Speculative Fiction and the Multiverse in the Mind
by Susan diRende
Everyone lives in a multiverse and navigates between worlds all the time. Growing up we learn to fit into our family, into our schools, into the worlds of our playmates and their families, and into the demands of the overarching society at large. At some point, we feel the jarring collision of these worlds, and realize they are constructed. Going “home for the holidays” is a cliché collision itself, fraught with tensions as we squeeze into ill-fitting roles or fight to resist them to the jingle of cheery admonitions for love and peace and unity.
We cannot choose the world we are born into, but we do choose the stories we like. And to bring us another cliché, stories are gateways out of this reality and into another. Through them we enter a different life and world and feel what it is to live there. Television series and genre fiction take the imagination even further through serials\ stories that return us to realms we love. Recursive returns allow us to deepen our relationship to the worldview underpinning them, book by book or episode by episode.
The Hobbit, when I read it as a kid, was captivating. But it was The Lord of the Rings trilogy that built for me a universe that, for a while, overlaid this one like a double exposure image over my suburban childhood in the sixties. In part it was pure escape from my general unhappiness. But in part it was a tool, a way to imagine myself elsewhere, to pull the threads of what I loved about it, and weave those threads into another universe I could inhabit.
It was the same for the Earthsea Trilogy a half-dozen years later. Again with the Psychohistory of Foundation and the Incarnations of Immortality. The dragons of Pern and the witches of Discworld. Ender and Murderbot. Harry Potter and Dr. Who.
I know in the front of my brain that all stories take me to another world. Nevertheless, speculative fiction not only dissolves the “me” who is a member of my family, class, and country, it can remake my species, reimagine my connection to other beings, alter my relationship to the cosmos.
The books I love to read sing into being universes that echo my deep desires for purpose and belonging and empower my voice in whatever here and now I find myself.
And I think that changes this world.
Susan diRende has always been a fan of the empty-handed
leap into the unknown, both in her life and her work. She creates stories at
the intersection of worlds that make heroes of misfits, skeptics, and fools.
Her published works range from serious academic to sci-fi space farce. Her art
and videos has been shown in exhibitions and film festivals in the US, Mexico,
Belgium and New Zealand. She has won numerous awards and grants for her writing
and art from, among others, the Artist Trust, the Philip K Dick Awards, Seattle
Arts Commission, Montgomery Arts Association, the Dixie Film Festival. Before
Covid, she wandered the world with no fixed abode and is looking forward to
getting back on the road with little more than a suitcase and her dog. Aqueduct published her novella Unpronounceable in 2016, and will be releasing her debut novel, Knife Witch, next year.
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