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Post-Scarcity Society
The Wormhole follows a young reporter who travels through a mysterious wormhole near Jupiter and becomes caught in a dangerous conflict between two vastly different civilizations. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
Do you know how Doritos are made? I don’t, and yet when I’m at a barbecue, I grab a cheese-powdered handful. I can guess, but I don’t know exactly where they’re packaged or what ingredients are put in. All I know is they taste delicious. There are many products we treat this way: cell phones, lipstick, bratwurst. Yet many of them have a sinister side we may not know about or choose to ignore. The Wormhole tackles that dilemma.
Why was journalism the right profession for Zhang?
Good journalists have a natural curiosity and skepticism about them that works well for a protagonist. Journalism has the ability to reveal truths. It’s a job people want to have. It can get people into areas that are off-limits to the general public. In a post-scarcity society like Zhang’s, where people can choose their occupation, I have a hard time imagining people lining up to be health insurance actuaries.
Did you see Atlas as a villain from the beginning, or did his character become more complicated as you wrote him?
I wanted Atlas to be a complicated antagonist, or at least an everyday one. In some ways, he is each of us: aware of an uncomfortable truth but willing to ignore it because the status quo suits him. Doing an antagonist’s point of view means justifying his actions to the reader. I want the reader to identify with Atlas at some points. Maybe some readers agree with him at the end.
If readers could take away one idea about personhood, technology, or colonialism from the novel, what would you want it to be?
“Where does the tofu come from?” The tofu fuels the fabricator, which fuels modern life. What is the tofu in your life? Are there some unpleasant truths we’d rather not think about when it comes to hamburgers?
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But when he’s sent through the wormhole on a rote journalistic assignment, he accidentally discovers a much bigger story. The fabricator is fueled by more than trees. His discovery sickens him; the cost of Earth’s utopia is too high.
Atlas, the commandant of the other side, can’t let Zhang go home to Earth. No one would use the fabricator if they knew its true nature. Billions of people, including his young daughter, depend on the fabricator for their medical treatments, for shelter, for food. If Zhang dies, the secret is safe. If he escapes, he digs paradise’s grave.
The Wormhole
Forrest Williams’s The Wormhole is a science-fiction adventure set in a future where fabricators can produce food, medicine, clothing, and nearly anything else people need. These machines have transformed Earth into a largely post-scarcity society, powered by material harvested beyond a mysterious wormhole near Jupiter. Junior reporter Hàoyǔ Zhang travels through it for what seems like a routine anniversary assignment, but his curiosity soon pulls him into a dangerous conflict on the other side. The setup combines imaginative world-building, mystery, and an increasingly urgent struggle over the future of two very different civilizations.
The novel alternates mainly between Zhang and Atlas, the commandant responsible for protecting the secret. Zhang begins as a distracted, pleasure-seeking reporter who’d rather be partying, while Atlas is disciplined, charismatic, and utterly convinced that his brutality saves lives. Their opposing perspectives give the conflict real weight because both men have loved ones affected by the disease that fabricators treat. Selene, the myco who captures and gradually befriends Zhang, adds the book’s most intriguing voice. Through Selene, Zhang learns that the mycos perceive gravity, communicate through scent, inherit ancestral memories, and understand individuality in a radically different way. Williams keeps the story moving through short chapters, mech battles, escapes, and sharp bursts of dark humor.
What makes the book stick is its examination of convenience and the stories societies tell to protect it. Humans describe the mycos as animals because recognizing their personhood would make exploitation harder to justify. At the same time, the mycos can be violent, emotionally alien, and disturbingly indifferent to individual offspring, so the ethical argument never rests on their being cuddly substitutes for humans. Atlas is especially effective because his reasoning has an uncomfortable internal logic: billions depend on the fabricator, including his daughter, and revealing the truth could dismantle the civilization it supports. The book’s direct style sometimes states these arguments more than once, but its vivid biological details and increasingly grim revelations give the central dilemma plenty of force.
I’d recommend The Wormhole to readers who enjoy accessible, idea-driven science fiction that mixes first contact, body horror, military action, and ethical debate. It’s particularly suited to someone who likes watching a clever speculative premise expand into questions about personhood, colonialism, disability, and the hidden cost of technological comfort. The violence can be graphic, especially in scenes involving experimentation and harvesting, but it serves the story’s moral pressure. The ending offers a satisfying resolution without pretending that one courageous act can settle every consequence, and that lingering uncertainty is exactly what gives the novel its bite.
Pages: 262 | ISBN: 978-1972120002
