Podcasts about centenal cycle

Modern technology is great, but could we be losing control? As our world becomes more crowded and demands for resources are greater, some people worry about humanity's uncertain prospects. An eminent cosmologist considers globe-altering developments such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Will we be able to stave off serious threats to our future? There's also another possible source of danger: our trendy digital aids. We seem all-too-willing to let algorithms classify and define our wants, our needs, and our behavior. Instead of using technology, are we being used by it – to inadvertently become social media's product?  And while we may be skittish about the increased data our technology collects, one sci-fi writer imagines a future in which information is a pervasive and freely available commodity.  Guests: Martin Rees – Cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Great Britain's Astronomer Royal. Author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Douglas Rushkoff – Media theorist and professor of media theory and digital economics, City University of New York. Author of Team Human. Malka Older – Author and humanitarian worker, author of The Centenal Cycle. Originally aired February 11, 2019 Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Modern technology is great, but could we be losing control? As our world becomes more crowded and demands for resources are greater, some people worry about humanity's uncertain prospects. An eminent cosmologist considers globe-altering developments such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Will we be able to stave off serious threats to our future? There's also another possible source of danger: our trendy digital aids. We seem all-too-willing to let algorithms classify and define our wants, our needs, and our behavior. Instead of using technology, are we being used by it – to inadvertently become social media's product?  And while we may be skittish about the increased data our technology collects, one sci-fi writer imagines a future in which information is a pervasive and freely available commodity.  Guests: Martin Rees – Cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Great Britain's Astronomer Royal. Author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Douglas Rushkoff – Media theorist and professor of media theory and digital economics, City University of New York. Author of Team Human. Malka Older – Author and humanitarian worker, author of The Centenal Cycle. Originally aired February 11, 2019 Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join host Adrian M. Gibson and authors Malka Older, T. R. Napper, Lincoln Michel and Craig Lea Gordon as they decode the (virtual) realities of cyberpunk's past, present and future. During the panel they discuss what attracts them to cyberpunk, the genre's origins in noir, the contrast between cities and apocalyptic landscapes, worn out cyberpunk tropes and aesthetics, big themes like biotech and transhumanism, memory and reality, information and AI, as well as how the genre can be resuscitated in the 21st-century and much more. ESSAYS MENTIONED: T. R. Napper's article 'The Ultimate Cyberpunk Primer' Lincoln Michel's essay 'The Future in the Flesh' EMAIL US WITH YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS: sffaddictspod@gmail.com ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Malka Older is an author, aid worker and sociologist, and wrote the Centenal Cycle, including her debut Infomocracy, and the short story collection …and Other Disasters. She also created the fiction serial Ninth Step Station. Find Malka on Twitter or her personal website. T. R. Napper is a former aid worker and now award-winning author, having published the novel 36 Streets and the short story collection Neon Leviathan. He also wrote his Doctorate thesis in Creative Writing on 'The Dark Century: 1946-2046. Noir, Cyberpunk and Asian Modernity.' Find Tim on Twitter or his personal website. Lincoln Michel is an author, teacher and editor. His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, NOON and more, and his essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian and Vice, among others. He also wrote the novel The Body Scout and the story collection Upright Beasts. Find Lincoln on Twitter or his personal website. Craig Lea Gordon is the author of ARvekt, Hypercage, Obey Defy, the Acid Suite books and more. Find Craig on Twitter or SoundCloud. FIND US ONLINE: FanFiAddict Book Blog Discord Twitter Instagram MUSIC: Intro: "FanFiAddict Theme (Short Version)" by Astronoz Interlude 1 & 2: “Crescendo” by Astronoz Outro: “Cloudy Sunset” by Astronoz SFF Addicts is part of FanFiAddict, so check us out at https://fanfiaddict.com/ for the latest in book reviews, essays and all things sci-fi and fantasy, as well as the full episode archive for the podcast and the blog post accompanying this episode. Follow us on Instagram or Twitter @SFFAddictsPod, and please subscribe, rate and review us on your platform of choice, or share us with your friends. It helps a lot, and we greatly appreciate it. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sff-addicts/message

Saronik talks with Manish Melwani about outdated visions of the future and stale science fiction ideas that just won't die. Manish is a Singaporean writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop in 2014, and then completed a master's thesis at NYU entitled Starports, Portals and Port Cities: Science Fiction and Fantasy in Empire's Wake. (That's where he met Saronik.) Manish has published several short stories, with several more—and a novel—on the way. They talk about science fiction's imperialist heritage and how going to Mars is just a distraction from the imaginative (and literal) dead end our civilization faces. They also throw shade on Cecil Rhodes and certain tech moguls who have completely missed the point of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. Manish's perspective has been shaped by many other writers and theorists including: John Rieder's work on Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, Samuel R. Delany's seminal essays, Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding, a group biography of John W. Campbell and other figures from the Golden Age of science fiction, and Kim Stanley Robinson's recent climate sci-fi oeuvre. Further reading includes Joanna Russ's We Who Are About To, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, Chen Qiufan's The Waste Tide, Malka Older's Centenal Cycle, Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers edited by Sarena Ulibarri, and Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland. Image created by Saronik Bosu using open source vectors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. This is the first novel of the Centenal Cycle trilogy, which also includes Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018). The trilogy was a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018. She is also the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station and the author of the short story collection …and Other Disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, Dr. Older has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at The Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments. Dr. Older is a part-time Faculty Associate at Arizona State University‘s School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) In today’s podcast, Dr. Older discusses worldbuilding and inspirations drawn from her humanitarian work. The following bullet points highlight key insights from our discussion: In Infomocracy, Dr. Older explores an alternative to our current media environment. Instead of fragmented media environments and the concept of media neutrality, she presents an idealized information management officer – a well-intentioned single source for information. With this comes the realization that even a single actor with good intentions could hold massive influence in society. The inspiration for Infomocracy came from Dr. Older’s disaster relief work while responding to an earthquake for which the United Nations brought in a dedicated information management officer to collate all information and ensure the response team had what was fundamental to completing their work. This curated the idea of centralizing information that was then widely dispersed. Dr. Older began thinking about the role of information in our society and how it is portrayed through media. When thinking about content for science fiction writing, it is important to experience things outside your comfort zone in order to give yourself an idea of the possible, while also taking an introspective look at yourself. Experiencing diverse communities allows you to truly get a different perspective on future possibilities. Some places may va

Welcome to a special two-part series about the looming clash over the future of America. In Part 1, we looked at the tattered state of our democracy and searched for peaceful ways through an election season in which one candidate—Trump—has threatened violence and disruption if he doesn’t win. Here in Part 2, we look at the work waiting for us after the election: fixing the way we govern ourselves so that we’ll never have another president like Trump or another year like 2020.The real breakdowns in our system go much deeper than Trump—hence the cliché that he’s the symptom, not the disease. Boxed in by demographic change, the Republican party has devolved over the past half-century into a force that taps racial and economic anxieties to win elections, erodes faith in government by deliberately and cynically undermining government, and exploits Constitutional loopholes and Congressional procedure to exercise endless minoritarian rule. Democrats, of course, are beset by their own internal divisions—and by a growing thirst for revenge.To reverse this toxic dynamic, we’ll need reforms that give both parties a fair shot at legislating and lower the risk of tyranny by the minority or the majority. It’s a tall order, given that we’re more sharply divided along ideological, geographical, and economic lines than at any point in American history. Which is why the necessary reforms could end up going so deep that we come out the other side looking like a different nation—or nations.This episode draws on a range of ideas from thinkers such as journalist David A. French, political scientists Adam Przeworski and William Howell, and sociologist and science fiction author Malka Older, along with an assortment of other commentators on the topics of polarization, federalism, and the possibility of secession or breakup. And in the best Soonish tradition, there’s also a little dose of Apollo 13.You'll find the full show notes and transcript for this episode at soonishpodcast.org.You can also read an essay version of "American Reckoning" on Medium.The Soonish opening theme is by Graham Gordon Ramsay.Additional music is from Titlecard Music and Sound.If you like the show, please rate and review Soonish on Apple Podcasts / iTunes! The more ratings we get, the more people will find the show.Listener support is the rocket fuel that keeps this whole ship going! You can pitch in with a per-episode donation at patreon.com/soonish.Follow us on Twitter and get the latest updates about the show in our email newsletter, Signals from Soonish.Painted face photo by Oskaras Zerbickas on Unsplash. Thanks Oskaras!

Last week, we had the great pleasure of sitting down with Malka Older to discuss her Centenal Cycle series of books (Infomocracy, State Tectonics, and Null States). Enjoy, as we get do a deep dive on the functioning of the political economy of science fictional microdemocracy. Malka shares with details of the inner workings of … Continue reading "On Surveillance and Information: In Conversation with Malka Older" The post On Surveillance and Information: In Conversation with Malka Older appeared first on Androids and Assets.

Last week, we had the great pleasure of sitting down with Malka Older to discuss her Centenal Cycle series of books (Infomocracy, State Tectonics, and Null States). Enjoy, as we get do a deep dive on the functioning of the political economy of science fictional microdemocracy. Malka shares with details of the inner workings of … Continue reading "On Surveillance and Information: In Conversation with Malka Older" The post On Surveillance and Information: In Conversation with Malka Older appeared first on Androids and Assets.

This episode is the second episode of our podcast series diving back into our 2016 Publishing Conference, which we held at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. The panel we’re sharing this week is titled “Breaking into Speculative Fiction”, featuring Jennifer Marie Brissett, author of the novel Elysium, and the upcoming 2020 novel Destroyer of Light, and Malka Older, author of the Centenal Cycle trilogy, which includes the novels Infomacracy, Null States, and State Tectonics. And last year Malka Older published the serial story Ninth Step Station. Their conversation on speculative fiction will be moderated by speculative fiction editor Tim O'Connell.  Remember this audio is from 2016, so some parts of the conversation are interesting to hear in retrospect, like when they talk about the “upcoming 2016 election” !  

…and Other Disasters, the smart and moving collection of short fiction and poetry from acclaimed author Malka Older, examines otherness, identity and compassion across a spectrum of possible existence. In stories about an AI built for empathy, a corps of fighting midwives traveling to a new planet, and a young anthropologist who returns to study the cultures of a dying Earth, Older's characters grapple with what it means to belong and be othered, to cling to the past and face the future, all while navigating a precarious world, riddled with natural and man-made disasters.Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. With the sequels Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), she completed the Centenal Cycle trilogy, a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018. She is also the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters will come out in November 2019. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she is currently an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Center for the Sociology of Organizations at Sciences Po, where her doctoral work explored the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments. She has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. Re-opening activities are made possible in part by a generous gift from Sandra R. Berman.

…and Other Disasters, the smart and moving collection of short fiction and poetry from acclaimed author Malka Older, examines otherness, identity and compassion across a spectrum of possible existence. In stories about an AI built for empathy, a corps of fighting midwives traveling to a new planet, and a young anthropologist who returns to study the cultures of a dying Earth, Older's characters grapple with what it means to belong and be othered, to cling to the past and face the future, all while navigating a precarious world, riddled with natural and man-made disasters.Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. With the sequels Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), she completed the Centenal Cycle trilogy, a finalist for the Hugo Best Series Award of 2018. She is also the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters will come out in November 2019. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she is currently an Affiliated Research Fellow at the Center for the Sociology of Organizations at Sciences Po, where her doctoral work explored the dynamics of post-disaster improvisation in governments. She has more than a decade of field experience in humanitarian aid and development.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund. Re-opening activities are made possible in part by a generous gift from Sandra R. Berman.Recorded On: Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Malka Older is an author and humanitarian worker with over a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her written works include 2016's Infomocracy, which is the first installment of a trilogy of titles entitled The Centenal Cycle and the cyberpunk series Ninth Step Station. In this episode, Adrian speaks with Malka about her experiences working as the showrunner and head writer for Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, which is the continuation of the award-winning television series, which ended it's original run in 2017. The new installment, narrated by Emmy Award winner and series star Tatiana Maslany, is being presented via Serial Box, an online service that offers serialized fiction in audiobook and ebook bundles from bestselling authors and original content. Adrian and Malka also engage in an in-depth conversation about a number of concepts including “speculative resistance” and “narrative disorder” and how they affect her writing process as well as our interpretation of how we view the world.

Malka Older is an author and humanitarian worker with over a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her written works include 2016's Infomocracy, which is the first installment of a trilogy of titles entitled The Centenal Cycle and the cyberpunk series Ninth Step Station. In this episode, Adrian speaks with Malka about her experiences working as the showrunner and head writer for Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, which is the continuation of the award-winning television series, which ended it's original run in 2017. The new installment, narrated by Emmy Award winner and series star Tatiana Maslany, is being presented via Serial Box, an online service that offers serialized fiction in audiobook and ebook bundles from bestselling authors and original content. Adrian and Malka also engage in an in-depth conversation about a number of concepts including “speculative resistance” and “narrative disorder” and how they affect her writing process as well as our interpretation of how we view the world.

(repeat) Modern technology is great, but could we be losing control? As our world becomes more crowded and demands for resources are greater, some people worry about humanity's uncertain prospects. An eminent cosmologist considers globe-altering developments such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Will we be able to stave off serious threats to our future? There's also another possible source of danger: our trendy digital aids. We seem all-too-willing to let algorithms classify and define our wants, our needs, and our behavior. Instead of using technology, are we being used by it – to inadvertently become social media's product?  And while we may be skittish about the increased data our technology collects, one sci-fi writer imagines a future in which information is a pervasive and freely available commodity.  Guests: Martin Rees – Cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Great Britain's Astronomer Royal. Author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Douglas Rushkoff – Media theorist and professor of media theory and digital economics, City University of New York. Author of Team Human. Malka Older – Author and humanitarian worker, author of The Centenal Cycle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where politics and democracy are heading into the future? It is a theme that has run throughout the history of science fiction. Something that already in 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin tried to imagine in his novel “We”, for example, and later developed in different directions by Orwell, Huxley and the likes. The following quote from “We” recalls the tone and the imagery of these reflections about the future of democracy, back in the past. A sort of archeology of the Future. *It goes without saying that this does not resemble the disordered, disorganized elections of the Ancients, when – it seems funny to say it – the result of an election was not known beforehand. Building a government on totally unaccounted – for happenstance, blindly – what could be more senseless? And yet still, it turns out, it took centuries to understand this. * Malka Older condensed a reflection on the topic in her Centenal Cycle, a series of cyberpunk technothrillers beginning with Infomocracy. Her premise is set in a not so distant future ad it portrays a world governed by micro-democracies. Countries have been replaced by districts (called centenals) of 100,000 people, and the entire world turns out to vote once a decade for their local government. The political party elected to the most centenals becomes the Supermajority, setting policy and direction for the world at large. Needless to say, the stakes are high as a new election approaches. In this episode we will start our space-time exploration of today with that premise. How would Europe look like under Infomocracy? Malka Older is a writer, humanitarian worker, and holds a PhD at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at science po in Paris studying governance and disasters. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than eight years of experience in humanitarian aid and development, and has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali. Her first novel Infomocracy has been published by Tor.com in 2016, starting the so-far trilogy of the centenal cycle, which comprises Null States and her latest State Tectonics. She is one of the nominees for the prestigious Hugo Award for 2019 and she recently published for the New York Times in their series op-eds from the future. Giuseppe Porcaro is the author of DISCO SOUR, a novel about Europe and democracy in the age of algorithms, among the winners of the Altiero Spinelli Prize for Outrech of the European Union in 2018. Giuseppe is interested in how the intersection between technology and politics is moving towards uncharted territories in the future. He also focuses on narrative-building and political representations in the European Union. He works as the head of communications for Bruegel.

Malka Older‘s Centenal Cycle is set in the latter half of the 21st century and yet, like all good science fiction, it speaks to the current moment. Null States (Tor, 2017), the second book in her series, builds on the first, Infomacracy, which introduced readers to a near future in which the Earth is crisscrossed by a network of small but stable democracies. But in Null States, efforts to strengthen and expand this world order are threatened by unknown plotters. What makes Older’s books so timely is that they address some of the most vexing challenges of the Trump era, including the difficulty of separating truth from lies and the uphill effort to foster trust in government. Drawing on more than a decade of experience working for organizations that provide humanitarian aid and development, Older’s books introduce the idea of mini-nations known as microdemocracies. These tiny states are capped at 100,000 citizens in an effort to ensure that the minority always has a voice. Each microdemocracy can vote for any government around the world, so that coalitions of micro-sovereignties are not massed in one geographic location but scattered around the globe. In a dense city, this means that different microdemocracies can arise every few blocks, with one (for example) under-girded by Rastafarianism and the next guided by the principles of Chabad. In order to ensure the efficient and fair administration of this system, an organization called Information provides expert advice, education and resources. Older describes Information as a cross between Google and the United Nations. Perhaps Information’s most important function is to constantly stream verified, annotated facts to every citizen as an antidote to fake news, a term that has grown increasingly popular in recent years even though the underlying problem, as Older points out, has been “going on probably for as long as we can trace history and politics.” For Older, science fiction is an opportunity to explore neither dystopia nor utopia but the real world in between — a place where her policy-minded imagination can explore practical solutions. “I wanted to show some ideas I’d been thinking about that would improve things in some ways, but they could also make some things worse,” she says in her New Books interview. “There is no perfect system. We’re not aiming to find some system that will work for every case and every country and every group of people and then we’re done. I think what’s really important is the process and the struggle.” Related links: * Older’s short story Narrative Disorder and her essay The Narrative Spectrum appear in Fireside Fiction. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, from The New York Times to the literary journal Thema. Follow him on Twitter @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Malka Older‘s Centenal Cycle is set in the latter half of the 21st century and yet, like all good science fiction, it speaks to the current moment. Null States (Tor, 2017), the second book in her series, builds on the first, Infomacracy, which introduced readers to a near future in which the Earth is crisscrossed by a network of small but stable democracies. But in Null States, efforts to strengthen and expand this world order are threatened by unknown plotters. What makes Older’s books so timely is that they address some of the most vexing challenges of the Trump era, including the difficulty of separating truth from lies and the uphill effort to foster trust in government. Drawing on more than a decade of experience working for organizations that provide humanitarian aid and development, Older’s books introduce the idea of mini-nations known as microdemocracies. These tiny states are capped at 100,000 citizens in an effort to ensure that the minority always has a voice. Each microdemocracy can vote for any government around the world, so that coalitions of micro-sovereignties are not massed in one geographic location but scattered around the globe. In a dense city, this means that different microdemocracies can arise every few blocks, with one (for example) under-girded by Rastafarianism and the next guided by the principles of Chabad. In order to ensure the efficient and fair administration of this system, an organization called Information provides expert advice, education and resources. Older describes Information as a cross between Google and the United Nations. Perhaps Information’s most important function is to constantly stream verified, annotated facts to every citizen as an antidote to fake news, a term that has grown increasingly popular in recent years even though the underlying problem, as Older points out, has been “going on probably for as long as we can trace history and politics.” For Older, science fiction is an opportunity to explore neither dystopia nor utopia but the real world in between — a place where her policy-minded imagination can explore practical solutions. “I wanted to show some ideas I’d been thinking about that would improve things in some ways, but they could also make some things worse,” she says in her New Books interview. “There is no perfect system. We’re not aiming to find some system that will work for every case and every country and every group of people and then we’re done. I think what’s really important is the process and the struggle.” Related links: * Older’s short story Narrative Disorder and her essay The Narrative Spectrum appear in Fireside Fiction. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, from The New York Times to the literary journal Thema. Follow him on Twitter @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Malka Older‘s Centenal Cycle is set in the latter half of the 21st century and yet, like all good science fiction, it speaks to the current moment. Null States (Tor, 2017), the second book in her series, builds on the first, Infomacracy, which introduced readers to a near future in which the Earth is crisscrossed by a network of small but stable democracies. But in Null States, efforts to strengthen and expand this world order are threatened by unknown plotters. What makes Older’s books so timely is that they address some of the most vexing challenges of the Trump era, including the difficulty of separating truth from lies and the uphill effort to foster trust in government. Drawing on more than a decade of experience working for organizations that provide humanitarian aid and development, Older’s books introduce the idea of mini-nations known as microdemocracies. These tiny states are capped at 100,000 citizens in an effort to ensure that the minority always has a voice. Each microdemocracy can vote for any government around the world, so that coalitions of micro-sovereignties are not massed in one geographic location but scattered around the globe. In a dense city, this means that different microdemocracies can arise every few blocks, with one (for example) under-girded by Rastafarianism and the next guided by the principles of Chabad. In order to ensure the efficient and fair administration of this system, an organization called Information provides expert advice, education and resources. Older describes Information as a cross between Google and the United Nations. Perhaps Information’s most important function is to constantly stream verified, annotated facts to every citizen as an antidote to fake news, a term that has grown increasingly popular in recent years even though the underlying problem, as Older points out, has been “going on probably for as long as we can trace history and politics.” For Older, science fiction is an opportunity to explore neither dystopia nor utopia but the real world in between — a place where her policy-minded imagination can explore practical solutions. “I wanted to show some ideas I’d been thinking about that would improve things in some ways, but they could also make some things worse,” she says in her New Books interview. “There is no perfect system. We’re not aiming to find some system that will work for every case and every country and every group of people and then we’re done. I think what’s really important is the process and the struggle.” Related links: * Older’s short story Narrative Disorder and her essay The Narrative Spectrum appear in Fireside Fiction. Rob Wolf is the author of The Alternate Universe and The Escape. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, from The New York Times to the literary journal Thema. Follow him on Twitter @RobWolfBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Information, challenging assumptions, and celebrity politicians, oh my! Paul interviews Malka Older, author of Infomocracy, about the second book in her Centenal Cycle, Null States. Malka shares how her experiences as an NGO worker in Darfur helped shape Null States, how having a global perspective is crucial to exploring micro-democracies, and the differences between campaigning […]