“Points of Failure Vol. 1: Interwoven” is available at Tesseract Books, and online through bookshop.org, which allows patrons to choose an independent book store through which to purchase. (Submitted photo)
Conscience and connection in new sci-fi novel
- Published: October 26, 2025
When local resident Roi Qualls first envisioned in 2013 a book that explored what it might take — not technologically, but morally — for a future humanity to travel beyond the stars, he had “two big fears.”
“One was that I’m not a writer,” Qualls told the News. “Another was, would the story be interesting enough, and has it already been told?”
The idea lingered for years in the back of Qualls’ mind, taking root until, one night, Qualls called up Hyacinth Wallace, a longtime family friend and aspiring writer.
“He told me the idea for the book, and asked if I would be interested in helping him to write it,” Wallace said. “And I thought, ‘That sounds like a really cool idea.’”
What followed was two and a half years of collaboration across time zones and temperaments — an effort that became “Interwoven,” a speculative fiction debut that’s as much a warning as it is a question. Qualls and Wallace will discuss the novel Sunday, Oct. 19, 3–5 p.m., at the Emporium.
Set in 2275, “Interwoven” follows Chief Scientist Dr. Tah Morant, conflicted creator of the Deuteron engine, slated to be used in humanity’s last desperate mission off a dying Earth. After centuries of conflict, resource exhaustion and ecological collapse, humankind looks to the stars for salvation. But as the Umoja-19 mission reaches beyond familiar space, something intervenes. Morant must confront greed and division to ask: Can Earth prove itself worthy of joining a larger galactic community?
“The irony is the proposition that other beings in the galaxy would just love for the human race to move out there,” Qualls said. “If I lived out there, would I want humans moving next door? Given what we’re doing today, heck no.”
Hyacinth Wallace and Roi Qualls (Submitted photo)
That skepticism is central to the novel’s premise, in which humanity is effectively quarantined on Earth until it can prove itself capable of moral evolution.
“It was the essential narrative point that Hyacinth and I talked about,” Qualls said.
In fact, Qualls’ original working title for the novel was “Quarantined” — but it was lost to the pandemic.
“That one got stolen,” he said with a laugh.
For Wallace, the challenge wasn’t just the story’s scope; it was figuring out how to share authorship without losing cohesion — particularly as the former Yellow Springs resident now lives in Washington state.
“It was a challenge — we live in different time zones,” she said. “You’re imagining something, and now you’ve got to imagine it with two brains.”
To help merge their approaches, the two brought in writing coach Kim Douglas, who guided them through developing plot and character while learning to integrate two distinct creative visions.
“She gave us a lot of literary tools to do that,” Wallace said. “It was a wonderful help … [in] developing a relationship as writers who have so much difference and distance.”
By the time the authors hit their stride, the process had grown “very intense, collaborative and consultative,” Wallace said. That work resulted in a novel that works to balance the personal and the political.
“Interwoven” is grounded in the perspective of protagonist Tah, whose personal trauma — hinted at in the book’s first pages, and fully explored throughout its length — tinges every choice he makes, whether it involves his work with the Galaxy Exploration Mission or his relationships with his wife and daughter. The novel aims to reveal a character motivated by fear and loss — as so many people are — and connect that characterization to the wider context of the capitalist future world Wallace and Qualls have built.
“Fear and grief — those are states in which you can be manipulated,” Wallace said. “You can be exploited to use your talents in a way that doesn’t actually serve you.”
Like any good science fiction work, the worldbuilding of “Interwoven” grows from imagining how the world will develop centuries down the line if it continues on its current course. Longstanding and current sci-fi anxieties, such as an increasing reliance on technology, are explored, with Wallace imagining and coining much of the novel’s tech vocabulary: haum, the ultimate automated home; rellow, the uber-smartwatch; viztra, the never-ending visual stream.
“Everything would be a stream — the information stream, the news stream,” Wallace said. “You can never escape.”
The idea of being trapped by one’s own inventions, and that the things meant to save us can reveal what still needs saving within us, is an ongoing theme of the novel. Still, “Interwoven” isn’t a dirge. Wallace and Qualls both see the book’s themes as a kind of global challenge — a mirror held up to what’s possible if we decide to change.
“To really advance towards a better world — towards peace and tranquility and stability — requires huge developments, both at the individual level, and also huge systemic and systematic changes,” Qualls said. “Both are required.”
A close reading of “Interwoven,” he added, reveals the writers’ view of humanity’s best next steps, nestled at the novel’s heart: “Being the best people we can and doing the best work we can to find collective solutions, and not being afraid of real, fundamental change in systems and institutions.”
The novel’s full title is “Points of Failure Vol. 1: Interwoven,” signaling that Qualls and Wallace have more stories waiting to be told. Qualls confirmed that a second book is already outlined, and that ultimately the two authors aim to write a series of works centered on the world they’ve created and the themes they’ve explored.
“We know what the second book is about — and there are lots of stories beyond just the ‘Points of Failure’ series that we’ve envisioned,” Qualls said.
“Points of Failure Vol. 1: Interwoven” is available at Tesseract Books, and online through http://www.bookshop.org, which allows patrons to choose an independent book store through which to purchase.
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