“...Under the influence of ambiguity in every aspect of life — a surrealist flame brushed against my brain — I moved from order to disorder, symmetric forms to asymmetry for my inventions, an advance out of my comfort zone…”
We are well into his story when the protagonist of Not Sci-Fi ——whose name is never shared with us from story start to end — avers this cornerstone belief in his world view and his approach to what some might call his mad scientist explorations.
It’s a fragile world he inhabits— much like our own– poised to self-destruct and at the mercy of the tragically limited human race. At a young and impressionable age he faces conflicts boiling between those with warring views of how to manage the finite nature of the planet’s resources. Conservists want to safeguard finite energy sources as long as possible. Distributists look to keep up a better standard of living for all, and look to innovations to keep the energy spigots open and running. These worldviews are antipodal. When the protagonist is quite young, war breaks out between the two camps. Life’s joys are gone. The ugliness of war takes over.
Finding a third way– a better way– becomes the driving passion of our protagonist. He seizes upon the possibility of busting the Laws of Thermodynamics to smithereens. His life becomes a walking fever dream to create a perpetual motion machine that will make all conflict over finite resources moot. He is determined to be THE one to save the planet and end all war by inventing this perpetual motion machine. This invention will allow him to shatter the Laws of Thermodynamics that damn us to a finite world.
We join him on this quest to build a perpetual motion machine. He rapidly accelerates far beyond passion into the realm of obsession. It’s quite the ride. We don’t merely go down the rabbit hole. We feel like we are riding bareback on a power drill burrowing deeper and deeper down bringing us dangerously close to having a meltdown in the earth’s hot core.
Or– maybe it’s his mind that is having a meltdown?
Is he mad? Or, is he another Edison or Einstein?
Spoiler Alert: It’s only at the story’s end –when it hits the ground with the kind of smooth landing that makes everyone on the plane clap– that we and he find rest. From the heights and lows of grandiosity, he, like Candide, seems content to just watch his garden grow. We can’t say if the planet is saved, but we do know he has re-joined the reality-based.
NOT SCI-FI Breaks Into New Genre Territory
Not Sci-Fi’s world is really not the unnamed Pacific Island where the story begins. Rather, the story’s setting is the interior of a creative mind getting progressively more cluttered. An O’Henry type ending lets us sigh in relief when the claustrophobic clutter of the protagonist’s over-active mind is cleared. Never mind that he doesn’t make it to the halcyon finish line where conflict over finite resources is moot. Like this writer, you too might be thinking that our imaginative super-driven hero/anti-hero just might get there in the sequel.
First and foremost, think of Not Sci-Fi as a novel of NOW. The likes of Jules Verne may have futurecast his tales, but those stories were born long before climate change became the lead story, or rather, what should be the lead story, every day. Gen Z author Mingyuan Dong doesn’t climb a soapbox to preach about the coming eco-disasters. Like Afro-Futurists making profound statements about slavery’s legacy by imagining a world without it, Not Sci-Fi takes us on a journey where imagination creates a hypothetical world where fights over resources just won’t ever happen again. This may be the world’s first oeuvre of what could be called eco-futurism!
Along the way, this milestone eco-futurist tale also gives some basic primers on science and engineering topics– from how magnets work, the a, b, c’s of friction, and more. Author Dong, who is also an artist, peppers her novel with pictures from the protagonist’s fever dreams of bypassing the Laws of Thermodynamics. Think novel-with-pictures, not graphic novel per se.
The title of the book is a good conversation starter about best- match audience. Those seeking Star Wars type thrills should look elsewhere. If you love a book that grabs you by the collar to immerse you in a vividly imagined alternate universe, Not Sci-Fi is a top pick for your time. Tip to Hollywood– take note of this virgin foray into eco-futurism and the nascent genre’s cinematic possibilities.
