Ali Hazelwood, who wrote The Love Hypothesis, at the 2025 Texas Book Festival. Photo Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. No free image of the book's own cover art exists.
The Love Hypothesis
What it took directly
- documentedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) comes from Hazelwood's own Kylo Ren and Rey fan fiction, “Head Over Feet”, which set the pair in academia instead of space"That’s how Hazelwood’s Reylo fanfic became The Love Hypothesis: While her fic “Head Over Feet” put Kylo and Rey in an academic setting instead of a galaxy far, far away," Elizabeth Held, Vulture, Aug. 29, 2023
- documentedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) comes from literary agent Thao Le, who came across the story in 2020 and thought it already read like an original"when literary agent Thao Le stumbled across it in 2020, she thought it already read like an original story." Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post, August 20, 2022
- statedThe Love Hypothesis cover took from the fandom artist @lilith_saur, an old friend of Hazelwood's"The illustrator is @lilith_saur on Instagram, and she’s an old friend and a fantastic fandom artist." Ali Hazelwood, interviewed on the HeyitsCarlyRae book blog, 2023
What it learned to do
- documentedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) learned from rewriting the fic for publication: a new antagonist, condensed characters, combined scenes, a tight timeline"she also added an antagonist, condensed characters, combined scenes, and raised the stakes with a tight timeline, all changes that gave it a more traditional narrative arc." Elizabeth Held, Vulture, Aug. 29, 2023
- documentedAli Hazelwood learned from writing fan fiction as a hobby, a way to unplug from academia"Creative writing — specifically the writing of erotic fan fiction about Star Trek’s Mr. Spock — was just a hobby, a way to unplug from the stressful world of academia." Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post, August 20, 2022
The tradition it sits in
- documentedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) comes from Reylo fan fiction, as readers who know it can tell"The Love Hypothesis, she says, is clearly Reylo fan fiction to people who know, but to others, it’s a fun romance featuring two scientists." Jen Prokop, romance critic and co-host of the Fated Mates podcast, to Vulture, Aug. 29, 2023
- inferredThe Love Hypothesis's scientist hero comes from Mr. Spock, the “broody, emotionless science man” Hazelwood loved as a kid and wrote fan fiction about"He’s just this broody, emotionless science man, but every two or three episodes, something happens, and they just make him feel all the emotions." inferred — Hazelwood tells The Washington Post (2022) why she loved Spock, and that she wrote Spock fan fiction before the Reylo story; she does not say her hero is modelled on him
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) comes from Kylo Ren and Rey, the leads of the Star Wars sequel trilogy"for the main characters bearing unmistakeable similarities to the leads of the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, Kylo Ren and Rey (Hazelwood’s book started out as a fan fiction published online before getting picked up by a publisher)." Haley Lerner, GBH News, June 13, 2023
- statedThe Love Hypothesis (2021) comes from Hazelwood's own gripes with STEM academia, worked out in fiction while she wrote her dissertation"when I started writing (with fanfiction), I was working on my dissertation, and I had lots of gripes with STEM academia that I worked out through fiction. That’s how I got into the habit of writing in science settings." Ali Hazelwood, interviewed on the HeyitsCarlyRae book blog, 2023
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