My speculative novel Quibble blends sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopia. Published serially on the substack Singular Dream, Quibble tells a story set in the far future on an otherworldly Earth after a technological singularity.
ABOUT THE STORY
Quibble doesn’t want to be a heretic. She doesn’t want her preternatural gift or any part of the bloody war it drags her into. She only wants to find her mother, vanished without a trace. But she’ll have to journey through hell for that reunion�
The year is 49371, but nobody knows it. Long ago, mysterious transhuman people called the Infinite exploited Earth’s resources to build interstellar arks, leaving the planet uninhabitable. Now, a new transhuman race � Ones � inhabit Within, a subterranean night world ruled by the artificial intelligence Unity and the powerful caretakers called Zeros. Cursed with longevity, Ones share dreams in virtual reality as they await their death and transcendence to the few remaining arks.
Clear-sighted, Quibble sees what no One should see wakeful � people’s shadows in the dark Within. Raised by heretic Zeros, Quibble chafes at Unity’s religion of control, which insists the natural sunlight Without annihilates Ones, body and soul. When Unity forces her into a loveless marriage and then her mother Quiddity disappears, she enlists the heretic Zeros� help to take her Without and help her find Quiddity.
Aboveground, Quibble discovers a surreal, bewildering world. She falls in love with Definition, a fragile woman beset with grief over her son’s death. When Quibble’s gift of sight reignites a long-dormant Zero war, she’s hounded by the phantomlike Asuja, the messiah of a fascist vision for the Ones� future. To prevail, Quibble must find her own powers in her human nature and her unique grasp of physical reality. But when Asuja reveals what became of her mother, Quibble’s loyalties are thrown into disarray as she struggles to learn the most elusive human trait � the ability to forgive.
Extrapolating a world from Clarke’s dictum that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,� Quibble explores joy and grief, mortality and immortality as it contrasts utopian transhumanism with the Digital Age’s epidemic of online facelessness.
COMPARABLE TITLES
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin Dawn and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
ABOUT SINGULAR DREAM
Chapters from Quibble are free to read. You can subscribe to get them in your email inbox; a new chapter comes out every Thursday morning. If you want more � my weekly reflections on writing the novel, sources that inspired me, the novel's topics and themes, and now and then a personal reflection or a poem � then you can get a paying subscription ($5/month or $45/year).
My speculative novel Quibble blends sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopia. Published serially on the substack Singular Dream, Quibble tells a story set in the far future on an otherworldly Earth after a technological singularity.
ABOUT THE STORY
Quibble doesn’t want to be a heretic. She doesn’t want her preternatural gift or any part of the bloody war it drags her into. She only wants to find her mother, vanished without a trace. But she’ll have to journey through hell for that reunion�
The year is 49371, but nobody knows it. Long ago, mysterious transhuman people called the Infinite exploited Earth’s resources to build interstellar arks, leaving the planet uninhabitable. Now, a new transhuman race � Ones � inhabit Within, a subterranean night world ruled by the artificial intelligence Unity and the powerful caretakers called Zeros. Cursed with longevity, Ones share dreams in virtual reality as they await their death and transcendence to the few remaining arks.
Clear-sighted, Quibble sees what no One should see wakeful � people’s shadows in the dark Within. Raised by heretic Zeros, Quibble chafes at Unity’s religion of control, which insists the natural sunlight Without annihilates Ones, body and soul. When Unity forces her into a loveless marriage and then her mother Quiddity disappears, she enlists the heretic Zeros� help to take her Without and help her find Quiddity.
Aboveground, Quibble discovers a surreal, bewildering world. She falls in love with Definition, a fragile woman beset with grief over her son’s death. When Quibble’s gift of sight reignites a long-dormant Zero war, she’s hounded by the phantomlike Asuja, the messiah of a fascist vision for the Ones� future. To prevail, Quibble must find her own powers in her human nature and her unique grasp of physical reality. But when Asuja reveals what became of her mother, Quibble’s loyalties are thrown into disarray as she struggles to learn the most elusive human trait � the ability to forgive.
Extrapolating a world from Clarke’s dictum that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,� Quibble explores joy and grief, mortality and immortality as it contrasts utopian transhumanism with the Digital Age’s epidemic of online facelessness.
COMPARABLE TITLES
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Dawn and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
ABOUT SINGULAR DREAM
Chapters from Quibble are free to read. You can subscribe to get them in your email inbox; a new chapter comes out every Thursday morning. If you want more � my weekly reflections on writing the novel, sources that inspired me, the novel's topics and themes, and now and then a personal reflection or a poem � then you can get a paying subscription ($5/month or $45/year).