Not many things make me happier than an intricate heist. And who doesn’t want their own space motorcycle? Marie Vibbert’s new novel, Andrei and the Hellcats, delivers so many of my favorite things—fast and crazy action, characters that are by turns goofy and brilliant, and an anti-authoritarian ethos that warms my punk heart.
The story’s point of view rotates among all the characters, building tension while deepening the reader’s understanding of key relationships. Once the story gets going, it is a non-stop thrill-ride with just enough underlying danger to make the high points sing. I found myself smiling throughout the book, and laughed out loud several times.
Andrei is a sequel to Galactic Hellcats, but this new novel easily stands on its own. I bet you’ll want to read them both.
Andrei and the Hellcats will be released from Lethe Press on July 1, and is available for pre-order now.
Thanks to Marie for letting me have an early peek at the ARC & for taking time to answer my questions!
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Myna: Andrei and the Hellcats is an absolute blast of action and fun with characters I couldn’t help but love. What deeper themes do you explore through these characters?
Marie: Consent and capitalism! I decided to have the sequel to Galactic Hellcats be from the point of view of Andrei, the sex robot who loves his job. Andrei has to think about why he was programmed to like the things he likes, and also weighing the need to save his sister against his programmed respect for property rights. How do we form our moral preferences? Can robots (or AI) have a conscious choice in their morality? What does that say about morality? I know, that sounds very heavy for a book about a sex robot enlisting a space biker gang to rescue his sister from an evil queen, but I promise you there are also heists and snappy dialog.
Myna: What’s unique about this book?
Marie: Andrei’s voice will feel unique, I hope. He is obsessed with fashion, cocktails, and sex, so everything he describes relates back to these things. He’s sassy and fun and not at all downtrodden. I feel like sex robots in particular are always presented as sad? Why not just program them to be really horny and sex-positive? I think a lot of our culture’s sexual hang-ups have been unfairly holding the sex robots down!
Myna: If Andrei had a theme song, what would it be?
Marie: “Good as Hell” by Lizzo
Myna: Did you have any surprises or hiccups while writing?
Marie: I had asked everyone I knew who read Hellcats what they wanted in a sequel. Many, many people wanted romance. I… was terrified to try writing that. But I did have all these nice people in their 20s without romantic partners, plus two flirty robots. Someone would have to end up meeting a romantic prospect, right?
It was literally the hardest thing to write in the book, and this thing has seven point of view characters moving through two elaborate heists! I got a lot of feedback from friends who read romance and they guided me past the clunky first drafts to something genuine and heartfelt. Margot gets a girlfriend! In a believable way! Yay! I CAN write romance! Sort of.
Myna: How do you stay motivated?
Marie: Crushingly low self-esteem. If I’m not writing, I feel I am wasting my limited and fast-passing time on this Earth. Not healthy, I know, but I also find I feel I am not wasting my life if I am on a beach.
Myna: Which mode of transportation would you prefer: electric seahorse, cyborg dragon, raven-starship hybrid, or something else (explain!)?
Marie: If you’ve read Galactic Hellcats, you’d know what I really want is a space motorcycle. A little spaceship just for me, FTL of course, that also flies in atmosphere. Femme Fatal Lipstick Red with FLAMES. And chrome. Always chrome.
I used to daydream as a kid that my bike was such a vehicle, with a sassy AI as an imaginary friend.
Myna: What’s next for you?
Marie: I’ve started working on a third book to wrap up the Hellcats, optimistically assuming book two does well enough that the publisher will accept a third! Working title: Hellcats at War – Thane finally confronts his mother!
I’ve just finished two novels that I am revising – one is a sort of retelling of the Homestead Steel Strike on Mars, and the other is a hive mind contacting earth – but the hive mind is the good guys!
Other than that, I have a number of short stories coming out soon:
“Velodrome on Mars” in Analog – about building the first bike track on Mars
“The Summer Kids and the Gemini” in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – about time-travelling fairies on roller coasters
“Yarn Theory” in Clarkesworld – actually a chapter of my hive mind novel, a mathematician figures out alien language via knitting
“Spandex, Sporks, and Space Vampires” in Uncharted in May – my working title was “Sassy Vampire in Space”
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Hugo- and Nebula nominated author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 90 times in top magazines like Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.
See more at Marie’s website, or find her on Bluesky and Instagram
Pre-order Andrei and the Hellcats here
And check out some of Marie’s short stories here!
Myna Chang 