Josiah Bancroft on His Towering Year, and What to Expect from the Rest of the Books of Babel

What was the germ of the idea for the Tower of Babel series? Some aspect of the Tower itself?
The idea for the Tower was inspired by several sources, but primarily by the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, which is a gorgeously written travelogue for unreal destinations. I wanted to write a similar guide, but I wanted it to be unreliable and contradictory. I started writing unconnected snippets which would later become the basis for the Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, the guidebook that entices Senlin to come to the Tower and very quickly leads him astray. It was an odd way to start building a world. I would write a grandiose passage for the Everyman describing, for example, the Tower’s restive Baths, and then I’d write in parentheses underneath it, “All lies.” The story grew out of those conflicting accounts.
By design, the Tower’s ringdoms have their own distinct flavors, with their own rules and codes of conduct and various seedy characters. Have any of the ringdoms been more fun to conceive of or to play with than others?
I really enjoyed designing the Silk Gardens in Arm of the Sphinx, because it gave me a chance to explore my dislike for both amusement parks and spiders. Most of the ringdoms are inspired by one of my many anxieties or irrational fears. This goes some way towards explaining why the Tower is so big. Somewhere in the Tower, there must exist a ringdom where doors unlock themselves in the night and gas stoves switch themselves on. I’ve been asked whether there are any happy ringdoms in the Tower. The nearest I can imagine is a ringdom full of burbling chocolate fountains. I’m told that some people actually enjoy eating wilted strawberries dipped in recycled gutter chocolate.

“Most of the ringdoms are inspired by one of my many anxieties or irrational fears. This goes some way towards explaining why the Tower is so big.”

But the Tower’s not the only thing of wonder in the story. Let’s talk about Senlin, who’s a pretty remarkable protagonist—in that he’s not necessarily remarkable. He starts out as this straight-laced, priggish schoolmaster and has since grown substantially, even just in the second novel. Did you have his personality pegged from the get-go?
I think I had him pretty well pegged from the start. I wanted a character who would be susceptible to the guidebook’s bad advice. Senlin comes to the Tower feeling self-possessed and well-prepared, and despite his good education and his love of the natural world, he is entirely unprepared for what lies before him. The Tower breaks him down; it exposes and exploits his faults. The wonderful thing about a deeply flawed protagonist is that they have plenty of room to grow and change. Senlin is a very different person at the start of Arm of the Sphinx, and he has changed again by the start of The Hod King. But I think that’s how people truly are: sometimes progressing, sometimes backsliding, but always evolving.

This series developed a following as a self-published work. How does it feel now that the books have publishing firepower behind them and tons of buzz?
It’s been a wonderful, humbling, sometimes overwhelming experience. But I’m very grateful for all the attention and support. I owe a lot of gratitude to many people, my agent, my editors at Orbit, and [author] Mark Lawrence, of course, who gave my books a second shot at success [by promoting them via his contest to find outstanding self-published fantasy]. I’ve been given so much encouragement. I love interacting with the bustling community on r/fantasy and with readers on social media. Early on, I was lucky enough to meet a group of independent writers—Phil Tucker, Timandra Whitecastle, David Benem, and Benedict Patrick—who are all delightful and immensely talented people. We’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons via video chat every month for more than a year now. I had never played D&D before, and it’s been so much fun having them teach me the ropes. I feel very fortunate.