Ann Leckie on 'Ancillary Justice' acclaim and breaking the pronoun barrier

A few years ago Ann Leckie was another struggling writer, a housewife and mom selling short stories to sci-fi magazines and writing her debut novel, "Ancillary Justice."

Now Leckie, who will be appearing at Phoenix Comicon May 28-31, is the talk of the science-fiction world, as her critically acclaimed debut won virtually every major science-fiction award in 2014, including the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Clarke and British Science Fiction Awards.

"Ancillary Justice" is the first in the Imperial Radch Trilogy, following Breq, a choral-music loving, millennia-old, spaceship's AI inhabiting the body of a human "ancillary." Breq is seeking revenge against the ruler of the Radchaai for the destruction of her ship and crew. It is vintage space opera with a twist — Breq and the other characters use only feminine pronouns when describing each other.

With the success of "Ancillary Justice" came high expectations for its sequel, "Ancillary Sword." The novel, which hit shelves in October 2014, sees Breq leading a new ship on a diplomatic mission to Athoek, a planet known for its tea. And Leckie may see a repeat of "Justice's" success— "Ancillary Sword" has also been nominated for several awards.

We recently spoke with Leckie about her recent success as well as her plans:

Question: Congratulations on all the awards you've picked up in the past year. Were you surprised by the critical reaction to "Ancillary Justice"?

Answer: Very surprised! I figured that if I was lucky, the book would sell a couple thousand copies, and if I was even luckier it would sell enough that the publisher wouldn't cancel the rest of the contract. I had, of course, hoped that readers would like it, and felt that at least a few would, and hoped that it would get a few good reviews, but more than that wasn't really something I expected.

Q: With "Ancillary Sword" already winning the British Science Fiction Award, and up for the Nebula, Locus and Hugo, do you think you might repeat last year's success?

A: The BSFA win took me completely by surprise. I wasn't even watching for the announcement — I went out hiking at a local nature reserve and figured I'd congratulate whoever won when I got back! "Ancillary Justice's" awards year is a hard act to follow, and I figure "Sword" doesn't have the same sort of surprise of the new that "Justice" seemed to have, so honestly I haven't been expecting much from this year's awards. I didn't even expect the nominations, though really. Those are awesome in themselves!

Q: The finale, "Ancillary Mercy," is coming in October. With all this acclaim are you feeling the pressure for a three-peat?

A: Hah, a little! Though it's not much different from the feeling of finishing "Sword" while "Justice" was exploding, so at least it's familiar. And at least I'm done with it — for a while there, I was seeing blog posts like '"I can't wait to see what happens in "Mercy"!" and I'd be like "Neither can I, I haven't finished writing it yet!" And that was a weird sort of terror — knowing people were not only expecting the thing I was working on, but anxiously looking forward to it, and what if I didn't manage to finish it? Or I finished it but left everyone disappointed? But really the only thing to do for that is take a breath and keep writing.

Q: One common comment about the Imperial Radch books is that you are writing a "genderless" society. That doesn't seem an accurate interpretation.

A: Yeah, it's been very interesting to me to see some of the discussion surrounding Radchaai and gender. The assumption, for instance, that the Radchaai must have "eradicated" gender in that society, when that's really nowhere in the text. Or that, as you say, gender doesn't exist, or that Breq "doesn't understand" the concept of gender. Not infrequently someone will comment that it's really stupid to think that a being as smart as Breq couldn't get her head around the idea of gender, which is probably true, and that's not really the problem Breq has, is it.

Q: The pronouns threw me at first when I was reading "Justice," but I quickly realized the characters' gender didn't matter.

A: The Radchaai are human, so of course they have gender. They just don't care much about it, and don't think about it the way we would. Sometimes I compare it to the way we think of hair color — that's something that's genetic, that some folks do consider part of their identity, and that we even have some cultural preconceptions about (blondes, redheads) but we don't consider it essential to assign a "real" hair color to everyone and we certainly don't call out people's hair colors whenever we talk about them the way that in English we're more or less forced to give a gender to any person we talk about. But you couldn't really say we "don't have" hair color. Of course we do!

Q: In "Ancillary Sword," Breq arrives on the planet Athoek as the citizens were celebrating the "Genitalia Festival." Was this a tweak on those "genderless" commentaries about "Justice"?

A: I actually wrote that scene before "Justice" came out! It was, though, partly the result of a conversation with a friend of mine, who predicted (more or less accurately) that some readers would probably complain that they didn't have enough information about the characters' genitals to suit them. That escalated into a series of penis-related jokes, because, honestly, how could it not? But afterwards, I kept thinking about it, and did some reading, and I thought, yeah, that could be a cool world-building detail, and also kind of amusing. Then the various discussions about gender in "Justice" hit, and, yes, I was extra-amused.

Q: Tea and choral music play important parts in your world and character building throughout "Ancillary Justice" and "Ancillary Sword." Do you have particular favorites in each?

A: My taste in both is pretty eclectic. I do encourage people to try new and different kinds of tea if they can — there are so many different sorts, and so many, flavored or not, and there's bound to be something you like.

The same with choral music, really. Singing together is something human beings just do, and there are hundreds of years worth of just European vocal music available to read and hear. And that's just one small part of the world, and one small bit of history. There's a huge variety out there. It's hard to pick just one or two favorites.

Q: The books have been optioned for a TV series. Any ideas how the gender issues will translate visually?

A: I honestly don't know. I know the production company is aware of how tricky it will be, if they actually attempt it, but I don't think there are currently any concrete ideas about how to approach it. I do think that if it does get made, whatever approach gets chosen will probably be something very different from the way I handled it in the books, and in my opinion doing something different would have the potential to make something really interesting, that maybe I wouldn't or couldn't have done in the books but that would be cool in its own way.

Q: What is next after you complete Imperial Radch?

I've committed to two more science-fiction novels for Orbit (Books). I'm just beginning work on the first of them, which will be a standalone, and so I can't yet say much about it that might not change tomorrow.

Q: Are you excited for Comicon?

A: I have never been to a comic-con before! I'm very much looking forward to it.

Phoenix Comicon

When: May 28-31. Noon-11:30 p.m. Thursday; 10:30 a.m.-11:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Sunday. The partner hotels have late-night programming; check website for hours and details.

Where: Phoenix Convention Center, 100 N. Third St. Additional programming will be at the Hyatt Regency, Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel and Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel.

Admission: $80-$90 for all four days, $399-$499 for fast pass, $15-$20 for Thursday only, $35-$40 for Friday only, $45-$50 for Saturday only, $35-$40 for Sunday only, $10 for ages 3-12, free for age 2 and younger.

Details: phoenixcomicon.com.