
Where can we find you?
My social media handle is mikechenwriter
wherever I'm active. I use Bluesky the most, and that's a blend of writing
community, nerd talk, and constructive political activism (I've been an active
on a grassroots level since high school). I'm on Instagram, but that is mostly
photos of my dog. And my website is mikechenbooks.com.
~
Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of novels that cross genres and audiences, as well as stories for Star Wars, Marvel, Star Trek, and Critical Role. His original work has been nominated for Goodreads Choice, Compton Crook, BSFA, and CALIBA Golden Poppy awards, along with being featured in NPR, USA Today, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Scientific American. For younger audiences, he contributed to the award-winning middle grade anthology “You Are Here: Connecting Flights.” He has written about geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, The Mary Sue, and StarTrek.com, and in a previous life, covered the NHL. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals. “Of Sorcery And Science” is his first YA novel.
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