Erin K. Wagner
Erin K. Wagner (also E. K. Wagner) is a professor by trade, a medievalist by discipline, and a writer of speculative fiction by design.She lives in upstate New York, a storied and story-making place, but her roots are in Appalachia, since she grew up in rural southeast Ohio. Presently, she teaches an array of literature and composition courses in the SUNY system as an English professor. Her interests, both academic and creative, lie in examining how the human responds to the nonhuman (whether that be AI, religion, or nature).Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, and a number of other spec-fic publications. Her novella The Green and Growing is available through Aqueduct Press. An Unnatural Life, her second novella, is available from Tor.com. And her debut novel, Mechanize My Hands to War, is forthcoming from DAW.She is an active member of SFWA.
Mechanize My Hands to War
Erin K. Wagner
The debut novel from Erin K Wagner is a chilling nonlinear sci-fi that examines androids as a labor force in conflict with both human farmers and homegrown militias in near-future Appalachia
Deep in the hills of Appalachia, anti-android sentiment is building. Charismatic demagogue Eli Whitaker has used anger toward new labor policies that replace factory workers with androids to build a militia–and now he is recruiting child soldiers.
Part of a governmental task force, Adrian and Trey are determined to put a stop to Whitaker’s efforts. Their mission is complicated by their own shared childhood experiences with Whitaker. After an automated soldier shoots a child during a raid to protect Trey, both grapple with the role of androids and their use in combat.
Interrelated with the hunt for Whitaker, farmers Shay and Ernst struggle after they discover their GMO crop seeds have failed and caused a deadly illness in Shay. To help manage, they hire android employees: Sarah as hospice, and AG-15 to work the now-toxic fields. The couple’s relationship to the androids evolve as both humans get progressively more sick.
Timely and chilling, Wagner's nonlinear debut shares intimate narratives of loss, trauma, and survival as the emergence of artificial life intersects with state violence and political extremism in rural Appalachia.
Unnatural Life
Erin K. Wagner
Murderbot meets To Kill a Mockingbird in Erin K. Wagner's An Unnatural Life , an interplanetary tale of identity and responsibility.
The cybernetic organism known as 812-3 is in prison, convicted of murdering a human worker but he claims that he did not do it. With the evidence stacked against him, his lawyer, Aiya Ritsehrer, must determine grounds for an appeal and uncover the true facts of the case.
But with artificial life-forms having only recently been awarded legal rights on Earth, the military complex on Europa is resistant to the implementation of these same rights on the Jovian moon.
Aiya must battle against her own prejudices and that of her new paymasters, to secure a fair trial for her charge, while navigating her own interpersonal drama, before it's too late.
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