Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project Publishes First Story for Forthcoming Anthology

Faculty-author pair (l to r) Associate Professor of Religion Devin Singh and Max Gladstone.

The project, born from the Design Initiative at Dartmouth, paired eight Dartmouth faculty with eight veteran speculative fiction authors who collaborated through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, to draw on faculty research to imagine worlds that pose questions about the future of humanity. 

"This project exemplifies Dartmouth's core strengths of interdisciplinary design and creative collaboration in ways that make sparks fly," says Diamond.

For this first story, Gladstone worked with Dartmouth Associate Professor of Religion Devin Singh, whose research engages the philosophy of religion and social ethics, and explores religion's interaction with economics and politics.

"I had a few fascinating afternoons talking with Professor Devin Singh, who's interested in debt as a theological concept, and debt in the Christian tradition in particular," said Gladstone in Lightspeed's author spotlight. "Dr. Singh's work teases apart these different senses of debt—which often lead us to regard, say, a contingent financial condition as having profound moral or spiritual weight, or a state of human obligation as a financial matter. We might say that a parent 'owes' their child care, say, but what are we doing when we use the same word for that relationship as we’d use for my relationship to the holder of my mortgage? I thought it would be fun and helpful to approach this question in fiction by slamming the many senses of debt together, and seeing what contradictions and conflicts showed up."

Each month, over the next year or so, another story from the project will be released and added to the anthology, Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures. The anthology, to be published by MIT Press in 2027, will include scholarship that describes the project's design activities and process.