It’s visited in the final act, but it’s very important to go there, I’ll put it that way.Mike Chen’s debut novel Here and Now and Then (MIRA, 2019) is a portrait of patience. There’s also a journey to the UC Davis campus, which has been turned into a survival commune. I wanted to examine the trauma of going on and trying to live a normal life after something so devastating happens. It takes place after 5 billion people have died. MC: We just settled on the title: A Beginning At The End. Any details about the second book that you can share?
Then you also have the forms of communication that have evolved over that time. I looked at the late 1800s, the late 1900s and compared ways to get water, cook, store food, to get transportation. I looked at how much daily life can change in the span of 125 years. JA: What does your idea of the future look like in 2142? You see downtown Davis very briefly in 2030. But basically daughter is in peril, and she is in peril as a grad student at UC Davis. Because it does happen in the final act of the book. MC: I’m trying to think of the best way to say this without spoiling the book. JA: What can you tell us about the scenes that take place at UC Davis?
I love sci-fi, but the stories I want to tell are very intimate in scale. I take something I’m watching or reading or playing, and then my brain asks, “What if this happens?” I’d been watching a lot of time travel stuff. Who.” Most of my story ideas come from a spark from any kind of media I’m consuming a lot of at the time. MC: The idea came from watching a lot of “Dr. JA: How did you get the idea for this book? That class at UC Davis - it felt like a creative freedom that I’ve never quite realized before. I don’t think I would be here without her. My teacher, Wendy Sheanin, is now an executive at Simon & Schuster and she encouraged me to keep writing after graduation. I took a creative writing class my senior year.
Mike Chen: My degree is in mechanical engineering, but when I was at school, I wanted to take advantage of the learning environment.
How does that education translate into your career now? Jocelyn Anderson: You were a mechanical engineering major at UC Davis. Here, Chen talks about the new book - and the next one - with UC Davis Magazine editor Jocelyn Anderson. Here and Now and Then (Mira Books, 2019) follows Kin Stewart, a secret agent from 2142 as he tries to get out of a botched mission that stranded him in suburban San Francisco since the 1990s - and includes two scenes at UC Davis. For his debut novel, Mike Chen ’00 imagined a futuristic world complete with flying cars.
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