New Book Spotlight
Uncertain Sons and Other Stories
A mini-interview with Thomas Ha
Tell us about your new book?
Uncertain Sons and Other Stories is my debut collection–twelve short stories covering five years of multi-genre writing that bleeds between science fiction, dark fantasy, and weird horror. The book contains some anthologized or award-nominated stories like “Window Boy,” “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video,” “Sweetbaby,” “The Sort,” and “Where the Old Neighbors Go.” But it also contains lesser-known personal favorites like “The Mub,” “Alabama Circus Punk,” “Balloon Season,” and others. All of it culminates in the titular “Uncertain Sons,” an original novelette that ties together themes raised throughout the book and hopefully recontextualizes the compilation of stories that precedes it. If you like strange, dark, and fantastical stories that deal with familial relationships, interpersonal conflict, societal shifts, technological anxiety, I think (or hope) this will be the collection for you.
What aspect of the book was the most fun to write?
There’s a trio of stories in the collection that form, maybe not a “frame” to all the stories, but a throughline or backbone: “House Traveler,” “The Sort,” and “Uncertain Sons.” One way to read the collection (and not the only way) is to see these three as one possible “container” to think about the other stories. Each of the twelve pieces in the collection approaches similar problems in different ways–a core conflict, often, though not always, about fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and how we confront them. And with those recurring themes and ideas come a lot of questions. I think the aforementioned trio of stories, and “Uncertain Sons” in particular, is at least one “answer” to those questions. This is the conclusion to a thesis that I have been playing with for years now. I hope it serves as a satisfying conclusion for readers who have been following along with me for a while, as well as for brand-new readers who might be discovering my stories for the first time.
If there is one emotion or theme that you would hope that the reader connects with, what would that be?
I think the overwhelming feeling that initially comes across in the stories in Uncertain Sons is fear, and fear in the face of the strange and unknowable. But the theme I want people to walk away with is some kind of faith–not necessarily in the religious sense. Faith in the self, faith in others, faith in what is distinctly human, to overcome. Some of these stories end in obliteration, some end in triumph, some end in interminable ambiguity. But in each of these stories is a kernel of faith in something. I don’t always know what. Something that allows us to survive, to endure, to live, and that’s what I hope readers are left with when they finish the book.
