Figments

Figments (F): Most of your stories are neither dystopian or utopian, but more like something in the middle. Is there a reason you refrain from settling on one or the other extreme?

 

Robert Charles Wilson (RCW): When has the world ever seen a human culture that was entirely utopian or dystopian?  And why would we expect a future human culture, even one vastly more equitable and liberated than our own, to be flawless?  The boundary between “better” and “best” (or “bad” and “worst”) is where human drama resides, and that’s what interests me as a novelist.

Continue reading Interview with Robert Charles Wilson

Figments (F): Much of your fiction could be described as utopian or dystopian; although your dystopian stories leave place to hope while messages and warnings hide in your utopias. How do you choose to go with one or the other when you start a new story?

 

Mike Resnick (MR): The first thing to do is take a hard, realistic look at the situation. Is it of Man’s making? Is it inevitable? If it’s a Utopia, what effort will be required to keep it going? If it is a Dystopia, can it be halted or reversed. If you want a story to be believable, you’ve got to stick with the facts as we understand them.

Continue reading Interview with Mike Resnick

He existed only for a moment. It was the time when he would be out in the morning, looking for a way to go about picking mushrooms. It would come strong, the opposite-of reduction that happens to you when you close your eyes and you stop existing for a moment. Yeah, it was the opposite-of-reduction, his eyes were open, his hands were open. Hovering just above another plump mushroom. Continue reading Offerings – Anonymous

In the beginning, everything was water—

“Right, yeah, and in my dreams everything is made of pretty women.” B, shut up.

“My bad. Go on.”

In the beginning, everything was water, and the sky stretched from one end of the world to the other over a vast desert of blue. And there was a woman who lived at the bottom of the sea, and her name was Rayen, whose name our land still bears today. She was not of the water but of the earth, and when she looked upwards through wavering light to the sky, she was jealous. Continue reading In A Dry & Weary Land – Ayame Whitfield ‘20

[CORTISOL: 20 mg/dL]

He glanced at the bedside table. 6:58 am.

She should wake up at any minute now.

He propelled himself out of bed and carefully stood amidst the shadows of the room, peering eagerly into the window across the narrow street. Momentarily, a lithe figure slipped into and out of sight. A flash of lilac. Unruly auburn hair. And she was gone. Satisfied, he rolled back into bed and waited for his alarm at 7:15 am. Continue reading Vitals – Teresa Tang ‘18