»It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.« This insight is attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Who exactly we owe what – that is of course not so easy to answer. And that is why RUDOLF INDERST has come up with a … let’s say … expert about it.
Rudolf Thomas Inderst (RTI): It is a great pleasure to be able to talk to Professor Stefano Gualeni today about his new experimental novel, his second, titled ›What We Owe the Dead‹ (Set Margins’ Press, 2025). This time it is a sci-fi detective novel. Before we talk about this exciting new book, our readers will certainly be interested to know who you are.
Stefano Gualeni (SG): Greetings! Hm, I tend to avoid talking about myself and my quirks—not the most interesting subject, I suppose. In this case, however, sharing a little more about my life might help readers better understand what makes this experimental book unique (and what is game-like about it).
My usual »non-answer« to the question of who I am goes like this: »I am a philosopher who designs digital games and a game designer interested in philosophical ideas.« A more specific response would be that I spend most of my waking hours as a professor in a research institute at the University of Malta (a small island in the Mediterranean), where I do academic work game studies, game design, science fiction studies, and the philosophy of technology.
RTI: Does this mean that the book stems from your research? And what does ›What We Owe the Dead‹ have to do with games and gaming culture?
SG: Some aspects of my academic work have been more successful and publicly visible than others. I guess that the works I am best known for are, for the most part, attempts to communicate certain philosophical ideas and forms of reasoning in unconventional ways—through artifacts and fictions, for example.
Your readers might have played or heard about some of the philosophical games I’ve created in the past, such as ›Doors‹ (2021) or ›Something Something Soup Something‹ (2017).
More recently, I’ve begun experimenting with more traditional forms of fiction. Writing philosophical novels has become a fun way for me to explore and articulate intellectually challenging ideas, hopefully making them personally and emotionally relevant to the audience.
My first novel in this vein, ›The Clouds‹ (Routledge, 2023), was an existential reflection on the simulation hypothesis—the possibility that we are living within an artificial subset of reality. ›What We Owe the Dead‹, on the other hand, is a detective novel (or shall I say a »defective novel«) that explores the survival of the human race in the aftermath of a future ecological catastrophe. Central to its plot is the discovery of a strange board game of extraterrestrial origin. Mind you that my new book, this new attempt at philosophical fiction, is not just about games, it is itself a kind of game.
RTI: You are saying that your novel is a kind of game. Do you mean it in the sense that is it an experiment in ergodic literature? Is it like an adventure book with branching narratives and non-trivial interactions on the part of the reader/player?
SG: Well, no. I meant it in a more… how should I put it… oblique sense.
Allow me to explain: In his discussion of mystery fiction (1985, p. 200), philosopher and play theorist Bernard Suits explored how a literary work can be considered a game in a non-metaphorical, »correct« sense. Following this tradition, literary scholar Peter Hutchinson examined the concept of literary play, focusing on both playful writing and the potential for a ludic relationship between author and reader. In Games Authors Play (1983), Hutchinson suggests that »a literary game may be seen as any playful, self-conscious, and extended means by which an author stimulates his reader to deduce or to speculate, by which he encourages him to see a relationship between different parts of the text, or between the text and something extraneous to it.«
RTI: So, the »playful« part of this new book of yours has to do with its being an invitation to imagine and hypothesize various possibilities, alternatives, and courses of action?
SG: Yes! I believe that is the greatest cognitively transformative effect of games—an effect that can also be tapped into by speculative fiction in general, and by detective stories in particular.
That said, the authors I just mentioned were focusing on detective novels in particular, which I found very useful when thinking about this new book. However, none of them, neither Suits nor Hutchinson, explicitly argued that playfulness is a catalyst for speculative thought or, conversely, that philosophy is inherently a ludic pursuit. But I believe both things to be true. ›What We Owe the Dead‹ was obviously conceived and written on those very premises. And so, when I say that the book itself is game-like, I mean that it was designed as a playful and speculative experiment—an attempt to merge philosophical inquiry with narrative fiction. Through deliberate deception and structural ambiguity, the novel invites readers to engage with intellectually stimulating themes, including personhood, mortality, duty ethics, and our existential relationship with technology and games themselves.
I hope this makes sense.
RTI: It certainly does to me. Now, ›What We Owe the Dead‹ is set in a dystopian surveillance society where humanity survives in massive cooling structures. What real-world social or environmental issues inspired this futuristic setting? How does the world of the book reflect our current fears and challenges?
SG: As your question correctly implies, the book emerges from shared concerns about privacy, artificial intelligence, and global warming. As a speculative—and distinctly dystopian—work, it explores these themes while articulating specific anxieties about our collective future.
In line with the tradition of science fiction, the novel extrapolates from current trends to present a thought-provoking, and hopefully both useful and entertaining, hypothetical scenario.
RTI: The book explores deep questions about personhood, the cultural role of games, and our obligations to the dead. Why did you choose those philosophical ideas?
SG: I do not kiss and tell.
RTI: Fair enough, but can you tell us why you opted for the format of the detective story?
SG: I find it to be one of the most intriguing literary genres. Beyond its inherent playfulness—in agreement with literary scholars of the last century—I believe this genre is particularly well-suited to stimulating skeptical and modal ways of thinking in its audience.
Now that I think about it, my game production—at least when it comes to point-and-click adventures—has always revolved around detective stories. ›Tony Tough & The Night of Roasted Moths‹ (1997), ›Tony Tough in a Rake’s‹ Progress (2005), ›Prezzemolo in Una Giornata da Incubo‹ (2006), and ›Doors‹ (2021) are all set up as investigations of some kind.
I suppose this format appeals to me because it aligns with my epistemic interests. I don’t know… Well, if you are someone who enjoys thinking things through, is fascinated by details, and likes imagining possible alternatives, it seems only natural to be drawn to this genre of storytelling. Don’t you think?
RTI: The protagonists of ›What We Owe the Dead‹ live in an extreme, vertically structured habitat above Antarctica. One of several megatowers that are the last refuge of humanity. Now, how did you develop this unique setting? I am sure, our readers would also love to know whether there were real-world inspirations for the »cooling mega-siphons«?
SG: You might be surprised to learn that cooling megasyphons are a real concept. While they are not yet the massive, inhabitable towers described in the book—soaring nearly thirteen kilometers above the stratosphere—they do exist. Theoretically, syphon towers like the ones in the novel are among the (admittedly less practical) proposed methods for lowering the temperature of our feverish planet.
For those interested, I recommend looking up solar updraft chimneys or superchimneys (this is their technical name). What We Owe the Dead builds on the idea of a superchimney capable of pumping an ammonia-based fluid to the upper layers of the atmosphere, where it rapidly loses heat. The cooled ammonia is then flushed back down to the surface, helping to lower planetary temperatures. In simple terms, as our planet became uninhabitable, humanity found refuge inside colossal air-conditioning systems. What would it actually be like to live in one? How would we produce food, store condensed water, or recycle waste within a superchimney? How would we move up and down the tower? How would live there shape our relationship with the animal species that survived the ecological catastrophe—like swallows, for example?
Oh, so many questions :) The book also alludes to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel—but I’m getting ahead of myself, here. Suffice it to say for now that towers play a central role in the story, so much so that early readers even discussed them (during feedback sessions) as a character in their own right.
RTI: Thank you very much for the interview and I wish you all the best for the future.
SG: It was fun, thank you! Hope it will make for a puzzling and enjoyable read.
Titelangaben
Stefano Gualeni : What We Owe the Dead
Mit Illustrationen von Daniele Giardini
Grafikdesign: Benedetta Ferrari
NL-Eindhoven: Set Margins‘ 2025
200 Seiten, 20 Euro
Reinschauen
| Webseite von Benedetta Ferrari
| Doors
| Something Something Soup Something
| The Clouds
