When Robert Repino pitched Mort(e) to agents he was told, "This book can't make up its mind about what it is," but it turns out they were wrong because Repino's debut is weirdly fantastic. "I like to think that maybe it's time for some science fiction books that aren't just, you know, a white guy on a quest." Agreed.

In a new interview with Paradoxa, Pulitzer-winning author Junot Diaz speaks at length with Taryne Jade Taylor about the allure of genre fiction, colonialism disguised as sci-fi, and immigrating to the U.S. at an early age (he refers to it as “a profound fracture of my reality, a temporal and spatial anomaly”). During the interview, Diaz also said that his attempt to write his new novel—which was excerpted in a 2012 issue of The New Yorker—has “ground to a halt,” admitting, “I’m probably going to have to abandon it.”