Interview with Nathan Toronto
Wall detail, Al-Hamra Palace. Photograph courtesy of Nathan Toronto.
Today, I’m chatting with Nathan Toronto, military sci-fi aficionado with an interest in alternate history and publisher of Bullet Points!
DV: Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
NT: I am a military science fiction addict. It can be a means for creating a more peaceful, prosperous world. In my professional life I study military learning, strategy, and civil-military relations, so I see how important societal attitudes toward the military and war are. Many of my stories feature military officers because I’ve worked with them for so much of my life, teaching operations and strategic decision-making. Every time I write it’s a thought experiment about war or warfare that starts with the question, “What if?”
There was a time I thought I could write to become famous, but now it’s really about writing what I would love to read, about escaping the chaos and insanity of the real world to make war and peace in my head. Someday, maybe someone will read my stories and find the same love and thoughtfulness in them that I experience when writing them.
These stories are like children that I raise to become full-fledged people, then I give them to the world, unfinished, raw, and waiting to make their mark.
DV: Your story “I Heard the Bombs on Christmas Day” features an alternate history in which Christian forces did not take the city of Granada (Spain) from its long-standing Muslim rulers. What was the inspiration for this story?
NT: I started thinking about this story when we visited Granada in 2017. I have studied the Middle East for decades and I’d always wanted to see Al-Hamra Palace, so this story is very much the product of place and history. All the places in the story are real, but reimagined and reinterpreted in light of a fascinating counterfactual: what if the Spanish forces of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon had failed to defeat Boabdil and his Moorish forces at the Battle of Granada in 1492? Set 500 years after this battle, “I Heard the Bombs on Christmas Day” posits that Columbus (who requested Isabella and Ferdinand’s help in the months after the battle) sailed across the sea under a Muslim flag. The riches of America would have gone to Islamic rulers instead of bankrolling the Spanish Empire. The world would be very different indeed.
The story follows the last Christian bookseller in Granada, grappling with the political reality of 500 years of Muslim rule. The story questions our assumptions about religion, history, and violence, and seeks to give readers an authentic experience using actual places and dialects of Spanish and Arabic (in which I am fluent). It was a challenging story to write because I don’t normally deal with such dark material, but it also asks some important questions that we should answer about ourselves, especially with what’s going on in the Middle East today.
This story appears in ZNB Presents: Year Two, along with over two dozen stories by other wonderful authors. It’s available in all the regular places, but I recommend getting it directly from the publisher in digital or paperback format.
DV: You run the military fiction magazine Bullet Points. What about military fiction draws you to that subgenre?
NT: The possibilities of the subgenre fascinate me and draw me in ways I can’t fully describe. I’ll read fiction or murder mysteries or even non-military science fiction, and the stories may be well written, but somehow reading military science fiction always feels like coming home. I just love this subgenre.
I’m a war nerd, so I can’t really help it. I earned a PhD in international relations because I am fascinated with how countries prepare for war. I’m a military history buff and I’ve written a fair amount on civil-military relations, Middle East security, and strategy, which you can read about on my website. Writing, editing, and publishing military science fiction is a way to explore war and warfare on a visceral, human level in a way I can’t through my academic research.
DV: What is your favorite thing about being a magazine editor?
NT: Without question, it’s the stories. Discovering stories I love is an indescribable experience. They stay with me long after I’ve read them. I love helping authors hone their stories and turn these stories into their best selves. It’s so easy for me to pass time editing, typesetting, and proofing, not to mention designing covers.
I’m bad at marketing, but I’m pretty not-terrible at everything else about editing Bullet Points. Creating books out of compelling ideas is a transcendent experience for me. When this thing starts making a little pocket change, that’ll just be gravy.
DV: What’s next for you in the writing world?
NT: I’m committed to Bullet Points for the long term and I just finished writing my third novel, Redemption of the White Planet. It will be ready for folks to read soon. I’m excited to send it out into the world because it ties up the trilogy in a way that captures so many of my thoughts on war, politics, gender relations, love, and peace.
I also have plans for my research. I’d really like to write my next big research project on understanding how defense institutions become more democratic, professional, and stable. At some point I’d also like to write a book about the sources of autocracy and winner-take-all politics in the Middle East. I’ve got a tentative title for that project: Desert Rules.
So many words, so little time.
DV: Where can folks find you (and Bullet Points) online?
NT: My website is https://www.nathantoronto.com/ and Bullet Points is on a subdomain: https://bulletpoints.nathantoronto.com/. Maybe someday the magazine will graduate to its own domain, but we’re a couple hundred subscribers away from that. This setup works for now!
Here are some other places to find me:
● BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/bulletpoints.bsky.social
● Mastodon: toronto@wandering.shop
Thanks, Nathan! I definitely recommend folks check out “I Heard the Bombs on Christmas Day”!
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