My first speculative story, “Simulations” has finally found a home and will be published in the next issue of Mythaxis, a beautiful online journal that gives its readers “speculative fiction without distraction” (their words). Indeed, I was drawn to this publication’s lack of advertising and the gorgeous AI-generated art on its pages.
I wrote “Simulations” nearly three years ago and even though that’s not a long time ago, the ideas in the story felt quite speculative. It’s about a near-future dystopia where rich people can upload themselves to escape climate change catastrophes. The story follows a couple’s strained marriage and the husband’s decision to upload himself, leaving his wife behind to raise their young son in a dying world.
In one part of my story, the protagonist uses an app to figure out when pollution levels will be low enough for her to venture outside with her child. This wasn’t a reality I had yet lived when I wrote the story. But today I downloaded the AirNow app. so I can figure out when my kids, one of whom has asthma, can safely play outside. The smoke from the fires in Canada have blanketed our blue skies. I am painfully aware that the distance between the speculative and the immediate is closing.
As the publication date of “Simulations” draws near, I wanted to highlight exciting recent works with similar themes- the choices we might make when our physical environment becomes uninhabitable and technology offers us a way out. Will we be willing to bargain away our humanity? What about other meaningful experiences, concepts, connections? Extrapolations is an excellent show that makes predictions about what the world will look like as we pass dangerous thresholds of CO2 concentrations and global temperature increases. in a not-so-distant-future. Episode 7 in Season 1: “The Going-Away Party: 2068” especially resonated with my interest in how class will impact day-to-day reality on a hotter planet. I also recently read Louise Erdrich incredible short story “Domain” in Granta, which imagines how digital immortality might be the work of a collaborative creative process.
Masha Kisel 