Joseph Wallace

Joseph Wallace is the author of three novels: Diamond Ruby, set in 1920s New York City; the global apocalyptic thriller Invasive Species; and its follow-up, the newly released Slavemakers.

From his Q & A with Lauren Sarner at Inverse:

How do you go about conceptualizing your ideas into stories that feel plausible?

Before I started writing fiction, I was a nature and science writer for many years, so I was sort of fascinated by the odd corners of science. It’s also what people are often interested in reading about. To me, wasps are really fascinating because they’re extremely highly evolved. They’re still not completely understood. For example, the venom in an average wasp sting has so many chemicals in it that they’ve only figured out what constitutes a tiny percentage of it — even with the most advanced techniques of studying such things. So I love the idea of something that’s evolved to be as complicated as that.

But mostly it’s that they have an extraordinary ability to get their way through enslavement. My most vivid example of this is that within the last couple of years, I’ve come up with the fact that there’s a virus only found when wasps inject it into the prey that they are going to lay their eggs in. It is used to help disable the immune system of the prey so the wasp’s eggs can thrive. As far as I can remember, it’s not found anywhere else.

So when I was sitting there trying to figure out a way to end the world, it was inevitable to me that wasps would...[read on]

Visit Joseph Wallace's website.

The Page 69 Test: Slavemakers.

Writers Read: Joseph Wallace.

--Marshal Zeringue