life imitating art : art imitating life
What even is reality anyway?
In this roundup…
🤔 Is the world going mad? Or just progressing faster than we can process it?
Keep reading (or scroll to each section) to learn more!
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” - Ernest Hemingway
Unless you’ve been living under a rock - or going through something so intense personally that you couldn’t handle the news, which I suppose is the metaphorical equivalent - you’ve probably seen the recent headlines (and inevitable ensuing memes) about the first all-female space flight since 1963. Back then, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova flew a solo mission on the Vostok 6, making her the first woman in space as she spent three days orbiting Earth 48 times.
The recent mission, by Blue Origin - an American space tech company founded by Jeff Bezos - took place on April 14, 2025, with a six-woman crew. There were two “space women” on it - former NASA engineer Aisha Bowe, and bioastronautics research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen. The other four were pop star Katy Perry, TV personality Gayle King, former journalist Laura Sánchez (who is Bezos’s fiancée), and film producer Kerianne Flynn. On the journey, they spent approximately four minutes in space, during which Perry also sang a cover of Louis Armstrong’s “It’s A Wonderful World,” and announced the launch of her new album with its first single, “Woman’s World,” to drop this July.
If you’re raising your eyebrows higher than your hairline right now, you’re not alone. Sending these celebrities to space in full glam and “sexy designer space suits” instead of actual astronauts feels like something out a spoof film. Surely there’s a better way to show love for the planet than what feels like a PR stunt paid for by a company run by one of the world’s richest men - who made his money from a company widely accused of destroying the planet? And if the goal was to encourage more girls to get into STEM, then why not include more women who are actually in STEM? I did enjoy the memes, though.
When Mike Judge (the creator of ‘90s hit Beavis and Butt-Head) made the movie Idiocracy back in 2006, he didn’t anticipate it to be predictive. It was a commentary on the rise of anti-intellectualism, but he didn’t necessarily think so much of the film would actually seem to come true - least of all, how popular Crocs would become. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 wouldn’t feel out of place in a season of Black Mirror - and the latter has also been noted, multiple times, for its predictive feel. From a VR headset that can kill the user IRL if they die in the game, to China’s social credits system, Boston Dynamics’ robotic guard dogs, dating (or hooking up) in the metaverse, a dead musician being used to compose new music through a clump of his brain matter, or the streamer banned for letting users pay him in virtual currency to torture himself, these days, truth can quite often seem as strange as fiction.
From Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report and George Orwell’s 1984 to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents, there’s a long list of sci-fi books that seemed to predict the future. TV, too: The Jetsons had the videophone (although I’m still waiting for someone to invent that “getting ready” conveyor belt, so every day can be an effortless good hair day). Depictions of the future in sci-fi can often seem dire - WALL-E, Interstellar, Looper, In Time, and Elysium, I’m looking at you. In fact, a lot of modern sci-fi feels downright pessimistic. Sometimes, it’s because of narrative need - dark and gritty stories mean more dramatic tension, and happy worlds often feel more boring. But I also think it’s because most of us are slightly afraid of the future, and how quickly everything is progressing. (More on that in “The Perspective,” below👇)
I’m guilty of it too: when I entered the Dubai Future Forum Echoes of Tomorrow Sci-Fi short story competition last year, 90% of my story ideas were dark, and 70% didn’t have a happy ending. The Foundation had asked for a vision of the future relating to the themes of the forum - and I tried, hard, to write a hopeful story. I wound up with one where the world itself was fairly beautiful, but for my protagonist, life was still bittersweet. (Thankfully, it still won me a place as a finalist!)
I’ve long believed that science fiction is inextricably philosophical - and if the predictive nature of fiction has a mostly bleak outlook these days, I’d say it’s a reflection of the collective psyche. The world has been in turmoil, and the amount of stories reflecting that lately isn’t just confirmation bias - it’s a way for the storytellers of the world to explore what the future might look like, through playing out various different scenarios (from the good to the ghoulish)… and in doing so, asking us all to give a little more forethought to how the changes we may be making today might affect tomorrow.
What’s your favorite instance of art imitating life, or life imitating art?
🤔 The Perspective: Thoughts that make me go “hmm”
I often feel like I’ve accidentally woken up in a parallel reality that is equal parts farcical and dystopian these days. I’m not the only one. There are multiple reasons why, but one is how unstable everything feels. Life and nature tend to be cyclical, and we often find comfort in a high degree of predictability. Even if change is the only true constant, it can still be scary - and at the moment, everything from the economy to global societal values seems to be seesawing at a breakneck pace. As technology evolves at an accelerating speed, life and the way we live it seems to be changing with an unprecedented swiftness; one that thrusts us into each new reality faster than we are able to process the last one. With all of this leading to rising rates in our collective global anxiety - and not just anticipatory anxiety, but most types of anxiety being tied to a fear of an uncertain outcome - it’s no wonder so many of us feel like we’re questioning our reality, or at least experiencing a distorted one.
But that doesn’t mean we’re going crazy - it could be anxiety, it could be grief, it could be disassociation led by emotional exhaustion, it could be all of the above and more. When the world feels like it’s spinning too fast, one of the best things to do is reorient yourself - and putting your feet back down with some grounding exercises, from meditation to deep breathing, or meeting with good friends, can help.
🗺️ The Scene
I enjoy writing from different cafés, hotels, libraries, and workspaces around the world - and rating them for their “writer-friendliness”. 9h nine hours woman Shinjuku is a sci-fi worthy hotel in Tokyo, Japan. This Japanese capsule hotel chain is known for its clever design and roomy bed pods with a wellness angle, for busy locals and travelers looking for a place to sleep - and this particular location is a women-only one that comes with the option for a personalized sleep report. The moment I laid eyes on it, I knew I had to try it out - it reminded me of the ship to Fhloston Paradise in The Fifth Element (possibly my favorite movie of all time). It’s no Four Seasons, but I do wonder if something like this could ever take off in Dubai, especially for people trying to dodge hellish traffic or a super long drive home after a super late night at work. Knowing Dubai’s tendency to be bougie, it would probably be a “luxury” version with VIP rooms and designer products!
📍Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
💰 Rates vary depending on dates, and if you opt in for a sleep report or not.
⭐ Writer-friendliness: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
✈️ The Setting: Destinations to help your mind (and body) wander
The Yemeni island of Socotra is one of the most unique places on Earth. Located between the Arabian Sea and the Guardafui Channel around 230-380m from the mainland, it’s one of the most isolated landforms of continental origin, and its biodiversity is truly unparalleled. An extraordinary amount of its flora and fauna is endemic - 37% of its plant species, 90% of its reptile species, and 95% of its land snail species aren’t found anywhere else in the world. It’s been described as one of the most alien-looking places on Earth, and some have even suggested that this archipelago might be the mythical Garden of Eden.
Its local name, Saqatri, is thought to either be a Greek name derived from Ḥaḍramitic and Sabaic inscriptions - both of which are languages spoken by ancient civilizations in South Arabia - or to mean “dragon’s blood market.” The latter refers to the Dracaena Cinnabari, the island’s famous Dragon’s Blood trees. Native to Socotra, the sap of these beautiful, umbrella-shaped trees is blood-red, so when the bark is cut, it literally looks like its bleeding. They’re one of the most iconic visuals of Socotra, and are also considered the national tree of Yemen.
I’ve wanted to visit Socotra for the last 15 years, ever since I first stumbled across a photo of one of these trees, otherworldly and majestic against a starry night sky. For any sci-fi writer, even a picture of this place sparks the imagination (and reminders of the seminal TV series Raised by Wolves), but to see it in real life would be a dream. Alas, it’s not easy to get there, with the area not only being so remote, but also having been riddled with conflict. Commercial tourism became virtually impossible from 2015, and it was only in 2021 that it started being more accessible to foreign tourists again. Even now, there are a very limited number of flights there and back, and beyond getting a visa, you must book in through an approved local agency.
This spring, photographers Andy Marty and Clément Coudeyre ran a PhotoPills expedition there, to capture the “Milky Way, the crescent moon and the golden light with immense desert seascapes, tall white-sand dunes, secret infinity pools, mystical dragon blood trees, pink-flowered bottle trees, sea-turtles, Egyptian vultures and strange rock formations…” and it looks like they’ll return next year. I’m determined to make it there in the next 1-2 years, whether with them or another way. Who’s coming with me? 😉
🙂 The Character: Inspiring people with a story worth telling
An illustrator, artist, and multimedia designer, I first met Mitali Sampat when she was a visual designer for Zomato. Mitali grew up in Dubai, before moving to India to study art in Mumbai. She has since returned to the UAE, where outside of her day job as a multimedia designer, she’s also an illustrator and mixed media artist. Mitali loves drawing with an ink, a brush, and some paper as much as she enjoys learning about new design software, and has hosted multiple workshops to help people of all ages tap into their own creativity.
Her Webtoon comic Maya's Magic tells the story of a mischievous and dreamy witch called Maya, and beautifully illustrates her distinct style of ligne claire drawing. I spoke to her about art, the business of creativity, and the world through her eyes.
✍️ The Process: Insights on the craft of writing and editing
Whether you’re writing science fiction, fantasy, or speculative fiction - or any other story that takes place in a fictional setting quite different from our own (even one set in our reality) - world-building can be incredibly important. It’s the foundation of where your story takes place, and provides context in which your characters and the plot can not only exist, but make sense. It can affect everything from the way your characters speak to each other to the way they live, eat, sleep, and breathe; the way they interact with each other; their value systems and societal structures; the problems they face, and so much more. I don’t think there is one right or wrong way to do it, but I’ve put together 130+ questions to help you ponder what you need to consider when building a more layered and complex fictional world.
🧠 The Idea-Sparkers, Thought-Stirrers, and Conversation-Starters
Researchers at Penn State University have created technology that can transmit sound waves to a specific person or place - and only them.
In Beijing, traffic gets so bad there’s a service called jam-busting, where you can hire a motorcyclist to pick you up from your gridlocked car for the equivalent of US$60, to set you free while someone else brings your car to you later. Is this an option for Dubai’s worsening traffic too? We already get our petrol delivered…
Eagle-eyed Black Mirror fans are buzzing over the second episode of its recently-released season 7 - where, like the main character, fans were also left questioning reality due to the power of technology… because subtly-different versions were actually released. That’s so meta.
Thanks for reading!
Until next time,
Yi-Hwa
