Frederick Pohl once said that Science Fiction wasn’t about technology but rather its human and societal implications – in other words, it wasn’t about cars but about traffic jams. This idea of using science fiction to describe and explore the implications of futuristic technologies and the social structures enabled by them was behind the project Cntrl+Alt+Delete by Nanyang Technological University, the Singapore government, and four speculative fiction writers (myself, Sarah Ang, Wen-yi Lee and Nuraliah Norasid).
Yesterday we got to talk about our SF stories and the cutting-edge technologies we wrote about at the Synergy Art x Tech Fringe Festival at the Figma Clubhouse organized by #Tusitala and #BeFantastic. Poet, technology enthusiast and civil servant Tse Hao Guang facilitated.
I had written 3 short stories: these include (1) a puppy love romance between two teens trapped in locked-in syndrome, involving AI, EEGs and Virtual reality technologies, (2) an extraordinary Singaporean triathlete and his obsession with enhancing his sports performance at any cost, involving advance prosthetics, and gene therapy, and lastly (3) a slightly gonzo tale about an alien invasion in Bukit Batok, with exploding birds, interdimensional travel, an autonomous vehicle full of hapless retirees in the most low-speed death ride ever. All three will become part of my second short story collection which I plan to finish by the end of this year.
The Infinite Library and Other Stories 