Man, woman, scythe, book: this story is for the people of Treehouse, yall inspire me.
This entire story came to me almost verbatim in a dream. But it took about two weeks to coalesce into coherence, that is, to write it down.
My goal was to do more worldbuilding. Which one of the difficulties is: if you start a lot of threads, how can you resolve all of them neatly- or should you? When so many relationships in life remain unfinished, still in tension. And one cannot know all things or even most things. So I’m working to strike a balance between enticing mystery and plain confusion.
My secondary goal was to actualize “the science of fiction,” a term that Nnedi Okorafor coined in her baller cyborg novel Noor. If fiction is the science of designing worlds parallel to our own, what then is an anarchist utopia? Not just fun to imagine: not just fun to read: but healing. The opening of a door.
As for other influences; I’m reading The Dispossessed and also, for some fucking reason I’m rereading C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and that’s real fun. And I continue to think about Murakami a lot while steadfastedly not reading 1Q84, and N.K. Jemesin’s The Fifth Season in this season of wet cold.
This a draft. Subject to change. Enjoy, yall 🙂
cdzhouse 