I think it’s incredibly unlikely that other life we encounter will be humanoid in shape. I’ve never made the acquaintance of Lrrr or Ndnd I just tried to think of something that would look as little like our typical image of invading “grays” as possible. When it came to the aliens, what influenced how you made them look and behave? For instance, did you ask a scientist what real aliens would be like, or did you model them after such TV-loving aliens as Lrrr and Ndnd from Omicron Persei 8? Incredible work that redefines the look of science fiction.Īnd this is my last “influence” question, I swear. I was also very influenced by a lot of graphic novels, especially sci-fi ones: the art of people like Jean Giraud, Shaun Tan, who I mentioned above, Serge Pelle, and the team behind the Image Comics series Prophet. The weird fantasy landscapes of the Old Masters, in particular, with their blue castles perched on impossible crags in the background. The book talks about landscape art of the past. What about non-literary influences? Are there any movies, TV shows, or video games that had an impact on Landscape With Invisible Hand? I guess I’m thinking of people like Kurt Vonnegut, William Tenn, Thomas Disch, Shaun Tan, Liu Cixin, Stanislaw Lem, the brothers Strugatsky, and Ray Bradbury. I love those high-concept satirical sci-fi writers who, while writing about other worlds, are really writing about our own home on Earth. What writers or specific novels do you feel had a big influence on Landscape With Invisible Hand, but are not big influences on your other novels or your writing style as a whole? How would we react? How would we find dignity and self-respect? What interests me is how human society would be changed if our world were colonized. It’s certainly not concerned with the science of alien invasion. And therefore, quite serious in some ways. The plot makes Landscape With Invisible Hand sound like it’s a bit lighthearted, and not a hard sci-fi novel. We watch how Adam’s own family - and, in many ways, the human race itself - is falling apart and struggling to define itself as its new financial masters, the vuvv, look on. The story is told entirely through descriptions of Adam’s artwork. We’ve become a backwater in some other species’ economic empire. It’s about a young artist, a kid named Adam Costello, who’s going around painting American landscapes a few years after an alien colonization of the Earth. What is Landscape With Invisible Hand about? Though in discussing this novel with Anderson, he revealed that this book isn’t about the invasion, or even the invaders, but how we’d react to be the ones who’ve been invaded. Anderson imagines a world where invading aliens have made Earth part of their economy.

But in his new sci-fi novel Landscape With Invisible Hand ( hardcover, digital), writer M.T. When aliens colonize Earth, it’s often so they can take our natural resources or enslave our people.

Matthew tobin anderson books