Why did I write The Chronicles of Spartak? asked the Bay Times.

What was the spark that ignited your novel?

Steven Coulter: I was bored with endless pundits and academics prognosticating about a possible dark future for America as social, political, environmental and economic issues collide. I wanted to make it real, on my terms, through fiction.

This kind story had to be physical, visceral, uncomfortable, exciting, sexual, emotional, disturbing and thought provoking, a tale that could be read from different levels, set forty years after the collapse of the middle class. And it had to be in my town, San Francisco.

In the year 2115, sixteen-year-old Spartak Jones tells his own story about the world we made for him, adding my own ideas about where science and fiction meld and trends reshape America. Spartak’s flesh and blood adventure has a serious political underpinning, set near enough in the future that we have a sense of how it might be based on our current experiences and building recognition about how what we do now impacts the lives of real people tomorrow.

I created a protagonist with pluck and values, a fluid sense of sexuality, loyal to family and friends. He is brutally bullied in an elite high school he attends on scholarship and is bisexual in an age when that is no longer an issue. He survives through cunning, loyalty, raw talent and ruthlessness when there are no other options, becoming a warrior and an icon for a revolution, an America that used to be and might be again. If he can survive.

Steven A. Coulter is a San Francisco based novelist using fast-paced speculative fiction to explore a future shaped by today’s reality.