San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Starting all over again
La Mesa author Sarina Dahlan’s novel ponders the possibilities of a ‘Reset’ life
Much contemporary science fiction portrays the future Earth as a cruel, dark place, where our civilizations have been destroyed or conquered by evil forces. Think about the wasteland of “Mad Max” and the poverty in “The Hunger Games.”
Asian American writer Sarina Dahlan of La Mesa imagines a kinder, gentler tomorrow in “Reset,” her first published novel, which will be released on Tuesday. It also will be part of a virtual authors conversation sponsored by the Mysterious Galaxy bookstore on May 31.
“Reset” takes place 200 years after the Last War, which has wiped out most of the world’s population. The people living in four futuristic concept cities deep in the Mojave Desert survive the devastation, so they and their descendants are able to live in carefully planned peaceful harmony governed by benevolent artificial intelligence programmers. You might say, a utopia.
But to prevent humans from going back to their bad habit of destroying each other, the programmers make citizens undergo a memory wipe every few years. This process, called the tabula rasa, or blank slate, wipes their minds clean of learned prejudices, greed and hate, as well as memories of their personal lives and connections with others.
Everyone starts all over again, waking up with new names, new jobs, new homes and whole new lives. No memories. No attachments. No wars.
And yet, there are these strange and vivid dreams …
“Reset” is science fiction with complex and creative nuance, a thought-provoking look at love and loss.
“I want the readers to ask themselves how they would feel if they were in this world, living this peaceful life, living in harmony,” Dahlan said. “And to ask, what if we don’t want to forget and what if we don’t want to be forgotten?
“The idea for ‘Reset’ came late one night after a frustrating writing session when I decided to erase everything I had spent months writing,” Dahlan said. “As I was staring at the blank screen, a series of questions came to me. What would it be like if humans could wipe our memories clean? What kind of world would we have? Why would it be necessary?
“Can you love someone you don’t remember? The last question haunted me the entire time I was writing the book.”
The narrative relied on Buddhist views of rebirth and the 1971 John Lennon song “Imagine,” which says in part:
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill and die for,
And no religion, too.
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You may say I am a dreamer
But I’m not the only one.
For the novel and a book of short stories she previously self-published, Dahlan drew from her own memories growing up in Kampong Java, a neighborhood filled with Indonesian migrants in the city of Bangkok, Thailand. Buddhism is the dominant culture and faith in Thailand, but this port city drew people from many Asian nations, including China, Japan, Myanmar and Cambodia, among others, so that as a child, Dahlan was exposed to ghost stories, legends and myths from multiple cultures.
“There was so much diversity to experience,” she said. “This is where I learned storytelling.”
Her family moved to the United States when Dahlan was 12. They settled in Moreno Valley in California’s Riverside County.
“I really felt I was dropped into a foreign culture,” Dahlan said. “It was so different. Bangkok is near the equator, so it is hot and humid with green trees and lots of rain. Moreno Valley is in the desert. It has hot, dry days and cold nights, and tumbleweeds instead of trees.”
In Thailand, Dahlan attended a small, private neighborhood school. In Moreno Valley, a few days after arriving, she was enrolled “in a huge middle school.”
She did not speak a word of English, so she was assigned to the English as a Second Language classroom. She said she learned the language using a Thai-english dictionary and making friends.
“I was different, but I didn’t feel that I was completely on the outside,” Dahlan said. “I never feel uncomfortable because I am not part of the dominant culture. I think of myself as a bridge. I am not just from one place, one language or one culture.”
Dahlan moved to San Diego County, graduated from the University of California San Diego, and worked in advertising production and marketing strategy. She decided to become a full-time writer in 2017 and works from home in the company of her three children and Scooter, the cat. Scooter had a starring role as a shapeshifting poisonous snake in one of the short stories in her self-published “Shadow Play: Ten Tales From the In-between.”
She also launched a website, “Wandering. Wonder. Woman.” (wanderingwonderwoman.com), devoted to personal growth, education and travel, as well as a Facebook page and Instagram account devoted to “Reset.”
“Being in America, I could find my own path,” she said. “That is freedom. There is diversity of thought and fewer expectations. There is no one telling me what I had to be.
“Freedom allowed me to expand my sense of self,” Dahlan said. “I love that about America.”