The Big Idea: Chris Gerrib

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and author Chris Gerrib has got plenty of it to serve up in his newest novel, Gunmaker. Follow along in his Big Idea to see how justice and revenge aren’t as much of opposites as one may think. CHRIS GERRIB: This novel started as an (admittedly one-sided) argument with the great Canadian author Tanya Huff. She wrote a lovely eight-volume space opera series, the Valor Confederation. Around about Book 4, Space Marine Torin Kerr transitioned to interstellar cop, as one does. In this transition, Kerr ends up under cover on a pirate space station. Nobody on this station has a gun of any kind. In a later book in the series, Kerr and her fellow Space Cops have never heard of or seen a handgun. I love this series and highly recommend it, but I found the bits about guns highly problematic. The first gun I ever owned was a Ruger Mark II target pistol, a copy of a Japanese pistol, the Nambu. The prototype of the Mark II was made by Bill Ruger in his garage and…