Fantasy meets Science with Fi Phillips

Haven Wakes by Fi Phillips

Fi Phillips is a fantasy author living in North Wales with her family and a pooch called Bailey. Writing about magical possibilities is her passion.

Her debut novel, Haven Wakes, was released in 2019 by Burning Chair Publishing and the second instalment in The Haven Chronicles is due to be released later this year.

When she isn’t ‘authoring’, Fi works as a freelance copywriter. Fi tells me how inspiring she fins the potential in that space where imagination meets science.

 

Fi Phillips: Fantasy with a touch of Science

I’m a fantasy author. I love all things magical – from people with spell-casting powers, to mythical creatures, to artefacts that can do the most marvellous things. If there’s magic involved, let me at it.

But here’s the thing. I also love reading about scientific developments. I’ll give you an example – robots. There’s a whole world of robots out there, right now. Some are the kind of robots I remember from childhood viewing, like Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, clumsy and cumbersome and unlikely to outrun or even outwalk you in a chase. Others are altogether more advanced and scarily relevant to the world we live in. You just have to look at the progress that Boston Dynamics has made to realise that. And then, there are the robots which are currently floating around and being useful, like the Astrobees (no, that isn’t a kids TV programme – they really exist) on the International Space Station.

Robots are kind of magic too
Robots are kind of magic too…photo by Possessed Photography from Unsplash

My favourite fantasy novels and films are those that have a mixture of fantasy and science, stories like Sheri S Tepper’s The True Game series or the Nicholas Cage film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. That’s why my debut novel, Haven Wakes, includes all of that – magic and robots and plenty of future-tech that is being developed as we speak (read?).

Inspiration for me is the place where imagination and science meet.

 

Extract from Haven Wakes

“Mind yourself.” Steve pulled Hartley aside as a small robot struggled down the centre of the pavement, pulled equally ahead and back by the four dogs it held the leads to.

“Is that normal?” said Hartley.

“Of course. That’s the kind of job robots do. Walk the dog. Serve in a shop. Clean up.”

“So what do people do?”

“Everything else, I suppose,” said Steve. “Or nothing.”

“Sounds peculiar to me,” said Hartley, still watching the robot as it untangled one of its limbs from the dogs’ leads. “Where’s the fun in having a dog and not walking it?”

***

The retail and eateries district that the department store sat in was a grid of mismatched shop fronts. The stores were split into three main types.

There were the older stores, like Sebastian Green and Sons with their faux-old pillars and marble-floored entrances, that attempted to mimic old world prestige. They sold the type of item that needed to be seen before purchase. It was also the kind of item that only the richest could afford, from rhodium jewellery to the latest solar sports car and the rarest of plants.

Dotted in between the shop fronts were the pick-up pods that varied in size depending on exactly what you were collecting. The largest pick-up pod that Steve had ever seen was one that supplied cars. Scan your identity from your wrap-phone, the door opens, and away you go.

“Surely that isn’t edible?” Hartley pressed his face against the window of an eatery, the third type of store in the district.

A conveyor belt of food-filled glass plates travelled around the eatery counter. At one end of the belt, waiter robots recovered the plates to serve to the waiting customers. At the other, the nozzles of the 3D food printer moved speedily around each plate, forming the pre-ordered food.

“That’s the advantage of synthetic food,” said Steve. “You can form it into any shape you want, and it’s fast.”

“Ludicrous,” said Hartley, shaking his head as he stepped back from the window. “There’s not enough on one of those plates to touch the sides.”

***

Oh, I love that! Especially the part about why you would have dogs but let the robot walk them! And 3D printed food. Wow. More please.

Author Fi Phillips
Author Fi Phillips

 

Fiona’s Links:

Author Website – http://fiphillipswriter.com/

Haven Wakeshttps://burning-chair.myshopify.com/collections/fiction-books/products/haven-wakes-by-fi-phillips

Find Fi on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/fiphillipswriter/

Seven tiny steps towards a future

I just wrote a long paragraph about the bushfires that are rampaging across Australia, but I deleted it. Nobody can be unaware. Everyone can see the destruction and count the cost. The better question is: what can we do about it?

An intransigence of climate-change sceptics deny any connection between this disaster and humanity’s actions. It keeps them busy, I guess. I see no hope of winning that argument. Instead of bashing my head against the stoutly defended walls of Big Money, I’m regretfully abandoning them as impossible to save.

In my quest to remain hopeful and positive – because humans do have children who deserve a future – I’m seeking new ways to support the Earth. Plus there are only so many pictures of mummified wallabies I can carry in my heart. Fund raising and physical help (money, goods, offers of accommodation and assistance) will continue years into the future as we strive to recover, so there will be no shortage of actions to take after the event (so big and so new it doesn’t yet have a name). Yet I don’t want to just sit and watch, so…

Here’s a starting list of seven tiny things I can do right now:

  1. Something that I’ve only just heard of: Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees
  2. Plus a new blogger to follow: InspireCreateEducate
  3. Check out The New Joneses for tips on living a big life with a little footprint
  4. Grow your love of retro every day: make Buy Nothing New a permanent resolution
  5. Share hopeful images to help nurture mental health, like the dog playpen on HMAS Choules
  6. Step outside and observe your world: the air, the birds, the plants, the locals, and think about how much you love them all
  7. Tell your people you love them

I’m certain I will find more and stronger actions as time progresses. We really have no choice but to do so. The future is coming. Let’s try to make it one we can live in.