{"id":3510,"date":"2019-09-18T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/?p=3510"},"modified":"2019-09-16T17:29:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T17:29:21","slug":"the-story-behind-the-story-the-monster-and-the-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/2019\/09\/18\/the-story-behind-the-story-the-monster-and-the-child\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind the story: The monster and the child"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, Futures<\/a> is delighted to welcome Dolly Garland with her story The monster and the child<\/em><\/a>. Dolly is a writer based in London, and you can find out more about her work at her website<\/a> or by following her on Twitter<\/a>. Here she reveals what sparked her interest in monsters and what led her to her latest tale \u2014 as ever, it pays to read the story first<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Writing The monster and the child<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For most people, the word \u2018monster\u2019 evokes an image of some scary, non-human monster; the word \u2018child\u2019 evokes an image of youth, innocence, and a human child \u2014 whether a happy one or one in need of affection.<\/p>\n

But as we know from school bullies, not all children are nice and innocent. I don\u2019t know exactly where the idea for this story began, but it came with the assumption that what if the child is the monster, and the monster is the child? There are plenty of stories where humans are the bad guys, and I wanted to merge that idea with the innocence of childhood.<\/p>\n

Of course, the famous example of that sort of exploration is Orson Scott Card\u2019s Ender\u2019s Game<\/em>, in which children are fighting a real war, thinking they are playing on a simulator.<\/p>\n

I wanted to touch upon the idea of childhood \u2014 regardless of species \u2014 and combine that with morality that adults and society teach children.<\/p>\n

Adam is told that what he is doing will protect his world, protect humanity. He has been taught what is good and bad, and he has been taught to do the right thing. But that moral compass is biased. Do we teach our children to do the right thing, or do we teach them to do what is right in our opinion? What if absolute morality has a negative impact on us? Who do we put first? What if it is \u2018them\u2019 and \u2018us\u2019\u201d but \u2018them\u2019 are not the enemy, nor have they done anything wrong?<\/p>\n

Humans, I think, are selfish creatures and it is that selfishness that has helped us thrive as a species. But as we continue to grow, without much care for the world around us, how far can we go? How far should we go? These are some of the questions that inspired this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, Futures is delighted to welcome Dolly Garland with her story The monster and the child. Dolly is a writer based in London, and you can find out more about her work at her website or by following her on Twitter. Here she reveals what sparked her interest in monsters and what led her to her latest tale \u2014 as ever, it pays to read the story first.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/futureconditional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}