Donny Cates Interviewed about God Country

Nice interview with @CBR

“God Country,” ultimately, and above all else, is about a small family dealing with forces beyond their control. In the beginning, those forces take the form of this horrid illness that has stolen a pillar of their family away. Emmett is suffering, he’s confused and angry and unmanageable. As the story evolves those forces grow from illness to “acts of God’ in the form of a tornado…and then to literal gods who have also come to take things away from them.


So it was important to me that when dealing with these big fantastical elements it always came back to the same idea. The same problem. That, no matter how big or out there the story gets, it’s always all about the Quinlans, and every insane thing they encounter is a just another metaphorical extension of the same idea. Things that are bigger than them that they can’t ignore. Uncontrollable things that they HAVE to face, that they have to fight.

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There's a lot of gold in God Country for a Science Fiction/Fantasy PoL setting. These weapons Uplift persons to be champions, sometimes of long forgotten conflicts (or possibly future ones). They can cure debilitating diseases, make someone on the lower end of the genetic luck spectrum stronger/better/faster/harder & maybe even prettier, and completely upend political situations.Points of Light across the Void maybe carved out by such uplifts or the Points might wink out due to these beings (unless, of course, the PCs step in). 

What makes God Country a great read is how personal it all is, with the stubborn need to feel whole after years of not having that sense of personhood driving the narrative. It serves as a reminder to (sometimes) humanize the Uplift process. It's oftentimes going to be a careless blessing and curse, "miracles" born of detritus from galactic conflicts lost to time, but it also oftentimes will alter the lives of those touched by these ancient designs.