A Rush Hour Ride on the Dwarf Planet: Neotropical Imaginings from a Postpandemic Colony

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3776

Keywords:

Borneo, COVID-19 pandemic, flash fiction, speculative fiction, dystopian worlds, utopian imaginaries, environment, Tropics

Abstract

In this dystopian flash fiction piece, a colonist on the Dwarf Planet takes the train back to her cubicle after another hard day’s work. As she struggles amid the harsh environmental conditions, KÆ reflects on why she volunteered to come out to this remote colony in the far reaches of the solar system. It is revealed that the great pandemic of 2020 never ended; the virus mutated and humans fled the Earth to build new worlds on other planets. But glimpses of the world left behind beckon as KÆ and her fellow colonists are now being enticed to return to a revived Earth; in particular, to the land of her forebears, Borneo, where orangutans roam in the resurrected rainforest and holiday-makers frolic in the famed underwater world of Sipadan and play on the island’s pristine beaches.

Author Biography

Christina Yin, Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak, Malaysia

Dr Christina Yin is a former news anchor, journalist, columnist and media executive at an international conservation organisation. Currently Christina is a writer and senior lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus. Her PhD on “Creative Nonfiction: True Stories of People involved in Fifty years of Orang-utan conservation in Sarawak” was the first in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Christina’s fiction and nonfiction writings have appeared in Anak Sastra, eTropic, New Writing and TEXT, among others.

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Published

2021-04-19

How to Cite

Yin, C. (2021). A Rush Hour Ride on the Dwarf Planet: Neotropical Imaginings from a Postpandemic Colony. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 20(1), 340–344. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3776