A re-imagining of the future through speculative fiction .
BY SARINA DAHLAN ’ 98
I am living in Margaret Atwood ’ s The Handmaid ’ s Tale . My mind races to a future that looks like the topography of Octavia Butler ’ s Parable of the Sower blending with the post-government-collapse world of David Brin ’ s The Postman . When I close my eyes , I see all at once the possibility of a primitive post-nuclear-war America in Kim Stanley Robinson ’ s Wild Shore , life on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in The Future is Red by Catherynne M . Valente , and my own post-apocalyptic setting of RESET , where memories are erased in the name of peace .
For some , fiction is not real life . For others , myself included , effective fiction condenses reality and distills it into a droplet of pure life .
Stories have had an influential impact on our physical world : The big screen televisions and interactive games from Ray Bradbury ’ s Fahrenheit 451 and the electric cars and hydrogen cells of Star Wars are now part of our everyday landscape . Fiction , specifically science fiction , has motivated real-life scientific exploration and research . The inventor of the cell phone , Martin Cooper , credited Star Trek as the major source of inspiration . Most recently , The Ministry for the Future by UC San Diego alumnus Kim Stanley Robinson ’ 74 , PhD ’ 82 is being touted as a blueprint for world leaders to work together to combat climate change .
While this university has always been at the forefront of leading-edge research and innova- tion in the sciences , not many know it is also a fertile ground for storytellers , especially in
the speculative fiction realm . In addition to the literary titans Brin , Robinson , and Valente , our alumni also include Aimee Bender ’ 91 , Vernor Vinge , MA ’ 68 , PhD ’ 71 , Luis Alberto Urrea ’ 77 , Nancy Holder ’ 76 , and Gregory Benford , MS ’ 65 , PhD ’ 67 . This campus , our campus , is home to authors who have made an impact on millions . And those millions have affected those around them .
Being at the beginning of my own path as an author of speculative fiction , I can ’ t help but wonder : What is it about UC San Diego that has created so many sci-fi and speculative fiction writers ? Is it a mere coincidence ? A statistical anomaly ? Is there something in the water ? Or is it from causation and interconnection ? When I was offered the opportunity to interview speculative fiction writers who are also alumni , I could not have been more excited to explore this phenomenon .
UC SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE 35