Creativity, Tech, and Neurodiversity Come Together in Abigail Hing Wen’s Latest Novel

‍Could you tell me a little bit about how the idea of The Vale came about, and how long it's been in the works?

I actually wrote it in 2015, long before the AI revolution. I was working in the heart of the AI revolution, but nobody knew that it was coming. I wanted to democratize access to this really powerful technology that I saw seeping into all our lives, that very few people knew about. It's a story about a boy who creates an AI generated virtual fantasy world that he wants to live in. It's complete with elves, a blue forest, and a castle that he's building. It's always under perpetual construction. My hope is that readers will come away with a deep, intuitive understanding of how this technology works. I wanted to equip them with the knowledge to take advantage of it because it is shaping our entire generation, but also to guard against the pitfalls. When I wrote it in 2015, it was too early. My agent at the time shelved it, so I had to set it aside for many, many years. And I'm excited that now is the time. 

You mentioned that you came from the tech world. How much of your own story and your experience influenced the world that you've created?

The tech family in a lot of ways is mine. It's a quirky neurodiverse inventor family, but that's also very Silicon Valley—there are a lot of neurodiverse people in the Valley and I wanted to humanize them in part, too. These are the inventors behind the technology. One of the themes of the story is that ethical people make ethical technology. And I know wonderful people in the Valley like that, who just genuinely want to change the world. As far as the technology itself, I saw it being incubated everywhere, and I chose the things that I found most exciting and put them into this novel. 

The lead character Bran is neurodiverse—why was this representation so important to you? 

I think that there's so much diversity within our community as Asian Americans that is often overlooked, because people think, “Oh, you're just that way because you're Asian American.” So it turns out (years later) my family has ADHD which explains so many things! People responded to my mom in a certain way because they just assumed she was a quirky immigrant. In two of my Loveboat books, I explored some of this neurodiversity with my characters who had dysgraphia and dyslexia that went undiagnosed—people assumed Xavier couldn't read because English was his second language, but that was not the issue. He actually had a learning difference that wasn't addressed and, of course, he was complicit in covering it up for many years.

I grew up in a neurodiverse family, but it was something we didn’t know for many years, and in discovering it, it did enable us to work around it. Some of that neurodiversity will be in my new novel coming in 2027, about an intergenerational Asian American ADHD family. But for The Vale, I never defined it exactly, but they're on the spectrum. They're awkward around humans—they'd rather be with technology. In some ways that's our time—we're all more comfortable with technology. Our kids are growing more comfortable with technology in a way that's both positive, because it's powerful and enabling, but negative in that we’re not spending as much time with humans. And so that's part of the storyline too. This kid who's lived so long in this virtual world—as so many kids do—needs to also learn to live in the real world and learn that it's rewarding to have human relationships. 

‍You tackle the ethics of AI in this novel. How do you hope that young people will approach the use of new technologies?

I like technology—it's a tech positive story overall. I want kids to master the tools that they can use to do a lot of good for the world. You don't have to be afraid of this technology—you can be in charge of it, you can use it. But you also have to be aware, and ask “what are the dangers?” I think being aware and spending time outside of technology is also important. And I will say that the best programmers weren't the ones who spent all their time in front of the computer screen. They were the ones who spent time away from it, when they're actually processing and thinking about things. And that's true for writers too. The best writers don't spend 24 hours in front of their computer typing. They're living in the world, and they're experiencing life, and that humanity is what fuels all of our creations. 

‍You're also releasing a companion short film that you directed, starring three-time Tony award-winner Lea Salonga. What inspired you to take a multimedia approach to telling this story? 

This project has just been growing in all these different directions that I didn't expect at all. So, I had shelved the book as I mentioned, and then we made the movie Love in Taipei. Loveboat was the next book I wrote after The Vale and that was the first one to publish. After Loveboat hit, I was getting calls and meetings with producers and studios. One of them mentioned he was a hybrid filmmaker, and that he did part animation, part live action. And I was so intrigued by that—I didn’t know it was a thing. I thought, I have a story like that—it's this novel that I had buried, and it goes back and forth between the real world and a virtual reality world, so that's very much live action and animation. 

I decided to do a short film around The Vale because there was a discrete story to tell. It was the story of how the Vale was created in the first place. And while I was in the process of making that short film, I connected with Stephanie, my publisher at Third State Books, and told her about this project. I was excited to publish with an Asian American publishing house because it was an opportunity to do something innovative, and the whole project had already been innovative from the start. It's been really fun. 

And your daughter scored the film. Can you tell me about that?

My daughter's a composer—she's been composing music since she was four. Her name is Andromeda, and she’s 18 now and spent a year studying composing in Vienna, from 2022-2023. She's lived in the world of The Vale too. She read so many drafts when she was nine years old, and she drew the original Gnomly. I felt like she'd always lived in this world and when I asked her to score it, she was really intimidated at first. I told her I wouldn't trust anyone else to do it. And she did a beautiful job. The response has been really wonderful. 

The Vale is out now, at Third State Books and from your favorite booksellers. To find out where you can watch The Vale Origins, sign up for Abigail Hing Wen’s newsletter at: https://www.abigailhingwen.com/

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