The Brooklyn Rail

Matthew Kressel and I first met at a speculative fiction reading several years ago. Those readings continue to be our primary source of interaction; we’ve participated as audience members, hosts, or, in his case, as a reader of his work. Our friendship developed through these opportunities to hear great new fiction, which were usually followed by drinks, food, and free-flowing conversation.

Kressel is a writer, podcaster, digital artist, and programmer whose latest novel is Space Trucker Jess, set in the same Terra Diaspora universe portrayed in several previously published shorter works, as well as an upcoming novella, The Rainseekers.

Sixteen-year-old Jess lives on a space station, repairing ships and dreaming of hauling cargo across the galaxy. She puts that plan on hold when her grifter father disappears from rehab with the rest of his fellow inmates. Soon she’s in hot pursuit of her dad in a stolen, poorly maintained starship, picking up companions along the way and becoming entangled in a vast sociopolitical conspiracy of both humans and aliens that upends previously understood concepts of sentience and consciousness. The book is a quirky, profanely narrated space opera that incorporates cutting-edge science, brainbending spirituality, and themes of found family and personal responsibility.

We met on Zoom to talk about Jess and her unique milieu. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Amy Goldschlager (Rail): What inspired you to write this novel?

Matthew Kressel: I don’t have a conscious recollection of where Jess’s voice came from, only that she was just there. The only specific memory I have is one night I was drifting off to sleep, and I envisioned this young woman, describing to me in very explicit detail how a starship works.

Rail: Engineering, mechanics, and physics all play a role in the worldbuilding. What did you have to learn to understand the place where Jess was speaking from?

Kressel: I invented things as I needed to invent them. I work in tech. I went to an engineering school. I keep abreast of science. So I think a lot of that worked its way into the story. But it’s a millennium or two in the future, so I could play fast and loose with things.

Rail: The one thing you didn’t really have to research is trucking, because the book’s title is deceptive; it’s not about trucking.

Kressel: The title is one hundred percent aspirational, at least for a good chunk of the novel.

Rail: Jess says she wants to be a trucker, a solitary career where she won’t have to answer to anybody. But somehow Jess is always looking for people or people keep getting dropped in her lap that she has to care for.

Kressel: The book’s opening quote is from the band Heartless Bastards: “The road is where I long to be. The days turn out so differently.” Jess basically recognizes that her father has been a negative, malignant influence on her, and yet she loves him so much that she can’t let him go. But even so, she still dreams of escape from that and has to go through a trial by fire to separate herself from him.

Rail: The parents in this book are terrible people who abandon their children, and minors don’t seem to have any protection in this society. They drink, they do drugs, and they work like adults. How did this society get there?

Kressel: I’m a Gen Xer and I was a feral kid. We got into all sorts of trouble, especially as I got into my early teenage years, just doing the stupidest, most dangerous things, and nobody was paying attention. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a limb or die or something. And we would have to solve our own problems. If you got a flat tire on your bike or the chain fell off, you’d have to fix it yourself.

I kind of wanted to recreate that a little bit. In Jess’s world, people’s physical needs are met way beyond what we have now. You can get food, clothing, and shelter if you want, and most people just spend their time in a hedonistic lifestyle or in a totally immersive virtual reality. There are some people that fall by the wayside that don't want to engage in this. Jess longs for a more grounded lifestyle that’s just not available to her, at least not initially. She begins at a space station which is close to the rim of the galaxy. And there's not a lot of supervision out there.

My parents were not neglectful or toxic. But I did know someone like that in my family who had an extremely negative influence on some of their children. My relationship with that real-life person was strained because I both love them and recognize their toxicity. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, and I think the book explores that in many ways. The story is really about seeking family and connection in a universe that seems to not really care too much about the people in it.

Rail: Your fiction and your art express hope that we will be able both to save our planet and to leave it someday. How confident are you that that future will come to pass?

Kressel: I think that we’re in a trough right now. Climate change is going to get really bad before we collectively fix things. I’m not optimistic that it’s going to get better soon. But in the long term, I think it will.