Ulises Silva is an emerging Latino author whose fusion of academia, mainstream influences, and vivid storytelling present a fresh entry and perspective into the genre of speculative fiction.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Silva’s dissertation work focused on science fiction and its retelling of American colonialism, including the westward expansion and its war against Native America. In particular, Silva studied the ways in which mainstream science fiction re-imagined American history by inverting historical roles and political ideals—retelling the story of exploration and expansion as an inherently benevolent venture.

As a fan and student of science/speculative fiction and its ability to re-imagine historical and contemporary realities, Silva was influenced by the literary works of H.G. Wells, Orson Scott Card, and Philip K. Dick. Authors of color, including Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucha Corpi, and Américo Paredes, have influenced Silva’s multicultural narrative approach.

Cinematic influences, such as George A. Romero’s Living Dead films, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which extrapolate the struggle of the human psyche under extreme and cataclysmic ordeals, played an equally large part in Silva’s writing. He is fascinated by what he calls the “psychology of apocalypse,” specifically the roles, actions, and decisions of characters in apocalyptic, end-of-the world scenarios. Indeed, the central question posited by his new novel, Solstice—“What would you do if you knew the world would end next week?”—looks to engage readers with the possibilities of such a scenario.

Taken together, Silva’s academic, literary, and cinematic influences produce a brand of fiction that tells gripping stories from historically marginalized points of view. (In Solstice, for example, the main protagonist is a Mexican-Japanese woman.) Silva delves deep into the fractured psyches of his beleaguered characters to uncover broader questions of race, gender, and the conceptualization of recorded history.