One of the great advantages of speculative fiction is that it can take the legends, myths and trope you already think you know, and recontextualize them in a way that presents them in a way you’d never considered them before. For Fathomfolk, author Eliza Chan took a well-known aquatic trope and presented it in a way that’s destined to make a splash.
ELIZA CHAN:
Water is a necessity of life. People the world over choose to settle near water: on islands and shorelines, near rivers and lakes. It is unsurprising then, that mythology and folktales, as varied as they are across the globe, often feature stories of sea folk. Mermaids and kraken, kelpies and water dragons. Most mermaid retellings focus on the love aspect of the traditional Hans Christian Andersen story; I wanted to focus on the movement from water to land.
In my head, the little mermaid is an first generation immigrant. She has to learn the etiquette and culture of another people; is isolated from the land of her birth, her family, pretending to be fully human to fit in. These were all concepts close to my diaspora heart, thinking about the journey my own parents made halfway across the world, my own sense of identity as someone who wasn’t ever certain where they belonged and was constantly hounded by the question, “Where are you from originally?” Fathomfolk is the story of these first and second generation sea folk, set in a big multicultural city, teaming with life and opportunities but also inequality and division.
I foolishly thought I was avoiding all the tricky worldbuilding of big epic fantasy or historical fantasy novels with my urban contemporary, semi-flooded cityscape. The first draft soon proved me wrong. I struggled to visualise a European style city that was semi-flooded without it edging into science fiction or terrifying visions of Waterworld flashing before my eyes. The more I researched, the more I was drawn to real-life aspects of East and South-East Asia: the stilt houses; the different boats still used to this day for housing, transport or fishing; the adaptations to monsoon rains and flooding. This is where my story wanted to be and so mid-draft, it became an Asian citystate.
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Source: The Big Idea: Eliza Chan
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