Brief Outline of my novel, Quilandria
(No major spoilers)
Liane Gabora, December 5, 2025
Stella, who is close to completing her PhD in quantum photonics in Montreal, learns that one of her housemates, Alyzia, claims to visit a realm called Quilandria where people’s inner worlds appear as hyperspherical vessels of light called Quiliands. If someone bends the truth, Alyzia sees light bend (refract), and if someone has a flash of insight and reflects on an idea, she sees a flash of light reflect off the curved surface of their Quiliand. Stella is intrigued that Alyzia’s realm is consistent with the laws of optics, yet skeptical because it sounds like pseudoscience. Her housemates convince her to co-star in a show called The Glory of Groove, in which they attempt to come up with scientific interpretations of Alyzia’s inner light visions using phrases with the word God replaced by Groove. A friend of the household moves in, igniting a love triangle between him and the two women. The show goes viral, and they’re stalked by opportunists keen to exploit Alyzia’s professed ability to visualize people’s inner worlds. Stella falls behind in her work, and her colleagues see deep-fakes parodies of the show that convince them Stella is a crackpot, and attempt to remove her from the university. Tragedy strikes, and Stella herself begins having visions of Quilandria, though she suspects they’re a side-effect of grief. In Quilandria she encounters Glisothul, who reveals that Earth’s inhabitants are in peril because the planet’s collective inner light is dwindling. Stella learns that when humans distort the truth, or disown undesirable aspects of themselves, or repress painful memories, they vacate parts of their Quiliand making them vulnerable to the inner-light-devouring Uthren. Glisothul has a plan for how Stella can help stop the Uthren, but though she’s learned almost everything there is to know about physical light, nothing has prepared her for a potentially lethal battle for inner light.
Like Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott, the novel reveals a hidden world and uses diagrams to illuminate its underlying logic. It is idea-driven, and incorporates AI and technology, as does All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu, while its humor—rooted in character rather than absurdity—echoes the sharp banter of The Likeness by Tana French. The science and technology elements are imaginative extrapolations of research from my own lab at The University of British Columbia, and were partly inspired by visions I had when I was young, making me uniquely positioned to write this book.
The novel is a work of speculative fiction that might also be called a metaphysical tragicomedy. It explores themes of legacy, technological innovation, truth versus dishonesty, and isolation versus connectedness. It will appeal to intelligent readers who are curious about life’s mysteries, and enjoy complex themes and characters. It has been workshopped at Cascades and Futurescapes Speculative Fiction Workshops, and the Novel Architectures Summer Writing Workshop. I have seven published short stories, which have appeared in Fiction, Catamaran, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere, as well as over two hundred pieces published in peer-reviewed journals and books.
(For any editors out there, my literary agent, Bill Hanna, would be happy to provide a full-length synopsis (with spoilers) and/or the entire manuscript.
