Reading this story the other day—about the first efforts to systematically clean up the debris orbiting the planet—couldn’t help but remind me of my short story “Space Tears Can Hurt,” which was published over at the lovely journal Pulp Literature in 2016.

“Space Tears” is a sort of #MeToo story that took place aboard a craft dedicated to cleaning up junk. I’d first learned about such debris in a law school “Space Law” class, and it felt like the perfect place to stage a subversive sci-fi story.