The Big Idea: A. T. Sayre

Everyone remembers Scrooge as a mean, cold-hearted man, even though his entire arc is that he becomes a better, kinder man and develops empathy. Author A. T. Sayre’s main character in The Asterist is quite the Scrooge, too, but maybe we’ll end up remembering him in the better light he deserves by the end. A. T. SAYRE: Asterist, noun /ass ter ist/ – someone who lives on an asteroid. Often used as a pejorative for people posted on solitary observation or research stations in remote areas of space. The Asterist is my second novel. Which, just like my first one, was only supposed to be a novella, but just kinda kept going. Seems to be the way it works for me—aim for a novella and miss. Not the most orderly ways to operate, I know, and I suppose one of these days I have to guestimate how long something I plan to write is going to be correctly. Small goals… It has been a wild turnaround on it, too. I finished the rough draft of this one less than a year and a half ago, in March ‘25. Then…