Honolulu Magazine's inaugural book awards recently recognized six local authors whose stories were published by national companies in 2023 — a number unheard of for Hawaiʻi.
Chris McKinney won Author of the Year. His credits include "The Tattoo" and "The Queen of Tears."
His latest work, "Sunset, Water City," is the third installment of a sci-fi trilogy born during the COVID-19 pandemic when he decided to switch gears and jump into the science fiction genre.
"I think a part of it was sort of the lockdown, and just not wanting to write about the world in its present state, and sort of pressing my imagination to speculate what all of this looks like 100, 150 years in the future," McKinney said.
"I wanted to explore this idea of, for example, in one book, blending murder mystery with science fiction. In the next book, blending adventure and some horror with sci-fi. And in the last book, I blend fantasy into the mix," he said.
McKinney said the books are set in an indistinguishable Hawaiʻi — the vast underwater city central to the trilogy is off the coast of the Big Island.
"I was living in Kakaʻako, too, at the time, and you know, I'm living in this condo, this glass tower, and I'm looking at Ala Moana Beach and the ocean, and I'm just sitting there and thinking, what if we took all of this, flipped it upside down, and put it underwater?"
This interview aired on The Conversation on June 4, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
