Claire Barner is the author of the new novel Moonrising. She lives in Chicago.
Q: What inspired you to write Moonrising, and how did you create your characters Alex, Mansoor, Victor, and Rashid?
A: I took inspiration from NASA’s Project Artemis, a plan to build a sustainable human presence on the Moon. I was also interested in exploring the intersection between private space entrepreneurs and NASA, which I find both fascinating and highly problematic.
Mansoor and Victor’s business partnership is inspired by Richard Branson’s plans to build a spaceport in Abu Dhabi to launch Virgin Galactic ships for tourists.
I created each of my characters in different ways. Alex is the most like me. She’s a University of Chicago agronomist studying how to grow food that can withstand the impacts of climate change. I was inspired by my own vegetable gardening in Chicago.
I also drew on some of my own challenging personality traits for Alex. She’s driven, abrasive, and struggles to relate to people. Much of her character journey centers around her figuring out how to let others in and build community.
When developing Mansoor’s character, I started with research and reading on the United Arab Emirates. I knew that as a white American, if I was going to write an Emirati main character, I had a responsibility to get it right.
Mansoor is a practiced code-switcher. In Abu Dhabi, he takes on the role of a traditional and respectful son to his powerful father. In America, he is a suave businessman funding the building of the first Moon hotel. Through the novel, he struggles to figure out how to be true to himself amidst these divided expectations.
I worked closely with a Middle Eastern sensitivity reader to ensure that I portrayed Mansoor, his family, and his culture accurately and respectfully.
To understand Mansoor better, I gave him a brother. Rashid is an artist and poet who has lived in the US since he was 18 and has fully embraced being an American. As a closeted gay man, he does not feel safe in his home country where it is still illegal to be gay. (This is unfortunately true in the UAE now.) As soon as I started writing Rashid, I knew I wanted him to be a bigger part of the story.
I also knew that with Alex and Mansoor headed to the Moon, I needed a perspective of life on Earth. So I created my final point of view character, Victor. I’m not sure how Victor came to me, but he was very fun to write! He’s completely unhinged and oblivious, while also being a genius self-taught rocket scientist.
I put Victor and Rashid in the same scene together, and it crackled. It became clear to me immediately that this was going to be a book with two love stories. Sure enough, for early readers of Moonrising, Victor and Rashid are a fan favorite.
Q: Why did you decide to set the novel 50 years from now?
A: I think near-future stories that are not full-on dystopian are an untapped area of sci-fi. I wanted to write a story where the world is still recognizable and familiar, but also at a crossroads.
In my version of 2073, climate change is going from bad to worse. The number of climate refugees is increasing exponentially, and rising sea levels are threatening to displace a billion people in the coming years. Some of this is irreversible, but there’s still time to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
In Moonrising, Mansoor and Victor believe the solution to the climate crisis is to shift much of the human population to the Moon and preserve Earth’s biodiversity.
Their approach to accomplishing this audacious goal is a combination of shadow lobbying the American government and secretly redirecting the wealth of billionaires in order to expand the existing scientific research base on the Moon into a rapidly-growing permanent family settlement.
The result is a novel that feels timely and relevant to our current national mood. The world recently mocked Katy Perry’s short vanity spaceflight on Jeff Bezos’s suborbital rocket ship. This seems like the perfect time to publish a novel that asks, what if we could trick the wealthy space tourism industry into funding a solution to the climate crisis?
Q: The author T.A. Chan called the book a “delightful blend of political intrigue, romance, and the daunting challenge of establishing a long-term colony on the Moon.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love this description so much! Moonrising truly does blend both politics and romance, and I don’t shy away from how difficult it would be to live sustainably in space.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I made so many changes! I wrote the first draft of this novel over a 10-year period and then did a full rewrite with the support and feedback of my agent. During that time, I ended up changing the primary antagonist from Russian mercenaries to American eco-terrorists. This is my first novel, and I had a lot to learn about the writing craft along the way.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next sci-fi romance novel The Red Woman of Mars is tentatively planned for publication with Diversion Books in 2026. Inspired by Pride & Prejudice, the story follows a climate refugee from Earth who falls in love with a prickly Martian politician.
Similar to Moonrising, I am exploring timely and relevant themes, including female bodily autonomy, the rise of generative AI, and the climate crisis. And like with Moonrising, I’m playing with these big ideas in a novel that is also a feel-good, fun romance with characters you root for.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I love connecting with readers! Please find me on Instagram at @clairebarner_author, Threads at @clairebarner_author, and Bluesky at @clairebarner.bsky.social.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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