Spend Your Genius Grant the Junot Díaz Way

…write a science fiction novel. Via Mark Bould.

Díaz has spent years working on science fiction projects such asShadow of the Adept, a far-future novel in the vein of Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer, and Dark America, an Akira-inspired post-apocalyptic nightmare.

“I always had this dream that I was going to be this switch-hitter, that I was going to be one year writing a [literary] book like Drown and the next year writing Shadow of the Adept, and it never came to be, I moved so slow,” says Díaz in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.

He actually completed a rough draft of Shadow of the Adept, but was too unsatisfied with the result to go back and finish it. He’s still under contract to write the book after almost two decades.

Díaz is currently at work on a third science fiction novel. This one, set in Haiti, concerns a viral outbreak that creates giant zombies. An excerpt, titled “Monstro,” recently appeared in The New Yorker’s first-ever science fiction issue. Though Díaz warns that, like his other science fiction projects, this one may never come together.

“I’m only at the first part of the novel, so I haven’t really gotten down to the eating,” he says, “and I’ve got to eat a couple cities before I think the thing will really get going.”