The Asterist by A.T. Sayre -review & interview

Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Google Play / Indigo /

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date October 13, 2026

Dull days drift by at the dead end of the galaxy for misanthrope Bill Jeffries fulfilling his mundane duties as an Asteroid Station Commander, or “Asterist.” But everything changes when his only companion, the monotone computer he has nicknamed “Nag,” alerts him to an unknown spacecraft that has crashed near the station. Thus begins A. T. Sayre’s science fiction novel with equal parts humor and suspense.

Suddenly thrust into circumstances far beyond his experience or pay grade, Jeffries investigates the puzzling wreckage and makes the shocking discovery of a four-foot-long spider-like being inside. If the alien still lives, Jeffries and his superiors from light years away debate if it should be treated as an ambassador, a test subject, or a threat. But as Jeffries studies the alien and attempts to communicate with it, his cynical exterior begins to shatter and a bond grows.

With the alien’s life in his hands, Jeffries must race against the clock to understand its origins and save it before his superiors arrive to determine their fate. Otherwise, both of them may be forced to commit the ultimate sacrifice.

•••••

REVIEW: THE ASTERIST by AT Sayre is an adult, sci-fi, futuristic, first contact story line focusing on Asteroid Station Commander Bill Jeffries.

Told from omniscient third person perspective (Jeffries) THE ASTERIST follows in the wake of a downed spacecraft found in a debris field that crashed into the asteroid on which Bill Jeffries has been stationed. Well into a solo two year assignment ,housed in an asteroid outpost with only an AI computer for companionship, Bill Jeffries is bored but boredom is about to turn into excitement and curiosity with the unexpected arrival and crash of an unknown spacecraft , wherein Bill Jeffries will rescue, against orders, a small spiderlike creature who will become both his life and his atonement.

THE ASTERIST is a story of survival and sacrifice as Jeffries struggles to assist, communicate and ultimately save a being he knows nothing about. With a language barrier beyond human capabilities, and a potential threat to his own endurance, Jeffries, refusing to adhere to command protocol, finds himself guardian and protector of a creature struggling to subsist on what has been offered by our story line hero. The premise is poignant and heart breaking; our hero is compassionate and empathetic.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

TRC: Hi A.T. and welcome to The Reading Café. Congratulations of the release of THE ASTERIST

A.T. Sayre: Thank you. It’s quite an exciting time. It wasn’t so long ago that I thought I would never manage to write a book, let alone get it published. And this is my second.

TRC: We would like to start with some background information. Would you please tell us something about yourself?

Social Media: Amazon Author Page / Website/ Facebook/ X (Twitter)/ Goodreads/

A.T. Sayre: Well, I was born in Kansas City, and moved with my family as an infant to New Hampshire when my father, who was in the Air Force, got stationed nearby. When he retired a few years later, my parents decided they liked the area and stayed. So that is where I grew up.

As long as I can remember I have been a pretty voracious reader, as everyone in my family is. And there were always more than enough books laying around. Reading The Lord of the Rings was essentially a family requirement (there were literally something like four different copies of the series in the house at one point; one sibling would get the books and not share them, or would misplace them, so another sibling would get their own). There was also The Chronicles of Narnia, kid’s classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and A Wrinkle in Time. A few others here and there. Mostly sci-fi and fantasy, as one of my older siblings had left behind a huge box of them in my closet (though none of my siblings agree on whose box it was), but not exclusively. I remember going pretty deep into The Black Stallion series when I was seven or so, for example. But mostly things like the ThievesWorld series, the Dragonlance Saga, the Mythadventures books, and I think I must have read every Piers Anthony series he wrote.

It didn’t take long before I had it in my head to create my own stories. I think the first time I did I couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. It wasn’t much of a story, though—actually it was a total rip-off of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books. And to this day remains unfinished. But I have been creating stories in some form or other ever since. It has not always been particularly prodigious, as other things going on took precedence at various times, but it has been a constant at every stage of my life, from weird little kid, to delinquent teen, to pretentious film student, to also pretentious starving artist.

TRC: What or who influenced your career in writing?

A.T. Sayre: The above mentioned books, plus several dozen others that I have undoubtedly forgotten about completely, naturally had a great influence on me when I was very young. As did the more sophisticated and mature authors and books that came later, your Nivens and your LeGuins, the Sturgeons, the Bradburys, and the Ellisons.

As far as people… I have to say I don’t really remember anyone sitting down with young and dumb little me and giving me a pep talk, or taking a red pen to something of mine with an eye on improving it or otherwise furthering my grasp of the craft. To be clear, nobody was discouraging either; I never got the ‘you’ll never make it as a writer’ or the ‘you’re not good enough’ type of attitude from anyone. If anything everyone was positive about it. If I had to encapsulate how people have reacted to the idea of me being a writer throughout my life it would be them giving a simple nod and saying ‘yeah.’ Almost like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

TRC: Would you please tell us something about THE ASTERIST?

A.T. Sayre: THE ASTERIST is my second book, the first one, THE LAST DAYS OF GOOD PEOPLE, being published in Analog Magazine in summer 2024, and then as a standalone novel in February 2025 (and available at various online sites via its Goodreads page). Much like my first book, I didn’t start out working on THE ASTERIST intending to write a novel. I thought at most it would be a novella. Single location with a limited number of characters. Deep, yet simple ideas needing to be expressed. But as I started putting it down, I found there was a whole lot that I wanted to get in there, far more than I had conceived of when I began. And the story kept going, and growing. It was somewhere around halfway through writing the first draft, when I realized I had just crossed over the length I thought the whole story was going to be, that I accepted that I once again had started out to write a novella and missed.

There are many ideas in the book, most of which evolve around the overall vibe of life on one of the lower rungs of the ladder, but I would say the central theme of this story, and the main reason I wrote it, would be about expanding empathy to ‘the other’. Or perhaps moving towards the expulsion of ‘the other’ from humanity’s psyche. There is no question that in pre-civilization, the instinct to protect against ‘the other’ was important for both your own self and for your tribe when resources were so very scarce. Driving the strangers out of your valley might be the reason why you and your children didn’t starve the next winter. But we don’t live in pre-civilization anymore, we don’t have the caveman’s problems, and this same instinct is more of a hindrance than a benefit today. Getting rid of this instinct completely will be very difficult—if we can do it at all. But at the very least it is important to keep expanding who is in your tribe and who is ‘the other’. And at its core this book is about someone doing just that.

TRC: What is the meaning of the word ‘asterist’?

A.T. Sayre: An asterist is, simply, someone who lives on an asteroid. In the universe of this book it’s used to describe the people who staff the isolated outposts of an intergalactic empire. And it’s actually something of a pejorative term for them—people who take these posts are not often the cream of the crop, as it were, though by virtue of being the only person at the outpost they are given a de facto commander’s rank, regardless of their service record. Hence referring to them with a term that sounds an awful lot like asterisk.

TRC: Is THE ASTERIST a standalone or do you have plans for a series?

A.T. Sayre: There is no plan for a series right now, but never say never. I’ve had ideas for follow up books to this one, and I may very well pick one up some time. But I also have tons of ideas for a lot of things. Ideas come in and out of my head all the time. I literally came up with one just answering this question.

TRC: How do you keep the plot unpredictable without sacrificing content and believability?

A.T. Sayre: This can be a tricky juggling act. And a fairly important one—though I think being engaging, which often is done through unpredictability, but not always, is more important. And I think this is solely up to what makes sense to me. Instinctively. If I find the story plausible, if I find it engaging, then it’s good to try. Other people can weigh in, and I always look for feedback, but in the end I am the only judge that I can fully rely on. This ability to sense when an idea works, when it’s both engaging and believable/ plausible, might be something that needs to be innate in a writer as opposed to a learned skill.

And for me, any issues involving these kinds of things have to be ironed out in my head and very clear before I start working on something. At least the broad brushstrokes—I can leave some of the finer details and adjacent themes/ ideas to flesh out as I go. But if I don’t find any potential story to be both engaging and plausible at its very core, then I won’t work on it until it is. If the story doesn’t ring true from the start, then no amount of sophistry or fancy phrasing will make a difference.

TRC: Speaking of believability, believability is an important factor in writing story lines especially stories of science fiction or speculative fiction. How do you keep the story line believable? Where do you think some author’s fail?

A.T. Sayre: Well, I think plausible is the better word for what I think you are going for here. And it’s not so much about the storyline as such, because I don’t think a story needs to necessarily be plausible/ believable. There have been some truly absurd, downright insane stories in speculative fiction over the years, ones where the plot, premise, or the universe of the tale is so ridiculous that it’s not supposed to be believed in any way. And those stories are sometimes quite glorious, and among the best things ever written.

But where you do have to be vigilant is with your characters. They and what they do in the story has to be plausible, believable, no matter how fantastic the world you put around them is. You can’t have your astronaut hurtling through space at warp nine in a ship powered by the soul of an orphan child, acting or behaving in anyway the guy who runs the deli down the street wouldn’t. What they do and think has to make sense, what they feel and how they react has to resonate. And this is something too many writers fail at. They are so desperate to get the character from point A to point B and move the story along in an orderly fashion that they don’t really make it make sense that their character would want to go to point B in the first place. And thus they lose the audience.

TRC: Which Sci-Fi or fantasy authors have inspired your writing?

A.T. Sayre: Oooh boy, there are so many. The ones mentioned above, of course, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Douglas Adams, Piers Anthony, Robert Aspirin when I was very young, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Ursula K. Le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Connie Willis and Octavia Butler when I grew older.

Of course I have never limited myself to just reading speculative fiction, because doing so would be a disservice, even for someone who is not a writer. And those non-genre writers have influenced me just as much: Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, Russell Banks, John Irving, Joseph Heller, Virginia Woolf, Michael Chabon, Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Christopher Ishwerwood.

And I could never omit Kurt Vonnegut from any list like this, whose Barnes and Noble promotional display poster that was discontinued thirty plus years ago still hangs on the wall above my desk today.

(I will note that a few of those ‘non-genre’ writers I would argue are actually at minimum quasi- speculative fiction writers—Kafka, Robbins, Vonnegut, and Pynchon in particular. And all of them at least dabbled in it from time to time.)

All of the above have influenced me, have added at least something to the soup in my head where all this stuff comes from. Some in very profound ways. As do many writers plugging along today, some of whom are my friends. I’ll refrain from listing them though, because I’m too afraid of overlooking someone. And while Vonnegut couldn’t care less what I say about him because he’s dead, the last thing I need is a friend being pissy with me next time I see them because I didn’t mention them.

TRC: Did you encounter any difficulties or problems publishing your novels?

A.T. Sayre: Not really. By the time I had finished my first novel I already was talking with my agent, and he has the connections and can send things around to publishers without it getting tossed right into the circular file. So I never experienced trying to shop my books around on my own. Short stories, yes, I still submit those myself, and deal with all the joy that whole process bestows on you, but not my novels. Which I do count myself lucky on.

Now the whole process before and right after a book’s release? That’s still a struggle. All the promotional stuff I feel compelled to do is not easy, because I do not enjoy self-promotion. Maybe it’s the New England upbringing, but talking myself up so much makes me uncomfortable, and I’d just as soon deflect all of it. It takes literally everything I can do to keep me from ending any statement I make implying how great a writer I am or how wonderful something I have written is with some nullifying snark about how much in reality I totally suck.

Promotion has to be done, I know, that’s how this all works, but I would love if I could just write things and get everyone else to do the ‘this is awesome!’ posts on social media and the like.

TRC: Do you believe the cover image plays a deciding factor for many readers when selecting a new book or author?

A.T. Sayre: I expect they do for most people. I’m a little different. And it’s odd, really, I consider myself a pretty visual person, but book covers very rarely stick with me for long. The only ones that stick out to me are from decades ago, the old 70s cover for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the one that was solid white with a little circle in the center with a landscape image in it. Or the mid-80s Dune cover from around when Lynch’s adaptation came out, and was riffing on the visuals from that film. But I don’t know if I’d say those compelled me to read those books, because I already knew about them otherwise.

The one time I think a cover actually grabbed me was in high school, when I came across Harlan Ellison’s Alone Against Tomorrow short story collection, which had this wild, insane looking collage sort of cover of a medusa like figure on it, all done in playdough pastel colors. The kind of cover you could only get in the 1970s. I’m not saying it’s a good cover, because I think 99 out of 100 people would say it isn’t (and I’m not sure I’d be the one contrarian, either), but it was definitely like nothing I had ever seen in my life. And it did get me to pick up this book and start reading a man who at that moment I had never heard of before. And Harlan Ellison has been one of the greatest influences on me and my writing. I have been reading him ever since.

TRC: What do you believe is the biggest misconception about authors?

A.T. Sayre: That any of us are completely, 100% aware of everything going on in our work. I’m not, other writers I’ve asked are not, and sometimes when I see how a writer will answer a question about some motive in their book, I can tell they are using a bunch of fifty cent words in a convoluted salad to avoid admitting that they have no idea why they did something a certain way, sometimes even something really pivotal.

I don’t mean there is no reason, because there definitely is, it’s just that the decision was made in the subconscious, which plays a huge role in most artistic decisions in all mediums. And it doesn’t often share the reasons behind many of the choices with the rest of the brain, going with simply saying to the conscious mind ‘do this, it’ll be neat’ or something like that. Then later on when you are going over your work, in a proofread or something, you’ll suddenly realize what it is your subconscious was doing. That has happened to me more time than I can count.

I don’t know how much people realize how much of even the most outlined and planned out writing is still effectively flying blind and going on vague vibes.

TRC: On what are you currently working?

A.T. Sayre: I have a few things I’m working on right now. Whether any of them will actually ever be realized I couldn’t say, but I’m optimistic about most of them. I don’t want to go into detail on what any of them are, though, because I find if I verbalize a story idea makes it harder to actually write it.

TRC: Would you like to add anything else?

A.T. Sayre: I hope you all will follow one of the links to pre-order THE ASTERIST today, because while all sales are wonderful, and I humbly appreciate everyone who buys a copy, accruing a healthy amount of pre-order sales is the best way to grab the attention of the big book chain stores and Amazon—or at least their algorithms. And getting their attention is key to them giving the book attention. So the more people who get the book now before it’s official release, the more people who will in the future. I’m quite proud of this book, and think it needs all the love it can get.

LIGHTNING ROUND

Favorite Food
Burgers. Or maybe BLTs made by someone who’s better at cooking bacon than me.

Favorite Dessert
The banana ice cream from Haywards in Nashua, NH when I was six. In a sugar cone, of course.

Favorite TV Show
The Prisoner has been a HUGE influence on me. But the one I’ve rewatched the most is Farscape.

Last Movie you saw
I do a movie night with some friends once a month, and finally got them to sit and watch Brazil, which crazily enough most of them had never seen. They loved it, of course. As far as new movies, I think it was One Battle After Another. P.T. Anderson riffing on Pynchon’s novel Vineland, how could I not?

Dark or Milk Chocolate
Dark. Like my soul.

Favorite Sports Team
Boston Red Sox.

Last Vacation Destination
Vacation? Why would I need time off from being an economic burden on society?

TRC: Thank you Andrew for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on the release of THE ASTERIST

A.T. Sayre: Thank you. I hope you all like the book. Because it would imply you bought it.