I get a lot of joy and purpose out of reading sci-fi. I want to offer that to the reader as well as ideally being a gateway author to denser material.
Leo X. Robertson – 9 September 2025
The Back Flap
The future is weird. Bring a drink.
An influencer lets the internet puppet his brand-new cyber-limbs.
Door-to-door sales-things arrive with a television that watches you.
Two YouTubers livestream a dinosaur attack—for the clout, of course.
Welcome to a dive bar at the edge of the multiverse, where every cocktail is spiked with existential dread. In these darkly satirical shorts, Leo X. Robertson skewers the absurdity of modern life through warped futures that feel unsettlingly familiar. Identity, surveillance, grief, pleasure—even the apocalypse—collapse into each other, often in the same paragraph.
These are the dreams of the doomed and the coping mechanisms of the barely functional. If you’ve ever wanted to simulate the rest of your life as someone else, or found comfort in a soothing blue screen of death, pull up a stool—the last round of reality is on the house.
About the book
What is the book about?
Barhopping for Astronauts is a collection of darkly satirical sci-fi stories that explore weird futures and all-too-familiar failures. If Black Mirror had a baby with Love, Death & Robots in a multiverse dive bar, this would be it.
When did you start writing the book?
If I’m not mistaken, the stories date back nine years? At least the first drafts of them. This is the first successful book-length accumulation of thematically similar sci-fi short stories I’ve ever written—so, much of that time was me learning how to write sci-fi short stories in the first place!
How long did it take you to write it?
A period of five years or so. Not to say I diligently worked on it every day. I wrote a whole bunch of stories, novels, plays and screenplays in that time. Of those, these are the sci-fi stories that stick nicely together.
Where did you get the idea from?
Most of the ideas come from imagining the logical extensions of several real-world technologies. Once they are further developed or adopted, what would they do to us and our societies?
Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?
“Ersatz Gym Rats” took me a long time to write. I began with a simple premise: friends worrying about an absent friend of theirs that they’d seen hanging around with android clones of real people. When I started to answer the questions about who these friends were and what their corner of the future looked like, the writing slowed right down.
What city are they in and why? What restaurant are they at? What are they eating? What is the future backdrop to this discussion—who or what is passing by? What are these friends’ jobs?
Every question required an answer pertaining to a somewhat realistically imagined future. I had to spend a long time on the structure of it before I could write what appears on the page.
Something like this, for most of the stories, is why it took me so long to write in general.
What came easily?
Two of the stories—“Love You to Death” and “Both Bunny and Not” more or less came to me in one sitting. I had to rewrite for flow, but the bulk of the material was all there.
That’s a very beautiful and unfortunately rare experience, when a story comes to you all at once. Also, they’re very odd stories—it’s nice to work on those very quickly, before doubt can set in.
Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?
In this book they run the gamut. “What Would Marina Abramovic Do?” is based on a fictionalized future version of Marina Abramovic. I make an appearance in “Both Bunny and Not.” The rest are completely imagined. Their attitudes, behaviors, personality traits and actions are tailored to serve the world and message of the story.
We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?
I feel woefully under-read in sci-fi. I don’t know if I am, but it is how I feel. So I made sure to read a lot of other contemporary sci-fi authors. I like Kelly Robson, Rich Larson, Sam J Miller, Naomi Kritzer, Alastair Reynolds, Peter F. Hamilton, Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, Cixin Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson. I’d guess they’re all far better-read sci-fi writers than me. I mean, some have been reading and writing it since I was born, so that goes without saying actually.
I looked to their concerns and writing styles to understand what were the interests and technologies of modern sci-fi stories, and where I thought I could find space within that contemporary realm for my own work.
Do you have a target reader?
A great sign of this book’s success, I think, would be if someone with no previous interest in sci-fi could pick it up, understand all the stories and enjoy them. I get a lot of joy and purpose out of reading sci-fi. I want to offer that to the reader as well as ideally being a gateway author to denser material.
Although a lot of my favorite sci-fi remains accessible. If you check out any of the sci-fi writers I’ve listed, you’d understand and enjoy their work without having done much sci-fi homework of your own.
About Writing
Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?
I do something, daily. I try to write first thing every morning, which is a maximally dreamy time of day and one of minimal doubt, because you’re writing before you’re even fully awake.
Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?
I do outline, quite extensively. I start with a paragraph that explains what will happen. Then I break that paragraph into sentences and give them different headings for the different sections they represent. Then I might break those sections into scenes, and flesh out what has to happen in each of them. Through this iterative process, the full story emerges. It takes a long time, but when you’re done, no word is (ideally) wasted.
Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?
You have to wait until you’re finished or it would drive you nuts. It’s also a perfectionistic or insecure tendency to interrupt what you’re writing to look up the facts, or refuse to keep writing until you can get a sentence correct.
In my first drafts, you often see sentences like “He picked up the gun (or whatever you decide later)” or “I felt like I was drowning within myself (etc, better metaphor, you get the point.)”
I have a process that works for me—but it’s not essential to adhere to any particular method. The point is just to keep writing anything. You’ll get where you need to go by the end.
Did you hire a professional editor?
Pulp Literature have their own editing team and they’re appreciably meticulous!
Writing has gotten so competitive that I had to get good at editing myself. But you’re always too close to your own work to successfully evaluate its quality or what it is lacking. Not a hundred percent at least. But I’m proud and stubborn. Too often I accept the caveat of the loss of quality of my material for the sake of being able to claim, “Look! I did all this by myself.” I’m a recovering individualist, I guess.
Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?
I do! It distracts the self-doubting part of myself, so I listen to fast-paced cheesy techno by playing Spotify playlists of this type of thing. And the hours fly nicely by.
About Publishing
Did you submit your work to Agents?
Have I ever! I send them all my stuff all the time. They are not interested, let me tell you, haha! But they haven’t yet come to Stavanger to take my keyboard away from me. So the words keep coming!
What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?
I have long-admired the work that Pulp Literature do and they had previously published two of my sci-fi stories—“Snapshots” and “Barhopping for Astronauts”—so I thought them a natural fit for a full sci-fi collection. They were the first people I approached about this project. I am thrilled they have taken it on and very proud of the end product.
Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?
Pulp Literature have their own cover artist, and what a great job they did!
Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?
Through Pulp, I’m a Creative Edge-represented author. Thank God for that, because I have no idea what I’m doing in that regard. Read this book, please? I think it’s great and we all worked really hard on it, I just don’t really know how to get you to take a look at it.
Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?
Yeah! Wherever you are, and for whatever reason you want to do it, it’s okay.
Like, I’ve often felt that “wanting to be known for having written a book” is one of the weakest motivations you could have for wanting to write a book. What is the book about? What do you have to say? I used to think if these weren’t the driving questions, there was no point. But any motivation is legitimate to get started.
If you want to do it to be rich and famous—I also think this is fine. That’s likely not an overnight thing. But if it gets you writing something, I bet you’ll slowly find that the joy of the process itself, and how it connects you to others, will win out over the fame and fortune you thought you wanted.
And now you’re in it, right? Now you’re writing, now you’re an author, and that’s what it’s all about. Your opinions, methods, aims, style, ability, it can all develop if you just get started.
Some people like to say “Don’t do it for this” or “You’re not a real X unless you’ve done Y”, and that’s all nonsense. Who are they anyway? Insecure gatekeepers. Who needs them!
Speaking of which, to this day I do a lot of vengeance-based writing, which is exceptionally petty for someone with my experience.
Whatever gets the words out, that’s what I say.
About You
Where did you grow up?
Glasgow, Scotland.
Where do you live now?
Stavanger, oil capital of Norway. Moved here about twelve years ago for my job as a process engineer.
What would you like readers to know about you?
I worked really hard on this book, Barhopping for Astronauts, and I think you should read it.
What are you working on now?
I’ve never been so beautifully plagued by story ideas as right now. More advice for new authors: the more you write, the more you write. I’m writing a play, to take a break from the novel I wrote, to take a break from the other novel I wrote. Send help!
Except don’t. I feel very blessed, like the creative Gods are pleased with how they see how I diligently do them service. They’re sending me work to make that is just about at my limits.
Would anyone like to read any of it? What would I know? I just wrote it.
End of Interview:
For more from Leo X. Robertson visit his website and follow him on Instagram.
Get your copy of Barhopping for Astronauts from his publisher here.
