Caroline O’ Donoghue is magically talented— novelist, podcaster, and screenwriter extraordinaire, her covens of  characters arrive to readers imbued with bold and lyrical language (just ask the witches of her New York Times best- selling series “The Gifts” trilogy). Aside from her spellbinding works of YA fiction, she’s the author of the riveting adult novel The Rachel Incident, a Time and NPR-selected best book of the year. Regardless of audience, the common denominator across O’Donoghue’s works is her profound understanding of connectedness: the relationships her characters forge are genuine and their plights feel frighteningly real— even when their worlds are brilliantly imaginary.

Skipshock is no exception, as O’Donoghue invites readers aboard the perilous journey of Margo, a boarding school student who finds herself flung into the midst of an interplanetary civil war, and Moon, the suave interdimensional traveling salesman who has no choice but to take her under his wing. When Margo learns she might be the living weapon that ends the war, it’s up to Moon to get her home before anyone finds out just how powerful she truly is. But where is home? And in a universe where death is frequent and time is scarce, will she survive getting there? With tense action, time-warping twists, and plenty bubbling under the surface between our two protagonists, Skipshock is a surefire sci-fi favorite for readers looking to lose themselves in something new.

Caroline O’Donoghue was born in Cork, Ireland and currently lives in London, where she records her internationally-charting podcast Sentimental Garbage.

Questions:

Skipshock’s pivotal premise is one of the most unique ideas in YA science-fiction right now. The different worlds of your novel all exist in their own sort of time-zones along a continuous, interdimensional railroad line. The wealthiest worlds are the ones with the longest days and therefore the most time, whereas the poorest worlds are bound to short days, and their citizens live short lives. When did you first start thinking about this central idea? Where do you see the overlap in these concepts of wealth, class, and time?

First of all, thank you! It’s definitely an odd little concept and I’m always a bit tongue tied when I’m explaining it to people. I think so much of the soul of this book comes from my identity as a Londoner. If you live in London – or any major city with a mass transit system, really – you develop this relationship to trains that is so wrapped up in money and class. You get on the Northern line in south London, a historically poorer part of the city, and thirty minutes later you’re in Highgate, a place so privileged that Gwyneth Paltrow raised her kids there.

If you hang out on both ends of this train line, it becomes pretty clear that how people divide up their time is quite different. Who has time to sit and drink coffee, to buy flowers, to walk their dog. And who is rushing, juggling work with childcare, or grabbing fast food on the way home because the shops were closed by the time they had time to think about food. There are versions of the same thing everywhere. What people in Queens are able to do, and what people in Manhattan are able to do.

It’s a pretty benign observation, but then you start thinking about the decline of left-wing political parties over the last few years. Activism and political engagement are, among other things, hugely time consuming. It’s hard to participate in it if you’re working extra hours because it’s become too expensive to simply survive. You’re too bloody tired. So politics becomes even more rarefied, or a thing we share on social media because we don’t really have time to go to a rally. Working class people get left out of politics, out of the arts, out of anything that requires the investment of free time. This is such an important thing about Moon’s character: he’s cynical, but he’s also just too busy surviving to think about structural change.

In our world, money decides how much free time you have. In Skipshock, it’s kind of the other way round. How much time you have decides how much money you have. Time is literally moving differently from world to world. That struck me as a fascinating place to start from.

Moon is a salesman in the world of Skipshock, one of the few occupations that are allowed to travel freely between different worlds, and different time-zones. The staple of every salesman is their briefcase: a portable inventory of pawnable oddities and ingredients. If you were a salesman in Skipshock, what would you like to keep inside your briefcase?

I think I would go to Khaise, a world in the deep North, pretty frequently. Because they run on a two-hour day, time passes so quickly that weird minerals and plants develop. Characters like Saffy, who owns a bathhouse up there, have side-hustles making potions with these natural resources. Sleeping teas, mild hallucinogens. that kind of thing. Shrooms, maybe? I could see myself getting close with the witches of Khaise. Or rather, I would try to get close, and they would just smile and take my money.

British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Your previous YA work has been witchy, moonlit fantasy, but Skipshock dives into space-traveling sci-fi. Any big differences that jumped out to you as someone who’s written both genres? Any surprising similarities?

The most surprising thing about writing Skipshock was the discovery, after I had turned it into my publishers, that I was writing science fiction. In my head, this was still fantasy, just in a different setting. I wanted to write something that made me feel like I was in Spirited Away, or – this is kind of a weird deep cut – the Australian fantasy series Spellbinder. I wanted a magical, inexplicable blending of worlds. The kind of thing that doesn’t rush to explain itself, but just asks you to accept the magic for what it is. But then I was sitting with my editors and my agent working out the exact math of how my characters were physically ageing in this world and suddenly realized: oh my god, I’ve written a sci-fi novel.

Despite the numerous otherworldly wonders of Skipshock (moon-worshipping nomads, giant moving cities, intergalactic train tracks), the bureaucratic obstacles our protagonists encounter feel all-too-familiar. Throughout the novel, their journey is put into jeopardy by the lack of a visa, a missing identification form, or a particularly loathsome customs worker. Were any of these scenarios inspired by real encounters or current events?

Skipshock has been on the backburner of my mind since 2016 – literally almost a decade! – and the first kernel was definitely Brexit. Britain leaving the European Union was traumatic for a number of reasons, but one thing that was devastating to my English friends was that they were losing their right to live and work in the EU. It was a huge, huge blow to so many. Overnight, the world just felt smaller and meaner. But because I was Irish, I technically hadn’t lost anything – my Irish passport meant I could live and work where I wanted. Suddenly everyone was envious for a thing I’d never thought twice about before. People joked that my boyfriend should marry me so he could get Irish citizenship. Here we were, mostly white and privileged Londoners, worrying and strategizing about our ability to travel. It was our first real experience of what millions go through all the time: the thought of a country not wanting you. I wanted to write about the thorny psychology of this, but I needed the power of fantasy (or sci-fi??) to help magnify the problem. That’s what genre fiction is great for. You make something real into something bigger, something crazier. It helps me feel sane, to turn an insane concept like visas into an almost magical object.

It took me years to get around to the idea, but its relevance has only grown. Particularly in America, where Trump’s presidency has made words like “undocumented” a slur, a word almost interchangeable with “criminal”. It’s horrifying, and feels uncomfortable close to the world of Skipshock.

As Margo tries to ground herself in the strange new society she’s transported to, she grasps for common threads between the worlds of Skipshock and the Earth she calls home. One of these threads is the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a tale familiar to both Margo and Moon. Interestingly, it’s also a story of two travelers: the wayward poet Orpheus delves into the underworld to rescue the soul of his beloved Eurydice and guide her back to the land of the living. Between Margo and Moon, who do you think is Orpheus and who do you think is Eurydice? Is it that clear cut?

Hadestown – the Anais Mitchell musical based on the Orpheus myth – is another huge influence on this book. Something that fascinates me about Orpheus is that it’s a story about trust. It begins with all the hopeful excitement of young love, the kind of love where you’re so obsessed with the person that they almost feel like an extension of you. It feels like they have the same thoughts, the same soul as you. But then someone does something completely out of character – in the musical, Eurydice willingly goes to Hades – so not only does Orpheus have to save her, he has to psychologically contend with why she would do something like this in the first place. It burrows into him, so even when he wins her back, you have to ask yourself if he can ever really trust her again. So he leads her out of the Underworld, but he looks back. He breaks his bargain with Hades. He loses her forever.

This is so crucial to Margo and Moon’s dynamic. The outside world is pushing in on them, and forcing them to make impossible bargains. But they also have to trust each other. And, in the second book, to keep trusting each other – even when the other person is out of sight.

When Moon tries to explain the civil conflict that’s taken hold of Skipshock’s planets, he describes himself as a “kind of a case study” for “people who are doomed to grow up in interesting times…” Do you have any advice for readers who, like Moon, feel doomed to grow up in interesting times?

There’s a scene in the book where Moon is talking to his slightly older cousin, Yaz. They’re both Lunati, both persecuted for their ethnic identity, both orphans. But Yaz is fighting for freedom, and Moon has decided to tap out of politics. She tells him: “Things weren’t always this bad, they had to change to get this way. Who says they won’t change again? And for better, this time?”

If there’s any ‘lesson’ in the book, this is it. Things change. Then they change again. For many young readers in the UK and US, they have grown up in a political atmosphere of unrelenting grimness, and can’t imagine anything different. And this is exactly what people in power are counting on. If they can’t have your support, they would prefer your apathy, your belief that you can’t do much to change your situation. Fight against this where you can. Believe in change, and work for it.

Readers who make it to the end of the line will surely be clamoring for a ticket aboard Margo and Moon’s next interplanetary adventure! Any hints about what to expect from the sequel?

Moon and Margo are apart from one another now and have to fight their way back through many worlds to find each other. But they have to trust that the other person won’t forget them, or doubt them. They’re both Orpheus. They’re both Eurydice.