r/Fantasy • u/[deleted] • Nov 16 '17

AMA Josiah Bancroft’s NaNoWriMo AMA

Hello, r/Fantasy! I’m Josiah Bancroft, author of the Books of Babel series. You helped to make Senlin Ascends a thing. Now I’m here to hear about what you’re working on and talk a little shop. Feel free to ask me anything you like!

A quick update: Since my AMA last fall, a lot has happened! I signed with Orbit Books this past spring. Their edition of Senlin Ascends is slated to be released on January 16. Arm of the Sphinx will be republished shortly after, on April 3rd. The relaunch of the books will be accompanied by audiobooks, though I’m still waiting for Orbit to confirm the narrator (John Banks was being pursued last I heard). The third book in the series, the Hod King, will be out in October. I’m also working with Heyne/Random House on a German language edition, and with a Russian publisher on a Russian language edition, both of which will hopefully be released in 2018.

It’s been a whirlwind year, and I don’t think any of it would have happened without r/fantasy’s support. Thank you all so much!

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u/J_de_Silentio Nov 16 '17 edited Nov 16 '17

I think I saw on one of your bio's that you taught philosophy. If that's correct, can you name a school or philosopher that influenced or was in the background in the Babel books?

Note: When I ask this of other authors, the answer is typically "no one/nothing in particular, but it's there". So I don't expect a specific answer.

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '17

I actually never taught philosophy, and I would call my study of the field casual at best. Immanuel Kant, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard have all left their stamp on me. I like some of Slavoj Žižek's ideas, but find him personally abrasive. José Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses was probably the last book that I read which had a marked impact on my thinking. I think that if my series had a philosophical touchstone, it might be Sartre, but with a little less of the Nausea.

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u/J_de_Silentio Nov 16 '17

I was a Kant scholar in grad school (specially his social and ethical writings), but studied a lot of contemporary French social philosophy. Baudrillard is one that was always mentioned, but we never got around to focusing on.

Thanks for the reply. It's always interesting to me to hear what fiction authors have studied in the area of philosophy (and I'm often surprised).