MIKEL J. WISLER

Hi, I’m Mikel (pronounced “Michael” but without those extra letters that make no sense). I write science fiction and make movies about the questions that often feel to scary to ask out loud.

 

I create the kind of science fiction I look for on bookshelves and in theaters but struggle to find. Stories that dive into high concepts and take their characters seriously. Stories that allow women and queer characters to be complex, dynamic human beings in unique settings. Stories that ask big questions without pretending to have tidy answers. If you've ever finished a Blake Crouch novel at 1 a.m. and lain awake afterward, or watched Severance and wished there were more cerebral stories like this, then we’re on the same wavelength. Bonus points if you played Horizon Zero Dawn and also felt like you needed to hang out with Aloy more.

 

I was born in Brazil and spent most of my childhood there. I grew up the son of evangelical missionaries and passionately lived a life of deep faith for decades until the cognitive dissonance became unbearable. My journey out was slow and complicated, and not something I'd wish on anyone, but it cracked open every assumption I had about life’s meaning, time, free will, spirituality, truth, and what we owe each other. Most of my fiction is basically me working out what I believe. I don't write to argue you into or out of anything. I write because I think the best stories (the ones that matter, to borrow a phrase from my fictional buddy, Samwise) are the ones honest enough to admit they don't have it all figured out either. Coming from a world of simple answers, logical leaps, and unearned certainty, I’m allergic to didactic storytelling convinced of its own perspective’s undeniable validity.

 

I am, for the record, a tremendous nerd. I read science non-fiction for fun. I study the neuroscience of storytelling the best I can as a non-neuroscientist. I think Arrival and Project Hail Mary are the best things Hollywood has done with a with science fiction this century. To me, shows like Severance and Silo are important reflections on societal structures and our assumptions that are so normalized we don’t even know how to question them, or that we should question them, until someone make a crazy TV show about it. If any of that sounds like something you'd want to talk about, you're in the right place.

 

I'm a dad, and that has rearranged everything I thought I understood about stakes, time, and what a good story is even for. My daughter is the best argument I've ever encountered for taking the future seriously, which is part of why I keep writing about it. We live on the south shore of Boston and love visiting art museums or bookstores and watching Kurzgesagt on YouTube.

 

If you're new here, the best entry point is my novel, STOP. Grab the first four chapters of it for free below. Many of my short films an short stories are also available on my Patreon. Thanks for stopping by. I'm genuinely glad you're here.

 

— Mikel