On the Other Side of the Night: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Can Help Us Through Our Dark Hour

On the Other Side of the Night is about the potential that science fiction and fantasy have to transform the way we see the world - and each other.

At every hour, faces on television and voices on Twitter are telling us to fear, fear, fear, like the drumbeat of our heart going too fast. Tragically, because death or extinction is too terrifying, because disease and ecological disaster are too frightful, we turn our fears on each other instead. Those others, they are what we must fear, our leaders and too many of our storytellers insist. We are being asked to accept small-minded stories that make our hearts smaller, when we are in most need of larger stories that make our hearts bigger.

When this time passes, if we strive only to ‘go back’ to how things were, to the injustices and unsustainable complacency that constricted our society before the pandemic, then we will be the most pitiable of fools. This is a time to imagine better, improbable, impossible futures. How we make it through this long night together will be dependent on the stories we tell and the stories we are willing to hear, as we face each other across the fire with our backs to the long dark. There are gifts of hope tucked inside these tales like trinkets or treasures tucked inside nested Russian dolls. Here, I’ll show you what I mean. Come closer to the fire. Let’s talk. - Stant Litore

Praise for Stant Litore’s Previous Titles:

Stant Litore may be SF’s premier poet of loneliness. - Jason Kirk, author of Reverb

Litore’s passion for well-crafted sci-fi comes through in every chapter. - S.G. Redling, author of Flowertown and Damocles