About Cifiscape

Cifiscape asks the reader to think of our future. The question strives to shape our expectations: sharing our dreams and nightmares, it narrates the best and worst. We are a group of editors, writers, and illustrators who have come together under Onyx Neon Press. Through Cifiscape Vol. I and II, we want to share stories of the Twin Cities, written by the Twin Cities.

With this mission in mind, we asked the authors to narrate a short story based in, around, or under the Metro of the future. We selected stories for their relevance to the theme and the clarity of their writing. We are excited to have worked with authors presenting possible moments in our future.

In the stories, I am struck by the idea of hope. The submissions were dystopic: collapsing society, oppressive technology, and oppressive expectations. This pessimism derives from the theme of Cifiscape: what will the Twin Cities be in the future? The unanimous response of the authors seems to be, “Life is messy.” Thus, setting a story in an actual place with all of its complexity requires failings to be believable. Unlike Thomas More’s Utopian “no place”, Onyx Neon asked authors to project into their actual reality. Idealized reality is fine in some far-flung universe, but in our own town, dangerous possibilities manifest with more dreadful consequences. As a result, the submissions painted a gritty picture of the future. The roughness of the edges in the narrations struck me. Structures of collapse and institutions’ incipient underside become apparent. Reading through this accidental theme made me wonder why unrelated authors share so much in common.

I realized that order must be prevalent in everyday life for decline to seem more likely than development. In other words, the current world is pretty good because improvements do not present themselves readily. A hopeful outlook on the future suggests that individuals see obvious solutions to today’s problems. Ironically, reticence when imagining the future suggests that while problems exist in today’s world, their resolution is beyond our imagination. By imagining our future together, we can see points of improvement for today. In this light, tales of collapse provide warnings. All things will collapse, but all things will be born. When too many life necessities collapse simultaneously, we have to hope for a better future. We look to Cifiscape for warnings, not because of impending collapse, but because of the immense possibilities future births hold. So, in the future of the Twin Cities, we find unlimited possibilities. The question is, what possibilities do we choose to live with each other?

Kit Martin