The Extraordinary World of Speculative Fiction

Illustration by Señor Salme

As a kid, I was a voracious reader. I started to make sense of the world through the fiction I was reading. I learnt what it was to experience heartbreak, loss, pain and eipc victory even though on the outside my life was that of a normal, middle-class kid. At any given time, I had at least two imaginary friends who I conversed with (in my head) when I was bored. I was a strange, quiet child.

What I loved about fiction was the way it explored the drama at the centre of every human being. People are endlessly fascinating to me. Why do they do what they do? What do they fear? What do they love? And above all, what makes them go on?

I found that science fiction was my least favourite genre. Sure, I had read and enjoyed the classics - Jules Vernes’ 60,000 Leagues under the Sea, Around the world in 80 days and so on. It was cool to read about futuristic societies and technology, but I found it somewhat lacking in the human drama that I so loved. I also realise now that almost all the stories I’d read were written by male, white authors. I had not related to their perspective, and as a result, the genre remained out of reach for me for a long time.

It was LeVar Burton (in his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads) who introduced me to a whole new world of fiction - called speculative fiction.

So what is speculative fiction?

It is fiction that asks a question - What if? and proceeds to rewrite the rules of the world based on this question.

One of my favorite pieces of speculative short fiction is called "Cuisine des Mémoires", a story by the American author N.K Jemisin. In the story, the narrator accompanies his old college friend Yvette to an exclusive restaurant with an astonishing claim. The claim? Guests could order any meal they liked from any period in history. One of the items on the menu is the last meal eaten by Marie Antoinette (the French queen beheaded during the revolution). The narrator is a cynical man. He asks questions and ridicules the restaurant’s audacious claim. He, like us the readers, believes it to be a cheap publicity stunt. That is, until his order arrives.

The meal is a perfect recreation of the most perfect meal of his life. The narrator is shocked at the memories it evokes - both of its original creator and the day he had eaten it. It is a bittersweet memory, one that was buried deep within his heart. With each bite, he feels the pain caused by the sharpness of this memory.

I have personally felt this association between taste, smell, and memory. When I feel unsettled or alone, I recreate something that I’d normally eat at home - my mother’s rich curries, or just plain dal and bhindi. One bite and I’m enveloped in the warmth of home. One day I was so homesick in college, that while walking the streets next to a house I thought I could smell the pungent smoke of fish fry. It immediately evoked memories of my mother.

What is the secret of this restaurant? Why is the meal so personal to the narrator? These answers are revealed later in a very satisfying twist ending. It not only stretches the limits of your imagination but also leaves you asking What if?

Listen to this story in LeVar Burton’s inimitable style to be transported straight into this story.

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Any mention of speculative fiction would be incomplete without the name Ken Liu, one of the boldest and most fascinating authors in the short fiction space.

Holding a degree in Computer Science and Literature from Harvard, Ken Liu has worn many different hats in his lifetime. He has worked as a software engineer, a corporate lawyer, and a litigation consultant. He’s also translated many works of Chinese science fiction into English.

I mention his background because it plays an important part in his stories. As a Chinese-American, he brings into his stories, his personal experience of what it means to be a migrant in a foreign land. A background in technology lets him build extremely realistic futuristic societies. But above all, it is his deep understanding of humanity that makes his stories so compelling to read.

Many of Ken Liu’s stories play with the two natures of time - time as a linear march of progress and the cyclical nature of time.

Time as a linear concept is easy to understand. As time progresses, societies progress or fall. Time here is an arrow, straight and unyielding.

Far more complex and interesting is the cyclical nature of time. Human beings, with their inherent flaws and their short lifespans, are doomed to forget the mistakes of their past and keep on repeating them. As a consequence, events in the distant past have a way of repeating themselves, in a different age, in a different setting.

The Regular is a fast-paced thriller from his collection of short stories “The Paper Menagerie” (a fantastic collection), where Ken Liu explores the effect of human body enhancement technology on crime and law enforcement. Primary among them is a device called the “regulator”, which helps eliminate human emotions like disgust, hatred or fear in the wearer. Worn by all law-enforcement agencies in the US, it helps minimize erroneous or irrational judgments made in the heat of the moment. If justice were to be dispatched dispassionately and calmly, wouldn’t it lead to a fairer justice system?

Turns out, prejudice can be perfectly rational.

Ken Liu talks about this human tendency in an interview.

“We often neglect the fact that human nature doesn’t really change. So, many times, the problems we solve using technology or new social institutions, will resurface in different forms after the change.”

By combining elements of magical realism, science fiction, along with his deep understanding of history and culture, Ken Liu creates stories that you can turn over and over in your head, long after you have finished reading them.

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Why should you read speculative fiction?

We live in a world today that is changing at a breakneck speed. The last few years could even pass as a science fiction novel for someone living in say - 1920! After all - we are living through a devastating epidemic that could have originated in a lab; we’ve seen an entire continent ravaged by wildfires, and are seeing continuous development in surveillance technologies that are taking state suppression to a whole new level!

Change of this magnitude is difficult to unpack, understand and contextualise.

This is where speculative fiction can step in.

By creating these diverse imaginary worlds, we are able to explore aspects of our humanity, that stay below the surface most of the time. Some of these works can actually help you envision what the future might look like!

Today, writers of speculative fiction are a diverse bunch. They incorporate themes of racism, colonialism, the migrant experience, state suppression, corporate greed etc into their own unique lived realities.

And as we lose ourselves in a multitude of these realities, we realise - the greatest of our gifts, as well as our downfall, is our humanity.

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“Pockets of sentience glow in the cold, deep void of the universe like bubbles in a vast, dark sea. Tumbling, shifting, joining and breaking, they leave behind spiraling phosphorescent trails, each as unique as a signature, as they push and rise towards an unseen surface.

Everyone makes books.”

- Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie

If you would like to listen to some more of my favorite works of speculative short fiction brought to life by LeVar Burton, check out the links below!

Mono no Aware, by Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu

Silver Door Diner, by Bishop Garrison

Tideline, by Elizabeth Bear