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Sheila's wheels.com For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pier-Lewis, in for Rachel Feldman.

Most of us know the story of Moby Dick, the 1851 novel by Herman Melville, that

dots many a high school required reading list.

That book, told from the perspective of Ishmael, a sailor aboard the whaling ship,

the Pequod, takes us on a journey of obsession.

The ship's captain Ahab has a compulsive desire that goes beyond the point of self-preservation

to find and kill Moby Dick, the giant sperm whale who bit off his leg.

Let's just say it doesn't end well.

Hell's Heart by author Alexis Hall takes that famous story and re-envisions it as a queer sci-fi space opera.

Ishmael is now a trans woman who joins the crew of the spacecraft, the Piquad.

It's a story that is equal parts funny, saucy, and philosophical.

Siam Associate Books editor Bree Kane talked with Alexis.

Here's their conversation.

I just am so eager to talk to you about how you took this incredible, like, pillar of the English literary canon from Melville, everyone's favorite book they read in high school, obviously. And you somehow made it into a queer sci-fi alien hunting adventure story.

So I just wanted to start with like, why did you do that?

How did you do that?

Why did you even want to take on such an important literary work and adapt it in this way?

So you might recall in 2020, there was, you know, this little thing called COVID.

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