Speculative fiction is often about society, how people think and work together. Sure, there's something decidedly out there, something not quite possible, sometimes something downright magical. But at the end of the day, the genre speculates about what might happen if... What exactly comes after the "if" depends on the writer.

Author Lily Brooks-Dalton's "what if" often includes a kind of societal collapse, and that collapse sets her latest main character, Ember, on a journey into a surprising past. Ruins is, on its face anyway, about an archaeologist who goes looking for a lost empire. But what is this lost world? What clue does Ember have of its existence? And why is the end of something so often the beginning for this author?

Lily stopped by to talk to host Katie Campbell about the allure of societal collapse in her storytelling.

If you want to stay speculative, check out Lily and Katie's Recommended If You Liked (RIYL):

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
• On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
• The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Honestly, Katie recommends anything by Emily St. John Mandel
• For All Mankind on Apple TV

Read more about Lily Brooks-Dalton (and all the authors who stop by for a chat with our host Katie Campbell) at kuow.org/books.

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