#243: Re-Imagining Our World Through Speculative Fiction with Alice McIlroy

This week, we’re joined by our latest special guest judge; novelist Alice McIlroy! In celebration of the launch of her speculative thriller, The Glass Woman, Alice will be curating this week’s contest. As well selecting the winner of our $250 prize, she’ll be giving personal feedback on the winning story, plus a signed copy of the book that inspired her prompts! Here’s Alice:

The reason I love speculative fiction is that it allows us to ask 'what if' questions and speculate about where they could lead. It enables us to change the rules of our world, commenting on societal issues through the lens of fiction, whilst raising moral dilemmas or imagining utopian/dystopian outcomes. I aim to do this in my debut psychological thriller, The Glass Woman: it follows a scientist who wakes with no memories to be told she volunteered to trial a pioneering AI brain implant, and re-imagines our world as a place that is familiar, and yet transformed.

For this contest, I'd recommend keeping your fictional world close in likeness to our own, grounding it in small, specific details, and then changing just one aspect to make the world strange and new. Ask yourself: what if one thing changed, or happened, or didn’t happen — what would the consequences be? How could that one change alter everything about the world as we know it? Good luck! — Alice

Special update: The results 🏆 

After reviewing the judges' top picks and choosing her winner, Alice kindly gave us some feedback to share on this week’s top stories. Here's Alice:

It’s been a huge pleasure reading the entries to this week’s speculative fiction competition and seeing the breadth of responses. It was interesting to see that the prompt which inspired the most entries was to write from the point of view of a non-human character. Detail really helped to create a convincing point of view here. There was a great range of viewpoints explored: a spider, a backpack, a journal, a best buddy bot, to name a few. Several place-based stories reached the longlist, and here specific observations helped evoke the most vivid near-future settings. The stories which stood out also had a sense of cohesion and worked as a complete unit, while making insightful observations about our world. There were so many interesting entries that choosing a shortlist was incredibly difficult!

Nicole Ashcraft’s Catalyst vividly evokes a strong sense of place through Nicole’s use of sensory descriptions. I also loved that this is a surprisingly hopeful dystopic vision of a ‘hibernating’ beach town awakening 'from a too-long slumber' as the ocean’s toxicity lessens. There are moments of meditation on the impact of climate change on different generations. For the younger protagonist, hope is newfound as the oceans become inhabitable again, whereas she reflects that the older generation were perhaps ‘the opposite—born with a sense of possibility that the world slowly excised.' The story ends with a feeling of hope for the future, enhanced by the protagonist’s encounter with Evie, as well as due to the ocean rejuvenating. 

There were many intriguing stories from non-human characters, but the one that made the shortlist had a level of detail that created a convincing viewpoint from an unusual perspective! Ajay Sabs’s The Interior Life of Ruck is a clever story from the perspective of a backpack. Ajay conveys its metamorphosis into a self-aware being that accrues language over the course of the story. It builds to a self-revelation about moving backwards, with a sprinkling of humour throughout. ('Kafka and I passed by another backpack and their human, who nodded at us as we crossed paths, the strangers going onward into our past while we went onwards into theirs, the other backpack and I continuing to face one another.') 

Deimantas Saladžius’s The Well and the Tower creates a labyrinthine sense of time. It begins with strong sensory detail to draw the reader in and goes on to pose some interesting questions (‘What then remains of the past if you inhabit it?’). I would like to know more about the rules of this world and how time functions here. 

My winner is Ke Kulanakauhale ma ke Kai, or The City by The Sea. I loved the mythic quality of Thomas Iannucci's narrative. It is a fascinating, dystopic exploration of oral tradition and memory. Designated 'Singers’ preserve the memory of what has been lost and it combines elements of the past with the future. The Singers' role takes on deeper symbolism as they strive to remember the ending of the song about the city by the sea (‘The end of a song binds the memory to us’). The mythical quality of the writing is aided by the setting - enshrouded in fog and sea mist - and Thomas’ careful worldbuilding. His use of Hawaiian language greatly enriches the text. My only question would be whether the monster is needed – there is already such rich material to explore without it. The story builds to an unexpected and terrifying ending with Veeka's realisation, heightened by the contrast in his grandfather's emotions as he sings on oblivious to their chilling fate. 

Well done to all the shortlisted authors and congratulations to Thomas. A huge thank you to everyone who took part in entering your stories: I wish you all the very best with your writing! — Alice