It’s easy to look at the world today and think our days are numbered…and it’s all our fault.
But in Lauren Stienstra’s speculative fiction novel The Beauty Of The End (hardcover, paperback, Kindle, audiobook), our days are numbered…and it’s a built-in feature.
In the following email interview, Stienstra talks about what inspired and influenced this thought-provoking science fiction story.
Photo Credit: Melody Yazdani Studios
To start, what is The Beauty Of The End about, and when and where does it take place?
Despite it being sometimes shelved as science fiction (which is usually future-looking), The Beauty Of The End takes place in the very recent past.
The story opens in the late 1980s, when a batch of periodical Brood X cicadas fails emerge. Scientists move to investigate, only to later regret that they did — because what they discover sets the world aflame: the missing cicadas carried a gene for extinction, and the same cursed sequence can be found in every living creature known to man. Homo sapiens is no exception: humanity has approximately four generations left.
In the U.S., the government stands up a new agency to address this crisis, now dubbed “The Limit.” This agency, the Mendelia, coaches women about their reproductive options, and offers cash rewards for live births. In exchange, the DNA of each child is screened in hopes of discovering a natural and helpful mutation.
That’s where our main characters come in: reluctant Charlie, and her brazen twin sister, Maggie, exchange their ovaries for guaranteed employment in this new human husbandry program. While Charlie struggles with the moral hazards of the work, Maggie makes unspeakable sacrifices to improve her odds of success. Though she stands on the brink of a promising breakthrough, Maggie suddenly loses her resolve. Charlie must then decide whether to continue her sister’s research — if she decides that society is still worth saving.
It sounds like The Beauty Of The End is taking cues from what’s going on in the world with women and reproductive rights. Is that a fair assessment?
Yes and no. I think it would be impossible to write a book that features reproductive decisions so prominently without thinking about the context of current events.
That being said, I would go out of my way to say, “what’s been going on in the world…for a very long time.” Women have never had the luxury of sidestepping the ethical and practical concerns of parenthood. This book also draws threads from reproductive and population management issues happening more widely. I’m old enough to remember China’s one child policy and India’s forced sterilizations. More recently, I’ve been following Japan’s population decline and New Zealand’s immigration policies. But yes, the themes of bodily autonomy and reproductive responsibility are definitely a major theme, though I wanted to contextualize them in the larger frame of what it means to be human — both as an individual, but also as a species.
To that end, I would say my story is perhaps even more strongly connected to another global concern: climate change. Both the Limit and climate change are slow-moving existential threats — specifically ones where the worst consequences are still in the distant future. The Beauty explores how humanity might handle such a crisis, and many of the questions are similar to what the world is grappling with now: in the absence of the urgency created by, say, a planet-ending asteroid, how do you motivate people to care? What changes can you reasonably ask them to make? What risks are appropriate?
So, did you start out with the plot of The Beauty Of The End and then realize it would work even better if it was socially- and politically-relevant, or did you start out wanting to write something socially- and politically-relevant and The Beauty Of The End is what you came up with?
I’m drawn to plot. I’m engulfed by books that do it well. And I’m also a firm believer that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down: a good plot is a great way to stimulate socially- and politically-relevant concern. As we all know, talking directly about the issues around reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and duty to the future can be really difficult, especially in today’s polarized climate. A lot of people either don’t want to talk about it at all or have become so completely entrenched in their positions that they aren’t open to dialogue — but I’m hoping that the plot of this novel helps reopen such discussions. We can’t have progress or healing without productive dialogue.
Where did you get the idea for The Beauty Of The End, and what made you realize it would work even better if it was tied into what’s going on in the world?
I started this novel in 2020, and, as you may remember, there was a whole undercurrent of dread that year — not only about COVID, but also about other plagues and possible signs of apocalypse: murder hornets, catastrophic wildfires, military confirmation of unidentified aerial phenomena. In Washington DC, where I live, people were already starting to get angsty about the 2021 emergence of the Brood X cicadas, which erupt from the ground every 17 years. And while I’d lived in DC for over a decade, I got swept away trying to understand this strange biological event: How can cicadas count to 17? Why do they need to go underground for so long? How can an insect outlive a housecat? I’ve always been naturally inclined towards biology, so I enjoyed delving into these research questions.
Of course, because it was COVID, and I, too, was falling into the doom spiral, I started thinking about worst case scenarios. And while most people were generally horrified by the forecast of a biblical-level infestation, I decided it would be far more concerning if the cicadas didn’t emerge at all. But for that to occur, there would need to be some sort of cause — that’s where I chose to apply my background in physiology and create a genetic mechanism for extinction. And because many fundamental elements of DNA are identical between organisms (the genes for building certain proteins are nearly indistinguishable between humans and bananas, for instance), what worked to eliminate the cicadas could very well be carried by all sorts of different creatures — including humans. Installing the hypothetical sequence in human DNA would have incredible implications for how we think about our future, both at the individual and population levels. From there, it was easy to connect to the themes I’ve mentioned earlier — reproductive rights, climate change, etc.
As you said, humanity only has four generations left. Is there a reason you made it four as opposed to one or two or, conversely, eight, twelve, or twenty?
Yes! This was very intentional, and based on research that’s been done around the extent of empathy. We know that people are very good at caring for themselves — most people have no difficulty keeping their own self-interests front of mind. Beyond that, many, many people are good at caring for their children — and it helps that children are biologically programmed to demand it. Generally, this care extends to grandchildren, too. There is a great cliff, however, beyond that.
I remember reading in my high school biology textbook that groundhogs were willing to lay down their lives to protect other groundhogs — but only certain ones. For instance: when a groundhog detected a predator, it would whistle an alarm to notify nearby groundhogs about the threat but potentially draw attention to itself. This behavior, scientists notice, would only be performed if the nearby groundhogs were family. And not just any family. Family that shared 1/8th of the whistling groundhog’s genetic material — cousins, essentially. The sentry would not risk being eaten if the other groundhogs were strangers or more distant relatives.
I chose four generations for this very reason: the fourth generation, your great-grandchildren, will also share 1/8th of your genetic material. My book begs the question: do you actually care about anyone in your family beyond your great-grandchildren? I mean this to say: are you willing to make sacrifices for them? Most people will never meet anyone that far down their family line. But we, as a species, need to think in these terms if we really plan to tackle serious strategic threats — like climate change, as I’ve mentioned.
That was the other reason I chose four generations. The average length of a human generation is 20-30 years, so in four (80-120 years), the species may very well be in the throes of a climate catastrophe. This book, to some degree, is an allegory for that: What are we willing to do now to avert a species-threatening event 100 years in the future? I think it’s natural to struggle with not only thinking that far ahead, but caring that far ahead — especially to a time we may not see, and to people we will not know.
In a similar vein, is there a significance to Charlie being of Marshallese descent, and a twin?
Yes to both questions again! A major part of the story involves Charlie and Maggie studying DNA in search of mutations and other unusual sequences. But human DNA isn’t monolithic — which is to say that different populations carry variations in their DNA at different rates. Western Europeans, for instance have a higher incidence of cystic fibrosis mutations while the underlying genetic defect causing Tay-Sachs is more common amongst Ashkenazi Jews. While I was writing this book, I researched other populations with unusual genetic profiles and came across Melanesia, which has a high incidence of archaic, Denisovan sequences. I’ve also had the great privilege of traveling to some of the Pacific islands and have fallen in love with the location and the people.
That being said, as I was sifting through scientific articles about ancestral DNA in the South Pacific, I also started turning up investigative journalism about how Marshallese children were being trafficked in the mainland U.S. via fraudulent adoption proceedings as recently as 2018. This was heartbreaking to read. But the longer I sat with this story, the more I realized that it resonated with so many things I wanted to explore in my work: the meaning of biological and found families, the loss of children, both as individuals and as biological function, and the struggles and responsibilities of parenthood. When I started writing this book, it was important to me that it be as factually correct as possible on a scientific level, but after uncovering the Marshallese adoption fraud, I felt like the story could be much more authentic on an emotional level, too.
In terms of the twins, that was another intentional choice. I wanted to feature twins in my story to emphasize the scientific concept of duality; the idea that something can be two things at once. I’m going to pivot back to the fundamentals of science here: if you recall your high school physics, you might remember that light can behave both as a wave and as a particle, even though these states shouldn’t coexist. It’s a paradox. Maggie and Charlie are paradoxical, and in many ways, complete opposites, despite their outward similarities. Their behaviors are paradoxical too, with both of them making inconsistent choices at times. But without paradoxes, the world would be entirely predictable, and all logically-derived assumptions would be fait accompli: in this case of my story, humanity’s extinction would be all but assured. Paradoxes, in some cases, offer us hope because they create space for contradiction and expose flawed assumptions.
It sounds like The Beauty Of The End is a science fiction story, though on your website you call it “upmarket speculative fiction.” What does that mean, how is “upmarket speculative fiction” different from regular speculative fiction, and why do you feel this classification applies to The Beauty?
In literature, “upmarket” is a label that tags a story as having both literary and commercial elements — that is, it’s strongly plot driven (a feature common in more commercial fiction), but also includes some more literary elements, like elevated language and more complex themes. Sometimes, the term is used as shorthand for “book club fiction” and signals that story is not only just nice to read, but nice to talk about, too.
Overall, I’ve always hoped that The Beauty could be a conversation stater. Writing the “Book Club Questions” (available at the back of the novel) was almost the most enjoyable part!
The Beauty Of The End is your first published novel, but you have a couple others in the works, including an arctic fantasy trilogy and what you call a “WWII historical fiction with elements of magical realism.” Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on The Beauty but not on anything else you’ve written?
There are many, many, stories that focus on societies that are on the brink of collapse, but not nearly as many that feature the early stages of the crisis. I really enjoy stories that focus on the latter because desperation hasn’t yet fully consumed normal human instincts and there are so many decisions to left to explore. In that vein, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, P.D. James’ The Children Of Men, and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home Of The Living God.
In terms of character development, I also loved exploring how young female characters grapple with progressive social decline and found Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age Of Miracles and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven to be riveting.
Lastly, as a reader, I’ve always loved how Jodi Picoult weaves medical ethics into her stories, and that was a source of inspiration, too.
What about non-literary influences? Was The Beauty Of The End influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
Global catastrophic biological risks like “The Limit” have always been fodder for great dramatic stories, and there’s not a year that goes by that doesn’t produce some fantastic dystopian film and television. But with a full-time job and two kids, I can’t say I have a lot of time to probe.
That being said, one particular influence that came to mind is Ndemic Creation’s [real-time strategy mobile game] Plague Inc. While you play as virus and try to infect the world, certain strategies work against you. For instance, you can evolve your virus to induce a violent hemorrhagic fever, but then some countries react by closing their borders and you can never achieve the mission. Alternately, one very successful strategy is to keep a low profile for as long as possible, and allow humanity to acclimate to the increased viral load before turning up your symptoms.
What I like about this game, and what makes it relevant to The Beauty, is its focus on global crisis response from the early stages through the endgame — I think “The Limit” could produce very similar results. The game also does a nice job illustrating how humanity’s inattention can be manipulated, which is also featured in The Beauty.
Science fiction novels are sometimes stand-alone stories, and sometimes part of a larger sagas. What is The Beauty Of The End?
While I wrote The Beauty as a stand-alone, I’ve already been getting feedback that some readers want to see how this universe progresses — that is, how humanity copes with its upcoming extinction. As I’ve mentioned, The Beauty follows Charlie at the beginning of the reproductive crisis. But there’s still a middle and end that this novel doesn’t touch. As we learn in the book, Charlie’s DNA has the potential for five generations (she’s a little above the global average), and I’ve been thinking about the potential for future stories featuring her grandchildren or great-grandchildren as they grapple with the progressive social decline that this novel forecasts.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Beauty Of The End, what “upmarket speculative fiction” novel or novella of someone else’s would you suggest they check out?
For more plot, paradoxes, and pointed social critique, try Sarah Langan’s A Better World.
If you’re not quite done with genetics and bioethics, Kira Peikoff’s Baby X or Rachel Khong’s Real Americans are both great.
