The Vale, Abigail Hing Wenโs latest young adult fantasy book, was written more than a decade ago by The New York Times bestselling author for her creative thesis at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
At the time, she felt that she was watching AI โbeing incubated and seeping into all our livesโ, something that sparked a story about a 13-year-old boy who builds an AI-generated VR fantasy world to retreat to from reality.
The idea was too far ahead of its time.
โNobody knew what AI generation was, so my agent at the time shelved it,โ Wen says. โShe said, โI canโt get behind this. I donโt know what it is.โ So I put it away for 10 years.โ
Wen turned her attention to an entirely different genre and, in 2020, she wrote young adult fiction Loveboat, Taipei. The story was about an Asian-American teen who attends an educational programme in Taiwan that is nothing like she expected.