About

Welcome to my little space on the Internet! My name is Zachary M. Wilmot (Z. M. for short), and I am an author of “weird fiction” – in my case, science fiction, fantasy, and horror, often blended together. I have been writing since I was fourteen, when I wrote online fan fiction based on Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy universe. In 2009, I began experimenting with my own worlds, and after participating in National Novel Writing Month that year and eventually self-publishing the resulting novel, The Loneliness of Stars, I began writing seriously.

My writing is heavily inspired by Dan Simmons, H. P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin, Frank Herbert, Lois McMaster Bujold, and David Brin. Other influences include Tamora Pierce, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ryogo Narita, Cixin Liu, Scott Westerfeld, Madeleine L’Engle, and Vernor Vinge. Due to my background in sociology, my work largely revolves around imagined societies – both human and alien –  with a dash of cosmic horror thrown in for good measure.

In my other lives, I am also a PhD Candidate in sociology at Brown University, with a focus on revolutions and social movements; you can access my professional site for sociology here. Many of the ideas that show up in my academic work also pop in in my writing, so be forewarned! In addition, I study tarot, geomancy, and astrology, and run my own blog related to the esoteric arts here.