An MFA, a new book: May is full of big milestones for science fiction author
“Of course novels can’t save the world, but we also can’t save the world without novels,” said Andrew Dana Hudson, who is earning his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing this May. He also has a master’s degree in sustainability from ASU. Courtesy photo
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable spring 2026 graduates.
Andrew Dana Hudson is more than an aspiring science fiction author. He is the actual, real deal.
The graduating Arizona State University student’s debut novel “Absence” is out this May from Soho Press. According to Kirkus Reviews, the book is a “fantastical tale about the afterlife and what its proximity can do to a community’s sanity.” Publishers Weekly gave “Absence” one of its coveted starred reviews, calling the book “strikingly original.”
Andrew Dana Hudson discusses "Absence"
Wednesday, May 6
7–8 p.m.
The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, Scottsdale
More details
Certainly, publishing your buzzy book right as you earn your Master of Fine Arts in creative writing is a great way to celebrate graduation.
Hudson already has two books under his belt, both of them speculative fiction collections: “Our Shared Storm” (2022), based on a set of climate-modeling scenarios; and “Northern Lights” (2024), imagining future energy systems. The first book was Hudson’s thesis for his master’s degree in sustainability that he earned at ASU in 2020. The second was the culmination of his stint as a researcher at Sweden’s Luleå University of Technology in 2023.
In his science fiction, Hudson imagines alternate political, cultural and climate futures, leaning less on the “science” part of the label. For instance, he contributed a short story about the management of nuclear waste in the future for the recently published Center for Science and the Imagination volume, “Our Radioactive Neighbors.” But he focused on policies and institutions surrounding the issue of radioactive storage, rather than technical aspects.
Hudson is committed to exploring questions related to sustainability in his writing, but he balks at the suggestion that storytelling is the solution to any problem: “Of course novels can’t save the world, but we also can’t save the world without novels.”
Rather than writing for social or political aim, Hudson said he feels the need to create art, not to preach.
“I’m doing this out of an ineffable creative impulse,” he said.
We caught up with Hudson before graduation ceremonies — and before he leaves on his book tour — to ask a few additional questions.
Question: What was your “aha” moment, when you realized you wanted to study in your field?
Answer: I have grade school papers from when I was little in which I declared that I would grow up to be a science fiction writer. It took a while for me to find my way there, but now I can't imagine being anything else.
Q: Do you remember a particular inspiration? A book, a movie, or some vision from your own imagination?
A: When I was a kid, I read a bunch of “kid sci-fi,” like by Bruce Coville. I also was reading “The Lord of the Rings” and watching “Star Wars” and all those classics. In middle school, I read all the “Animorphs” books in a summer. I lived in a tiny town in Illinois at the time, and whatever they had at the library, I read.
Q: Why did you choose ASU?
A: ASU has been an intellectual home for me almost a decade. I came here because it was a place that supported the kind of imaginative practices I was interested in, using speculative fiction to generate insights about the possibilities unfolding in our changing world. Since then I've found a lot of friends and supporters here who have enriched my work.
Q: What are your plans after graduation?
A: I'll be headed out on book tour over the summer, while also looking for new job and freelance opportunities — and of course finishing my next novel, “The Murders in the Zoo Morgue.”
Q: What can you tell us about “The Murders in the Zoo Morgue,” besides the obvious nod to Edgar Allan Poe?
A: “The Murders in the Zoo Morgue” is an alternate-history detective novel set in New York in which humans and elephants can communicate and collaborate and have built a post-capitalist world together.
My protagonist is a detective who with her partner, an elephant, is investigating a death of two orangutans at the Bronx Zoo. It’s a riff on the Poe story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”In Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short story, Detective C. Auguste Dupin discovers that the titular murders were committed by an escaped orangutan. — considered the first mystery-detective story.
This is a world I’ve been working on for a long time from when I first arrived at ASU in 2018. I got the idea and started asking questions like, “What would it actually be like to inhabit a multi-species society? How would we change them and how would they change us?”
Q: If someone gave you $40 million to solve one problem on our planet, what would you tackle?
A: I can certainly think of a few ways to use $40 million, but the truth is our biggest problems require the kind of social and political reforms that you can't just throw money at. After all, the people and organizations standing in the way of climate action, sane governance and a dignified life for working people, well, they all have tons of money. Money helps, but it can't replace building a real movement if you want meaningful, lasting change.
Learn more about Hudson's writing at andrewdanahudson.com.
Excerpt from "Absence" by Andrew Dana Hudson
Chapter 1
“We were sitting right here, eating dinner, like always, and she just ...” The husband held up a closed fist and then opened it, fingers splayed wide.
“Popped?” Harvey Ellis suggested.
“Yeah, exactly,” the husband agreed. “She disappeared into thin air, no time for goodbyes, no nothing. There was just that noise you hear, then gone. God — what am I going to do?”
The husband put his head in his hands, the shock apparently starting to metastasize into grief. Apparently.
Harvey looked around. He could see into the kitchen, the TV room, and down a dim hall. All shabby; furniture covered with magazines and dishes and dust. The dining room where they stood, on the other hand, was pristine. Floors scrubbed, table set with a fresh, white cloth. Picture of husband and missing wife smiling at him from the mantel.
“Well, Mr., uh” — Harvey checked his notes — “Bartholomew. My deepest condolences on your loss. If everything checks out, I’ll get the paperwork going, so the IRS can send you your remainder benefit.”
The husband nodded, but couldn’t help but ask, voice deadpan, “Checks out?”
“Yup,” Harvey said. He pulled out a boxy, handheld device, with buttons and a little gray screen. He unspooled a cord wrapped around an oblong metallic rod, connected the two. “Soon as this beeps, I’ll finish filling out your wife’s Certificate of Absence.”
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