Fairy tales have always been a way to escape into another world, one full of magic and mystery, chance encounters with creatures good and evil, and adventures around every corner. For these unprecedented modern times, Plympton teamed up with Amazon Original Stories to explore how traditional fairy tales would look in the “here and now,” and how the role of myths and legends has transformed our cultural, historical, and literary landscape. What new wisdom could a modern folktale depart upon a contemporary reader? How can the classic morals endemic to fairy tales be conveyed in fresh and different ways? And what would a fairy tale look like today, in a world that seems so futuristic compared to the days of yore?
We contributed three stories to Faraway to examine how fairy tales would look in an experimental modern setting. The collection of five mystical, suspenseful, and fantastical short stories imagines an upside-down world where villains and heroes clash, the past and present collide, and monsters hide in high schools and house parties.
Ken Liu’s story from the collection, titled The Cleaners, has been optioned by Amazon Studios and is currently in development as a television series. Liu’s piece, which is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, will be produced in association with Orlando Bloom’s studio, Amazing Owl, with Bloom executive producing the series. Other names working on the project include Dominic Orlando, writer of The OA and Mindhunter, and producer Adam Karasick, along with Liu himself executive producing.
This is not Liu’s first foray into the television production world. From Deadline, “His short story The Message is being developed as a feature film by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment, while [his short story series] Good Hunting became an episode of Netflix’s animated series Love, Death + Robots and AMC’s Pantheon is adapted from his interconnected series of short stories.”
The Cleaners tells of a near-future world where inanimate objects carry traces of the memories of their previous owners, with treasured or controversial objects carrying intense, even painful memories of their past. Certain people who possess a special power can relive these memories by touching the objects, and some work as cleaners, scrubbing the old memories from objects so that they can become new and untainted. Liu’s story follows a young man working as a cleaner at his family’s business as he undertakes a strange new cleaning project on a mysterious set of items.
Our other two stories in the collection include:
Rainbow Rowell’s The Prince and the Troll, a love story about a normal man who falls for a beautiful yet mysterious troll who lives under a bridge. As he struggles to bring her out of her shell — and out from the mud she’s covered in — they develop a heartwarming connection that challenges their previously-unrelated lifestyles. How can two creatures from such different worlds learn to live side by side? Rowell is the author of the Simon Snow series and the bestselling novel Eleanor & Park.
Gayle Foreman’s hilarious story The Wickeds, which revisits the mothers of Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel. Foreman is the author of If I Stay, the number-one bestselling novel that was adapted into the 2014 film of the same name. Clever and subversive, this story examines the forgotten lives of the “evil” mothers and “wicked” women that lurk in the background of many classic fairy tales. The three disgraced mothers set out to retell their stories and right the wrongs of history in this funny, feminist tale.
There are two final stories that round out the collection:
Author of the New York Times number-one bestselling novel Dear Martin, Nic Stone takes on the enduring tale of Hansel and Gretel in his harrowing story Hazel and Gray. When two teenagers get lost in the woods on the way back from their romantic date, they are relieved to stumble upon a house full of people. However, they quickly realize that they are not as safe as they thought when the party inside turns sinister, and monsters from home await them in the dark.
A twisted murder mystery unfolds in the halls of a high school in Soman Chianani’s story The Princess Game. The author of the bestselling series The School for Good and Evil revisits the teenage drama in this frightening tale, where the most popular girls in school keep turning up dead, each killed in the theme of a different classic fairy tale. Two juvenile detectives must go undercover and try to catch the killer...before it’s too late.
Each story in Faraway is available for purchase in eBook and audiobook format, and free to download for all Amazon Prime members. It is the latest collection of stories Plympton has contributed to in collaboration with Amazon Original Stories. Recent collections include Out of Line, a collection of feminist fiction; Hush, a collection about the end of truth; and Inheritance, a collection about family secrets.