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WORK TITLE: The Prey of Gods
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.nickydrayden.com/
CITY: Austin
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/13/book-reviews-the-prey-of-gods-by-nicky-drayden/ * https://www.outerplaces.com/science-fiction/item/16153-interview-nicky-drayden-prey-of-gods
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Systems analyst, fiction writer.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to publications including Shimmer and Space and Time. Contributor of short fiction to anthologies, including Twisted Beyond Recognition, Amazon Digital Services, 2014.
SIDELIGHTS
Based in Austin, Texas, Nicky Drayden works as a systems analyst and writes fiction with an interest in artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Besides her debut novel, The Prey of Gods, set in a futuristic South Africa, Drayden has also published short fiction in Shimmer and Space and Time and in the anthology Twisted Beyond Recognition.
Drayden’s The Prey of Gods is set in 2064 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. In the story, violent demigoddess and cranky manicurist Sydney plots to return to her full power and stages a cataclysmic event. Meanwhile, a hallucinogenic drug gives people psychic connections and allows them to tap into their animal spirit. Gay teen Muzi realizes that the drug gives him mind control abilities, which he uses to bring order back to his world. Drayden intertwines numerous conspiracies, robots, genetically engineered animals, and old cultures meeting new. Commenting on Drayden’s excellent world building, mixture of Xhosa and Zulu cultures with modern technology, and the politics of dik-dik control, Chris Mahon wrote online at Outer Places: “The POVs are deftly managed, and the plot, though expansive, comes together in a very satisfying way. The Prey of Gods is what new sci-fi should be: boldly original, well-written, and mind-bending.”
In an interview with Chris Mahon on the website Outer Places, Drayden explained that the inspiration for the story came from seeing a store sign, “Magic Nails,” for a local salon, and she “started thinking about what kind of person would be giving manicures if they could do magic. [Then] I wrote a character sketch.” Drayden had also visited South Africa during college for an environmental protection program studying renewable energy, so she extrapolated to see what the country would be like fifty years into the future.
According to Sarah McCarry on the Tor.com website, “The skill with which Drayden pulls off her fully realized world, bananas plot, and multivocal narrative is so impressive it’s hard to believe this is a debut novel.” McCarry added, “She can build a fleshed-out character in a handful of paragraphs, [and] make you (well, sometimes) root for a demonic ancient evil who eats people.” Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer explained that the book has a lot of plot from the various story lines and varying points of view, but Drayden balances all the elements skillfully in a world “where genetic manipulation, sentient robots, and folkloric origin stories can coexist plausibly, if not peacefully.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 17, 2017, review of The Prey of Gods, p. 52.
ONLINE
Nicky Drayden Website, http://www.nickydrayden.com (January 15, 2018), author profile.
Outer Places, http://www.outerplaces.com/ (June 2, 2017), Chris Mahon, review of The Prey of Gods.
Tor.com, https://www.tor.com/ (June 13, 2017), Sarah McCarry, review of The Prey of Gods.
About Me
Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel THE PREY OF GODS is set in a futuristic South Africa brimming with demigods, robots, and hallucinogenic hijinks. See more of her work at http://www.nickydrayden.com or catch her on twitter @nickydrayden.
nickydrayden
What I’m reading right now:
Noumenon, Marina J. Lostetter
Favorite Authors:
Neal Stephenson
Octavia Butler
Christopher Moore
Other Interests:
Hammocking under my oak trees
Stalking my local grocery stores for turkey jerky
Interviews:
Podcast Interview by Nayah SciFi
Author Interview by Outer Places
Author Interview by Texas Monthly
Author Interview by FIYAH Lit Mag
Radio Interview by Joy on Paper
Author Interview by Alfonso Words
Author Interview by Shimmer
Contact me at:
nickydrayden (at) gmail (dot) com
Twitter: @nickydrayden
Facebook | Goodreads | Amazon
2017 Appearances
(Exact times and schedules to come)
June 27 – Barnes & Noble, Austin Arboretum @ 7pm
June 30 – Agents & Editors Con, Austin
July 14 – BookPeople Signing, Austin @ 7pm
August 4 – ArmadilloCon, Austin
Nov 3 – World Fantasy Con, San Antonio
Nov 17 – Wizard World Comic Con, Austin
Sci-Fi Movies Comic Book Movies Sci-Fi Books MORE»
Interview: Sci-Fi Author Nicky Drayden Talks About Her Trippy Debut Novel, "The Prey of Gods'
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Science Fiction > Sci-Fi Books
Chris MahonFriday, 02 June 2017 - 4:31PM
Interview: Sci-Fi Author Nicky Drayden Talks About Her Trippy Debut Novel, "The Prey of Gods'
Image credit: Nicky Drayden
When people hear the terms "sci-fi" and "South Africa" in the same sentence, the knee-jerk reaction is to say "Oh, like District 9?" Nicky Drayden's The Prey of Gods, however, is unlike anything else we've seen before. Its futuristic vision of South Africa, entwined with personal robots, genetically engineered animals, and old cultures meeting new, is incredibly inventive and ambitious. Did we mention there are giant robot fights and hallucinogens?
Yeah. Those are important.
We sat down with Nicky to talk about the book, her inspirations, and what readers can look forward to when it comes out on June 13th.
Outer Places: Tell me a bit about yourself—hobbies, private obsessions, lifelong passions, etc. The nerdier the better!
Nicky Drayden: Most of the time, I don't feel like a proper nerd since I don't have any hobbies or obsessions (other than reading and writing), but I do have a pretty swanky collection of nerdy t-shirts. I try to live with a minimalist's mindset, so my collection is far from vast, but every shirt I own, I love. Some of my faves: a painting of Serenity in the style of Van Gogh, Lego Moss from IT Crowd, and probably my all-time favorite Ursula from The Little Mermaid. I think she was just misunderstood.
OP: Tell me about your inspirations for The Prey of Gods. Were there stories or experiences you drew from when writing the book?
Drayden: The first character I wrote for this book, a disenfranchised demigoddess working as a nail tech, came to me while I was driving around downtown Houston and saw a salon sign that said "Magic Nails." I thought about how cool it would be if they really did use magic to do nails, but then started thinking about what kind of person would be giving manicures if they could do magic. I wrote a character sketch and filed it away.
I like to participate in National Novel Writing Month, and in 2009 when November 1st rolled around and I was desperate for a story idea, I turned to my pile of random character sketches, picked a handful of them, and decided to weave them together into a story. I chose to set the story in a futuristic South Africa since I'd been there back when I was in college.
Many of the highlights from my visit are featured in the book, for example, we toured some of the rural townships where people live in tin shacks, met teenagers who had recently gone through the circumcision rite, and bought hand carved souvenirs from local artists. And it seemed like everywhere we went, there were these little cute antelopes called dik-diks rummaging around the city, kind of in a similar way some places have deer overpopulation problems, so those things all got worked into the book. It was a lot of fun to relive my memories through my writing and to project how South Africa's unique challenges and strengths would intersect with technological and scientific advancements over the next fifty years.
OP: What was the hardest part about writing the story? What was your favorite part? Any fun behind-the-scenes anecdotes?
Drayden: My favorite part was also the hardest part-weaving the characters' threads together. There are six point-of-view characters, most of which have never met one another, and yet they're all connected in various ways. For example, in Sydney's first chapter, she's giving a manicure to a woman who's getting ready to go to a fundraiser for Councilman Stoker. She also has a night job overseeing janitorial robots at the place where another character's sister works. Almost every character's path crosses every other character in some way—sometimes a big way, sometimes just in passing.
OP: A major feature of the book is personal robots, including alpha and delta bots. What do you think about AI personal assistants like Google Home or Amazon Echo, and what do you think about the prospect of robots replacing humans in the workforce?
Drayden: Right now, having Alexa is kind of like having a five-year-old for an assistant. Sure, she can do some useful things, like turning on the lights and television, but then when you're doing an important phone interview, she'll decide to interrupt and tell you a completely useless answer to a question you didn't ask. And a lot of times you're screaming at her because she's not listening to what you're saying. I'm sure things will improve, but it might be a while.
Honestly, I think the AI movie that is the closest to how life will be 150 years from now is WALL-E. Ruined Earth, living in space, with robots doing all the work, while humanity (or what's left of humanity) is at leisure. But 25 years from now? Cheap AI labor will drive prices down, drive wages down. However, I think the savvy individual will use this cheap labor to their advantage, and we'll see a lot of ingenuity from startups and entrepreneurs harnessing the power of AI.
OP: Genetic engineering (and a genetically engineered virus) is another big theme in the story, mostly driven by the ZenGen corporation. With tools like CRISPR on the horizon, where do you see genetic engineering coming into play in our future?
Drayden: If it can be done, I think we should do it. Cautiously, of course, but at the rate we're changing our environment, we no longer have the luxury of letting evolution run its natural course. We'll be engineering trees that are more efficient at consuming CO2 and ocean creatures that can better withstand polluted waters. For better or (probably) worse, we're going to be micromanaging Mother Nature for many centuries to come.
OP: The Prey of Gods is grounded in elements of South African culture, including Zulu and Xhosa beliefs. How did you balance the futuristic aspects of the story with these older traditions?
Drayden: I'm quite far removed from being any sort of expert on South African culture, but I do find it interesting to watch how old traditions butt up against technology and the demands of a modern-day lifestyle. For example, in my research, I saw that the Xhosa circumcision rite used to be followed by six months spent in seclusion up in the mountains. The seclusion period shortened to three months, then one month, and participants no longer venture to the mountain, but to a secluded place away from the village. Following that trend, in the novel set 50 years from now, Muzi's rite takes place over the course of an afternoon spent camping out in his own yard.
One of my favorite small details in the book is a street vendor selling robots made from old Fanta cans. Township art is one of the newer South African traditions, which uses recycled tin or wire to produce unique sculptures. Having small robots made from reclaimed soda cans in the story seemed like the next logical step.
OP: There are elements of fantasy mixed in with the sci-fi elements in Prey of Gods, especially when it comes to the 'gods' part. In your mind, is this a 'Clarke's Third Law' sort of thing, where the fantastical aspects can be reconciled with science, or did you want to leave that question ambiguous?
Drayden: Yes, in my mind, science and magic are pretty much interchangeable, which is probably why I enjoy combining them so much. We've come so far over the past century, but right now, we're sitting on the brink of a technological explosion, and with it, we'll be dealing with new and interesting social and moral dilemmas.
OP: There's a lot of drug use in the book, including a hallucinogenic, pain-killing drug that makes various characters see themselves as animals (which is pretty trippy when you read it). Did you have a real-life drug equivalent in mind, like peyote, when you wrote those experiences?
Drayden: The goings-on in my head are pretty trippy 24-7, combined with the high of writing 1666 words a day for NaNoWriMo...well, you get things like hallucinatory dolphin/crab sex in the first chapter.
OP: If you could grab someone by the shoulders and give them one good reason why they should pick up Prey of Gods, what would it be?
Drayden: It's got giant robots doing jujitsu. If that doesn't catch your interest, then we can't be friends.
OP: What are you working on next?
Drayden: My next book is sort of an African-inspired humorous dark fantasy with a heavy helping of steampunk. More gods and robots to look forward to!
You can check out our full review of The Prey of Gods here, and pre-order the book here! You can also visit Nicky Drayden on her website here.
The one question interview: Nicky Drayden
Doyin Oyeniyi
Texas Monthly.
45.6 (June 2017): p54.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Texas Monthly, Inc.
http://www.texasmonthly.com
Full Text:
Nicky Drayden's website promises "speculative fiction, with a twist," and her debut novel, The Prey of
Gods (Harper Voyager, June 13), delivers on that pledge with a story set in a futuristic South Africa overrun
with artificial intelligence, a powerful new hallucinogenic, and at least one very vengeful demigoddess.
When she's not writing fiction, the Houston native has an aptly twenty-first-century job: she works as a
systems analyst in Austin.
TEXAS MONTHLY: What was the inspiration behind this book?
NICKY DRAYDEN: When I was in college, I went to South Africa with an environmental protection
program for high schoolers-I was one of their peer counselors. The point was to see what the world was like
and try to figure out ways that renewable energy and environmental protection could be helpful. We got to
tour a lot of the rural townships and see how people lived, and everyone was really welcoming and excited
to have us.
When I was looking to write a novel, I was like, "I'm going to write about South Africa." I'd read Ian
McDonald's River of Gods, which speculates on a future India, maybe fifty to sixty years out, and I thought
it would be kind of cool to see how my experiences in South Africa would translate fifty years into the
future. I keep character sketch files, and I had a bunch of different characters that I pulled out randomly--
most of them aren't related or don't know one another--and I stuck 'em in. Then I just sat back and watched
how their stories intertwined and overlapped.
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Oyeniyi, Doyin. "The one question interview: Nicky Drayden." Texas Monthly, June 2017, p. 54. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496084596/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=39e995bc. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496084596
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514149600834 3/4
The Prey of Gods
Publishers Weekly.
264.16 (Apr. 17, 2017): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Prey of Gods
Nicky Drayden. Harper Voyager, $15.99 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-0-06-249303-3
In this genre-bending debut novel, a science fantasy set in 2064, newly awakened demigods and artificial
intelligences battle for the fate of South Africa. As a new drug spreads through the population, it unlocks
long-hidden abilities and animal affinities, remnants of a mythological time when humans and nature
intermingled. While an ancient demigoddess schemes to regain her full powers by causing terror, other
people are swept up in the tide of events, including a politician who dreams of embracing his female side as
a stage performer, a pop diva, a gay teen in love with his best friend, and an AI collective unsure of its role
in the world. Drayden uses numerous perspectives to weave an engaging story that's populated by a diverse
cast and enhanced by fascinating concepts. There's a lot to take in as the various plot threads interweave and
converge toward a surprising climax, but Drayden balances the genre elements skillfully, creating a world
where genetic manipulation, sentient robots, and folkloric origin stories can coexist plausibly, if not
peacefully. Agent: Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maass Literary. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Prey of Gods." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 52. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490820799/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=caaf983c.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490820799
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Harper Voyager takes Drayden's debut
Rachel Deahl
Publishers Weekly.
263.19 (May 9, 2016): p6.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Nicky Drayden, editor-in-chief of the audio fiction podcast TheDrabblecast, sold her debut novel to David
Pomerico at Harper Voyager. Pomerico took world English rights, in a two-book deal, to The Prey of Gods',
the second book in the deal is currently untitled. Prey, which Jennifer Jackson at Donald Maass Literary
sold, is slated for summer 2017. Jackson said the book is a near-future thriller set in South Africa that
follows "a diverse set of characters imbued with supernatural abilities by a street drug" who must join
forces to stop a goddess intent on "remaking their world."
Deahl, Rachel
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Deahl, Rachel. "Harper Voyager takes Drayden's debut." Publishers Weekly, 9 May 2016, p. 6. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A452883255/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=508b7e8a. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A452883255
A Madcap Debut: The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden
Sarah McCarry
Tue Jun 13, 2017 3:00pm Post a comment Favorite This
The first thing you should know about Nicky Drayden’s wildly imagined debut is that it’s really, really fun. You’ll bounce from tormented more-than-besties Muzi and Elkin’s first sexual experience (under the influence of a hallucinogen that unlocks their inner dolphin and crab selves, obvs) to a demigoddess moonlighting as a nail tech who plans to destroy the human race to a robot uprising to a young lady who is More Than She Seems to a global superstar and impossible diva whose friendly neighborhood drug dealer is the only person who knows her Dark Secret to an aspiring government official with a very overbearing mother and a secret life as a charismatic transgender pop star. And that’s just the first few chapters.
Spinning between the perspectives of multiple main characters, the seemingly divergent storylines of The Prey of Gods soon begin to intersect in—spoiler alert—unexpected and often delightful ways.
Set in the just-slightly-future South African city of Port Elizabeth, The Prey of Gods is about—well, okay, it’s hard to explain exactly. An evil and ancient demigoddess is really tired of doing rich ladies’ nails for a living so decides to arrange a catastrophic event that will restore her ancient powers! A new drug allows users to access their inner animal selves (and dormant psychic powers)! A lot of different people don’t know it yet but the fate of the world rests on their shoulders! Muzi is totally head over heels for Elkin and terrified to tell him and thanks to the aforementioned hallucinogen has realized he has the power to control people’s minds! Also there are a whole bunch of murders, a genetically engineered dik-dik plague, about fourteen different simultaneous conspiracies, Xhosa folklore, tragic sacrifices, an epic street battle, and lots of dirty jokes.
But the novel is much more than just a series of madcap events; in between demigoddess/manicurist Sydney’s periodic snacks on any person unfortunate enough to cross her and Muzi and Elkin’s witty banter, Drayden tucks in ongoing themes of family—birth and chosen—memory, heritage, and loss. Muzi struggles with his grandfather, Papa Fuzz, whose commitment to his Xhosa heritage strikes Muzi as old-fashioned, and who Muzi is certain won’t exactly be overjoyed at the news his favorite grandson is gay. Politician-slash-transgender lounge singer Stoker is trying—and failing—to reconcile the secret life she’s desperate to live with the ambitions of her family. The robots are learning that an insurrectionist uprising is a lot harder than it looks. Magic is complicated in Drayden’s world, and although the magic-has-a-terrible-price trope can often wear thin in other novels, here she uses it to explore her characters’ often-painful pasts and complex bonds with one another in ways that feel entirely new. Even Sydney, as hilariously (and sometimes frighteningly) terrible as she is, serves as a framework on which Drayden builds many-layered lessons about what exactly it means to be human. For all its wild subplots and deeper messages, the novel never collapses into (unintentional) camp or heavy-handedness, but underneath the propulsive action is a fleshed-out cast of living, breathing characters whose journeys are as vivid as their costumes.
The skill with which Drayden pulls off her fully realized world, bananas plot, and multivocal narrative is so impressive it’s hard to believe this is a debut novel. And on top of her nearly supernatural ability to juggle something like thirty-seven balls at once, she’s also an inventive and delightful stylist with an eye for the novel metaphor and snappy turn of phrase. She can build a fleshed-out character in a handful of paragraphs, make you (well, sometimes) root for a demonic ancient evil who eats people in order to fit into her party dress (it’s complicated), and move you even as you can’t stop laughing. Though she’s pulling from sources as diverse as folkloric origin stories and Terry Pratchett, she balances the disparate elements of her story beautifully. And while there are moments in the story that, shall we say, defy plausibility, by the time she wraps up her own magic show you won’t care. The Prey of Gods is a remarkable debut; I can’t wait to see what Drayden does next.
The Prey of Gods is available now from Harper Voyager.
Read an excerpt from the novel here on Tor.com.
Review: Sci-Fi Novel "The Prey of Gods" Is a Mind-Bending Vision of Hallucinogenics, AI, and Zulu Gods
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Science Fiction > Sci-Fi Books
Chris MahonFriday, 02 June 2017 - 3:20PM
Review: Sci-Fi Novel "The Prey of Gods" Is a Mind-Bending Vision of Hallucinogenics, AI, and Zulu Gods
Image credit: Harper Voyager
A professor of mine once said that the best stories teach you things—how sand dunes change the ecology of a planet (Dune), how to catch a fish (Old Man and the Sea), or how to create napalm from kitty litter (Fight Club). In the case of Prey of Gods, half the fun of reading comes from learning about society in a futuristic version of South Africa, which is so full of depth and interesting details (the mixture of Xhosa and Zulu cultures with modern tech, the widespread use of robots as servants and workers, and the politics of dik-dik control, to name a few) that it makes you nod your head and say "Yeah, that's how it would be." It's great worldbuilding, and the story takes full advantage of it.
We get of this panoramic view of South Africa from about a half-dozen characters, ranging from a cross-dressing politician to a small girl who's being groomed as a goddess by an ancient being who takes the form of an old man. Mixed into this, as the book's back cover explains, is a hallucinogenic drug, an AI uprising, a bio-engineered virus spread by a vengeful demigod looking to plunge the world into chaos, and a pop diva who's trying to overcome her crippling MS. And then there's Muzi, a young boy who's just made the passage into manhood and realized that being a 'man' is more complicated than he thought it would be.
The Prey of Gods, at some points, feels almost too ambitious, and with each chapter switching between POVs, I found myself speed-reading through some chapters to get back to the characters I cared about. Sydney, the chaos-dealing demigoddess in disguise suffering from an American Gods-like situation, is a bit gratuitous with the torture and cruelty, and I found myself thinking that Hannibal Lecter could give her a few pointers on subtlety. That being said, the book moves aggressively fast, and if you don't take your time when reading you will miss how subtly Drayden weaves together all these disparate strands.
All in all, the worldbuilding is fantastic, the imagery is incredibly vivid (the first chapter gives you a taste of what's to come), the POVs are deftly managed, and the plot, though expansive, comes together in a very satisfying way. Prey of Gods is what new sci-fi should be: boldly original, well-written, and mind-bending.
Prey of Gods will be available from Harper Voyager on June 13th. You can pre-order the book here, and check out Nicky Drayden's website here!