Duncan Fraser describes the inspiration behind Terrarium Hostel – a story of ordinary lives against a backdrop of cosmic stakes, exploring themes of connection, belonging, and self-discovery. “Ultimately in this book I am concerned with the question: Is it wise to try and communicate with technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilisations?”. Duncan Fraser An odd little incident many years ago provided both my motivation and the germ of the story. I lived in hostels when I was 18. One of my roommates saw a science fiction short story competition advertised in a newspaper. He cut out the entry form and presented it to me saying that I should write a story and send it in. This took me by complete surprise because I had never expressed any interest in science fiction or in writing. He seemed to have an inexplicable confidence that I could do it. I thought it strange for him to think of me like that because at the time I would never have passed for an artist or an intellectual or even as someone vaguely intelligent. A few years later I did have an intellectual awakening and I did start writing but I wasn’t interested in science fiction. However, as the decades passed, I remembered the incident and felt a nagging compulsion to accept what I began to think of as my inescapable fate. And so, about forty years later, I started to contemplate writing a science fiction story. I have been fascinated by the idea of extraterrestrial civilisations for a long time. In recent years, as I would be standing at a bus stop on my way home from work on wintry evenings, my attention would focus on a particular star in my line of sight. I would begin to daydream about an alien civilisation around that star. It would be at about the same stage of technological development as ourselves, maybe slightly ahead. And rather than weaving a story about its leaders or warriors or astronauts, I imagined what the lives of its ordinary workers might be like. Perhaps workers living in a hostel. A hostel in space. A hostel in a city in space. I later discovered that the star I was focussing on at the bus stop was called Zeta Herculis. Intelligent alien life forms will almost certainly be so dissimilar to us that mutual understanding might be very difficult. In the story that was forming in my mind, I came up with a solution to this problem by introducing the device of an artificially intelligent technology that translates the utterly alien communication into a comprehensible message in our own idiomatic language and with every detail of the alien world given a recognisable correlate in ours. BUY THE BOOK Dollop, a homesick young man, keeps a diary of his life in The Terrarium, a vast space city, as part of a groundbreaking extraterrestrial project. Living in a hostel with two peers, Backlog and Methane, and the enigmatic older man Octave, he feels uncertain about his future and lacks ambition. But after slowly building up his confidence, a shocking truth emerges that compels Dollop to reassess his identity. TERRARIUM HOSTEL is available on back order in paperback £9.50 Add to Cart ABOUT THE AUTHOR DUNCAN FRASER is an award-winning Scottish writer and poet and the author of the sonnet cycle The Campus of Love (Matador, 2018).
Phil M. Shirley talks to Flemish author Vince Piessens about chemistry, working on a farm in Costa Rica, old flames and his new book, Searching for Adeline. When Vince Piessens was just fourteen, he landed his dream job reviewing video games for a gaming blog. “A friend of mine mentioned my love for writing and gaming to them, and they reached out to see if I wanted to give it a shot,” he recalls with a chuckle. “The perk? You get a free game for each review, and at fourteen, I thought, ‘Great! I can play even more games for free!’ So, I started writing. My early work wasn’t very good, but the editor-in-chief, who was studying journalism, took me under his wing. He taught me a lot about sentence structure and how to develop my writing skills, and it all just grew from there.” It’s a revealing anecdote, speaking to Piessens’ passion for writing that makes you feel something, but also to his open-mindedness and willingness to master a trade. It’s one of many anecdotes the blogger turned chemist turned novelist regales me with from our meeting place Mazette, a cooperative café-brasserie located in a square in the heart of the Marolles district of the City of Brussels. After his journalism stint, Piessens found himself eager to write more, but he wasn’t keen on returning to journalism. Instead, he turned to fiction. “At first, writing longer pieces was challenging,” he recalls, “but I quickly became immersed in it.” During this time, the young Flemish writer was also wrapping up his chemistry thesis, which focused on bioplastics. “I had about a month of free time before heading off on holiday, and I wanted to make the most of it,” he says. “I began writing again, sharing my work with a couple of friends who were eager to read along and discuss it. They, too, were completing their internships related to our theses and would soon be moving away. I was determined to finish my story before they left so I could gift it to them.” The result was a short story titled The Last Day, about a young boy who finds himself lost on the coast of Spain. Piessens’ latest work, Searching for Adeline, was crafted during a transformative period spent working on a farm in Costa Rica, where he had no internet access. “The afternoons were too hot to work, so I would sit at my laptop, listening to podcasts about politics and other subjects. I met many inspiring people there, and their stories fuelled my creativity.” He gathered various ideas as a foundation for his novel and spent about three years developing it, allowing the diverse inspirations he encountered along the way to weave naturally into the narrative. Piessens’ shrewd and provocative debut novella follows the fate of a wealthy but disillusioned older man, Adam Wilson, on an impulsive journey to find an old flame who has gone missing on the other side of the world in a highly secretive and post-totalitarian country. One day, while watching the news, he discovers that an old acquaintance and former flame has gone missing. This revelation sparks a sense of urgency within him; he feels compelled to help them, as it seems like the right thing to do. This journey not only leads him to assist someone in need but also prompts him to reevaluate his own life. The novel explores a well-known sentiment, an idea that reflects how many of us feel unfulfilled, losing touch with our true selves. “In my view, a strong message in this story is that we often hope for a crisis or a dramatic event to give our lives meaning and reignite our passions,” Piessens says. “The protagonist is a successful man who doesn’t need to get involved in this situation, yet he finds himself drawn into a predicament he could easily avoid. It’s almost a relief for him, as he waits for a catalyst—something that might give him a reason to truly live again. Life can sometimes pull us along, making us feel stuck. We may find ourselves making choices less actively, until an opportunity presents itself. He jumps into action without any real incentive, but this chance allows him to rediscover his purpose. “Can it be that sometimes our lives must be completely shaken up and rearranged to guide us to where we’re meant to be? We all have a mission on this earth, and figuring out what that mission is takes time. Ultimately, aren’t we all seeking something beyond our current existence? At some point in our lives, many of us have dreamed of a different reality. The allure of a new and better life might make us willing to risk losing our current one entirely. Yet, part of us often hopes for an end, believing that it might lead to something greater.” A portion of Searching for Adeline is set in London, as the protagonist shares his memories of the woman he quickly fell in love with. These nostalgic reflections include several references to the city. One of my favourite passages is when the protagonist Adam Wilson, as a young version of himself, comes across a cafe-bar, the very place where he would first meet Adeline. The Dusty Bookshelf, as the place had been called, had been one of an ancient and arcane beauty. The walls had been made up of rows upon rows of books of every shape, size, and age imaginable. On the ceiling there used to be a mural of Aphrodite in her clam shell, so exquisitely painted that it convinced me of being the perfect mix between Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel and Botticelli’s masterpiece, the Birth of Venus, only with more charm to the whole thing, charm expressed through flaking and dust. The wooden floorboards had made a satisfying creak as I’d shifted my weight from one foot to the other, marveling at the incredible range of plants filling every nook and cranny of the room. There
