Memory is a popular theme across many genres, but the scope for unique storytelling is particularly rich when speculative fiction writers turn their attention to human recollection. After all, we understand and know ourselves through memory alone. Without memory, what are we?

Philip K. Dick’s short stories, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale were the inspiration behind the films, Blade Runner and Total Recall. Both stories examine the thorny issue of real versus false memories and their effect on a person’s sense of identity.

In Blade Runner our heart breaks for Rachel, the replicant whose implanted memories mean that she believes she’s human. But are her memories more or less important than those of the replicants who know what they are? And do either set of memories carry less worth than those of humans, like Deckard, the Blade Runner hunting the replicants down. Of course, whether or not Deckard is human or replicant, is still a topic up for debate.

In Total Recall, Construction worker, Douglas Quaid struggles to distinguish dreams from reality, to know which past is truly his own. We join him in veering from one belief to another – he is a secret agent who has defected from his support for a tyrannical regime – he is trapped inside his fantasy memory, on the verge of death – he is a double agent, working against the rebels in support of the regime. With no way of knowing which memories are real, Quaid can only act on the facts and emotions of the moment.

Both Quaid and Rachel struggle with their sense of identity. But their self-perception isn’t the key issue so much as individual autonomy; androids, whose memories belong to someone else, and humans whose memories have been altered, are all subject to control by those in power.

In Philip K. Dick’s dystopian future, technology is used to create and control memory, but George Orwell, in his chillingly prescient masterpiece, 1984, shows how effective a simpler approach can be. Oceania, a totalitarian superstate led by Big Brother, manipulates collective memory through the suppression of truth, the alteration of historical fact, and the persecution of independent thinking and individuality. Sounds familiar, right? Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, where he constantly revises history so that it remains in line with the Party’s current view of itself. Obsolete documents, including photographs and newspapers, are sent to an incinerator through chutes known as ‘memory holes.’ With no true sense of their past, the population of Oceania is easily kept in line.

But writers also explore how the sanctity of memory can be undermined by altruism and the unexpected consequences of good intentions. In Recursion, by Blake Crouch, detective Barry Sutton encounters a woman with False Memory Syndrome (FMS) – a condition in which the individual has memories of a life they never lived. The woman’s suicide sparks an investigation which results in Sutton being sent back in time, to the night his daughter was killed in a car accident. Barry saves his daughter, but his actions lead to a population-wide surge in FMS. Overwhelmed by false memories, his daughter ultimately commits suicide.

But in Sutton’s world, travelling through time was never the goal. Time travel was the unexpected result of neuroscientist, Helena Smith’s research and development of a ‘memory chair’, created in the hope of discovering a cure to Alzheimer’s. Of course, the technology falls into the wrong hands, leading eventually to military conflict and the threat of global war.

In my own novel, Tomorrow Was Beautiful Once, time travel is developed by Dr Noah Kingsley in the hope of returning to the past and arresting the planet’s descent into climate catastrophe. As with Recursion, time travel’s misuse leads to disaster, in this case compounding and accelerating climate change.

Another consequence of Kingsley’s invention is the emergence of a new ethnic group with the unique ability to recall parallel versions of time. People of Mixed Era Origin – known as Cronods – are born to parents who come from different periods in time. Without the testimony of these individuals, the cause behind accelerated climate change, as well as multiple historic atrocities, would remain unknown.

My protagonist, Jack Elliot, a Cronod and academic in the field of transient history, struggles with the burden of carrying layer upon layer of memory – multiple versions of the same event which are known as polymorphic memories. While not all People of Mixed Era Origin see their abilities in a negative light, being a Cronod has more than one challenge. Changes to the past lead to violent temporal storms, which in Jack’s lifetime occur with increased frequency, leaving Cronods temporarily debilitated and vulnerable to persecution.

With the world dying, Jack accepts the mission to journey to the past and try to prevent time travel’s inception, knowing that success means erasing his own existence. Haunted by the morality of his task – his won’t be the only life affected or erased – he also struggles with the concept that not a single memory of his existence will remain.

When Jack’s mission becomes entangled with that of Maddie, a second-generation climate migrant and resistant fighter, he is tempted by thought that together they could be happy. Maddie counsels him to live for the moment, but Jack knows that his actions could restore the future, that his own sacrifice could guarantee a lifetime of memories for those born in his place.

Perhaps Jack, as a historian, would have read the words of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman who resisted the Nazis, was sent to a concentration camp, but survived. In later years she wrote about her experiences, reflecting that “memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.”

After all, Jack knows tomorrow was beautiful once, and that it could be again.

About Amy Orrell

Amy grew up in a family of artists and writers where discussions about dragons and leprechauns flowed into debates on the existence of extraterrestrial life or the probability of time travel.

Painting was Amy’s first artistic calling — her artworks focused on narrative art — but the complexity of the stories she wanted to tell demanded something more, and naturally led her to writing.

Amy likes to write thought-provoking science fiction, fantasy and thrillers, delving into her characters’ emotional lives whilst delivering fast-paced thrills, twists, and turns.

In pursuit of balance, Amy also writes Motherland meets Bridget Jones style rom-coms, because it’s important to laugh, even if it’s at yourself.

Amy lives in Norwich, in the East of England (which, contrary to popular opinion, is not flat) with her husband, two children and writer’s support cat.