Presenter(s): Andrew Tesoriero
Faculty Mentor(s): Mark Hennion
Oral Session 4 DL
“Greener Fields” is a story of unrequited love in a dystopian future. The ambiguity of the narrator—who has no name or gender—explores questions of identity and conveys the mutability of the story’s theme across genres. The narrator shares this sense of unknown identity and inner turmoil with the story’s setting: a future defined by corporate servitude and an endless war. As the narrator visits their childhood friend Aaron, now a veteran, in a strange facility, they are forced to confront their history with Aaron and their future without him. When writing this story, I considered how science fiction can explore themes of unrequited love in new ways. I wanted the larger world to be ambiguous as to focus the story on the two characters, and found through revision which details of the outside world are important to defining the worlds of the characters. “Greener Fields” confronts love and loss amidst the uncertainty of the future—while exploring how this future is painfully tethered to the past.