SINGAPORE'S BIGGEST literary phenomenon in recent years has been speculative fiction. Local writers are increasingly incorporating supernatural or science-fiction elements into their narrative fiction and winning acclaim here and around the world.

Rachel Heng's much talked-about debut novel Suicide Club (2018) looks at a future where humans can live past 200 years of age. JY Yang's popular Tensorate novella series (2017-2018) merges fantasy, science fiction and Asian mythology to create a brave new world of magical monks and dragons. Nuraliah Norasid won the Epigram fiction prize for The Gatekeeper, a fantasy novel about snake-haired Medusas roaming an island not unlike Singapore; while Sharlene Teo's Ponti (2018) weaves elements of the pontianak mythology into a decades-long story of three women.

Partly reflecting these "new energies", the theme of the upcoming Singapore Writers Festival is 界 (jiè), which refers to worlds and borders. Several of the talks, discussions, courses, films screenings and performances are centred on science and technology, science fiction, fantasy and mythology, horror, utopian and dystopian fictions, and combinations thereof.