How much world-building can you do in very few words? If you’re George Saunders, the answer is: a surprising amount. I only recently discovered this heavily-awarded author, and have loved discovering the hidden gems in his story worlds. Liberation Day is a brilliant immersive worldbuilding short story collection that will give you a crash course in spare writing.

Let’s cover off on the stats for Liberation Day:

• Short story collection.
• Published in 2022.
• American author.
• Science fiction: adult, short stories, sparse world-building, voluntary memory erasure, unique character voices, world is never as it seems but also precisely experienced from within.

Liberation Day is an outstanding collection of speculative fiction short stories. If you (like me) have ever wanted to write better short stories, then get this book and start studying. The unique thing about George Saunders’ writing is the eerie, strange, outlandish, yet totally believable, way that he creates worlds and characters. We see the setting deeply through the characters’ eyes, exactly as they experience it.

Immersive worldbuilding short story: the eponymous story of Liberation Day

The eponymous story in the collection is a perfect example of this craft. The main character has no memory of his former life, and now lives essentially as a puppet, in a rich couple’s home. He is part of a machine that is a musical instrument, and with others in a similar memory-erased state to him, they perform compositions for their owner’s guests. This bizarre situation is made only more so by the main characters absolute, unswerving dedication to his craft. His goal is to be the best performer that he can. There is nothing else for him beyond this: to create the perfect story with his owner and the other puppets.

What feels like the obvious way for the story to evolve – a realisation of terrible injustice, a fight to escape, and freedom! – is parodied in the denouement, when the rich couple’s son storms the performance, demanding release of the puppets – to which the main character reacts with incredulity and bemusement. He is embarrassed on behalf of the son, for behaving so poorly. The horror of the situation is the conflict: that the son has ruined the performance, and distressed the guests. The argument and fight is outlandish and over-dramatised, because that’s how the main character sees it: as a ridiculous, misdirected farce.

Everything happens through the eyes of the main character

There is also a B-plot of the rich wife, having this fantasy love affair with the main character, which he reacts to in a very naïve, disregarding way. She paints onto him an imagined lover. He is no more than a cardboard cut-out, a placeholder, for her imagination. We see clearly through his eyes the complete disjoint between her view of him, and his view of her. Everything about his character is focussed on the great honour of being a part of this musical machine. The whirl of these other – still “normal” – humans around him draws into sharp clarity the bizarreness of their behaviour.

Throughout the story there are enough hints to unravel how this man ended up in this situation. All of the stories in Liberation Day have this intense sense of immediacy, of living within the characters, within the world. This is the part I love about Saunders’ world-building: like us, his characters take the world at face value. We don’t walk around commenting on our lives and past decisions that led us to where we are today. We’re just here. We don’t walk around mentally info-dumping on what the world is like. We just are in the world, being there, experiencing it. Bit by bit, the world is revealed, perfectly shown, through the characters’ experience of it.

 You can check out Liberation Day, by George Saunders, in our Spec. Fic. Society bookshop. You won’t be disappointed.

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