Shaping tomorrow’s stories at the Singapore Writers Festival 2025

THE 28" edition of the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), which ran from Nov. 7 to 16, made a stab at the future with its special focus on sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative writing, featuring marquee names associated with the popular genre such as the Americans Ken Liu and R.F. Kuang and the Philippines’ own Dean Francis Alfar.

- By Lito B. Zulueta

The futurist thrust of Southeast Asia’s biggest writers’ powwow coincided with the 60" anniversary of Singaporean independence. Billed as $G60, the nationwide celebration has been a look at the future as much as the past. In fact, the SWF 2025 theme was “Shape of Things to Come,” derived from H.G. Wells’ 1933 futurist novel.

SWF director Yong Shu Hoong said the theme “encapsulates my reflections” on G60. “On one hand, it’s a chance to look back at past struggles and achievements with the wisdom of hindsight,” he said. “On the other, we're tapping the confidence gained through the years to press forward with optimism and hope.”

The festival’s new Sci-fi Spotlight track, he added, “opens a portal into a brave new world where science fiction can help us speculate on possibilities for our future across technology, society, and culture.”

SPECULATIVE SPOTLIGHT

The spotlight on speculative fiction featured two of the genre’s most influential figures: R.F. Kuang and Ken Liu.

Ms. Kuang — best known in Manila for her Poppy War trilogy of historical fantasy novels — turned her keynote toward academia, drawing from her new grimdark-academia novel Kata-basis, a thematic companion to Babel.

She dismantled what she called three myths of higher education: that universities guarantee social mobility, reward merit, and nurture political resistance. “US universities have always been bastions of the elite,” she said.

She contrasted student radicalism with administrative conservatism: “Students are historically agents of revolution, but when they protest injustice, administrators send the police — or even the National Guard.”

In Katabasis, Ms. Kuang makes the PhD candidate journey a literal descent into hell, yet the author remains hopeful. “You criticize an institution because you love it,” she said, urging public investment, academic living wages, and relief from student debt.