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Happiness is a sham. Written by Malka Older (Ninth Step Station, Infomacracy, Null States, State Tectonics) and Gwenda Bond (New York Times bestseller, Dead Air, Remade, Lois Lane and Cirque American trilogies, Stranger Things novel, Suspicious Minds). Embodied is a Realm production. Listen away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm+ on Apple Podcasts, or Realm Unlimited. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! https://www.realm.fm/w/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this week's Talkhouse Podcast we've got a pair of guys who worked on an incredible record together, which just came out last week: Will Westerman and James Krivchenia. Krivchenia is best known as the drummer of Big Thief, the Brooklyn indie band that has blown up pretty big over the past few years, up to and including last year's fantastic album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. When he's not busy with Big Thief, Krivchenia also plays in Mega Bog, among other bands, and he even played some drums on Taylor Swift's re-recorded version of her Red album. He's also made some really interesting music as a solo artist, including last year's Blood Karaoke, which samples dozens of YouTube videos that had zero views and synthesizes them into an intense collage that will either get your toes tapping or your brain frying. Check out “Null States” right here. Will Westerman, who releases music under his last name, happened to meet Krivchenia in the UK a few years back, and for the second Westerman album, the two worked together. An Inbuilt Fault is a more textured beast than the first Westerman record, gaining space and a bit of groove courtesy of both Krivchenia and some other ace players, like Luke Temple. Recording the album was a weird experience that involved a lonely apartment and a couple of guys with Covid, and lyrically it deals with a pretty dark time. Check out the song “Take” here, which they talk about in this chat. In addition to their own recording experience, Krivchenia and Westerman talk about an incredible guitar that James' uncle built, figuring out how you're going to play studio-built compositions on the road, and a bunch of upcoming projects, including another Westerman record and a mythology-heavy, “metal as fuck” children's album. Enjoy. Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Will Westerman and James Krivchenia for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all of the other great podcasts in our network via Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!
Every week, we will be highlighting a panel from TBRCon2023, looking back on the amazing variety of panels that we had the honor of hosting. This week, join moderator Adrian M. Gibson and authors Malka Older, Sheree Renée Thomas, Lincoln Michel, Samit Basu and Victor Manibo for a TBRCon2023 author panel on "The Future of Near-Future Sci-Fi". SUPPORT THE SHOW: - Patreon (for exclusive bonus episodes, author readings, book giveaways and more) - Merch shop (for a selection of tees, tote bags, mugs, notebooks and more) - Subscribe to the FanFiAddict YouTube channel, where this and every other episode of the show is available in full video - Rate and review SFF Addicts on your platform of choice, and share us with your friends EMAIL US WITH YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS: sffaddictspod@gmail.com ABOUT THE PANELISTS: Adrian M. Gibson is a writer, illustrator and creator/co-host of SFF Addicts podcast. Find Adrian on Twitter and his personal website. Malka Older is a sociologist and author of the Centenal Cycle (Infomocracy, Null States and State Tectonics) and more. She also created the fiction serial Ninth Step Station. Find Malka on Twitter, Amazon or her personal website. Lincoln Michel is an author, teacher and editor. He edited the anthologies Tiny Nightmares and Tiny Crimes, and penned The Body Scout and Upright Beasts. Find Lincoln on Twitter, Amazon or his personal website. Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning author, editor and poet. Her works include the Dark Matter anthology, Black Panther: Panther's Rage and much more.Find Sheree on Twitter, Amazon or her personal website. Samit Basu is a film director, screenwriter and author of The City Inside, the GameWorld Trilogy, Turbulence, Resistance and more. Find Samit on Twitter, Amazon or his personal website. Victor Manibo is a speculative fiction author of The Sleepless, as well as a queer immigrant and civil rights lawyer. Find Victor on Twitter, Amazon or his personal website. FOLLOW SFF ADDICTS: FanFiAddict Book Blog Twitter Instagram MUSIC: Intro: "Into The Grid" by MellauSFX Outro: “Galactic Synthwave” by Divion --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sff-addicts/message
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
Today I welcome disaster researcher and novelist Malka Older back to COVIDCalls to continue our discussions about disasters and time, language, governance, and disaster justice. Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and academic. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her research interests include intra-governmental relations in crises; the paradox of well-funded disaster responses; measurement and evaluation of disaster responses; and the effects of competition among actors in humanitarian aid. Malka Older’s science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is also the author of the sequels, Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018). Her short story and poetry collection And Other Disasters came out in late 2019.
Today, we have a discussion of fiction and writing in the COVID-19 pandemic with Malka Older and Malka’s brother Daniel Jose Older.Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of the Middle Grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, The Book of Lost Saints, and the award winning Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which won the International Latino Book Award and was shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature,the Andre Norton Award, the Locus, the Mythopoeic Award, and named one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person ShouldRead. He is a lead story architect on the Star Wars: The High Republic cross platform initiative. You can find out more at http://danieljoseolder.net/Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and academic. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development.Her research interests include intra-governmental relations in crises; the paradox of well-funded disaster responses;measurement and evaluation of disaster responses; and the effects of competition among actors in humanitarian aid. Malka Older’s science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is also the author of the sequels, Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018). Her short story and poetry collection And Other Disasters was released in late 2019.
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” !
The moment in the voting booth when you put your pen to your ballot (or put your finger to the electronic touchscreen, as the case may be) is democracy distilled. It’s the act that makes America a republic. But while the casting your vote is critical, it’s everything that happens before, during, and after that moment that makes up the larger election system. And these days there are whole armies of people working to influence and disrupt that system—and opposing armies working to protect it and make it safer and more accessible.In this special Halloween 2019 edition of Soonish, we look at the scary vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system that were exposed after the 2016 presidential election, and we meet a company working to make it possible for everyone to vote securely on their smartphones. We hear from a retired U.S. Air Force major general who’s deeply worried about the lack of good “cyber hygiene” within state election agencies, and national security experts who fear the 2020 presidential vote could once again be manipulated and distorted by social media misinformation and disinformation. And we meet a science fiction author who says democracy is always a work in progress, but argues there’s an urgent need now for better media literacy and clearer thinking about how to strengthen the key beliefs, norms, and institutions behind democracy.Check out the complete show notes, including a full episode transcript, at soonishpodcast.org. Chapter Guide00:00 Hub & Spoke Sonic ID00:13 Opening Theme00:22 A Scary Story from the Senate Russia Report02:49 E-Voting Machines Without Paper Trails03:38 The Nightmare Scenario04:28 Maj. Gen. Earl Matthews on Cyber Hygiene06:33 More Money for Election Security07:23 The Big Question: Can We Achieve Fair Elections?07:52 The Anti-Sikh Riots of 198409:47 Nimit Sawhney at SXSW10:58 The Founding of Voatz13:58 How to Vote on Voatz22:03 Baby Steps and Criticisms24:19 Meet Centenal Cycle Author Malka Older27:58 Elections as Systems, and the Dangers of Disinformation30:59 Adapting to New Communications Platforms32:32 The Fragility of Legitimacy33:45 End Credits, and a Shout-Out to Open SourceNotesThe Soonish opening theme is by Graham Gordon Ramsay.Additional music is from Titlecard Music and Sound.Episode logo photograph by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.Sound effects / foley from Freesound.org.If you like the show, please rate and review Soonish on Apple Podcasts! 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.Give us a shout on Twitter and sign up for our email newsletter, Signals from Soonish.Please check out Open Source, one of the newest additions to the Hub & Spoke audio collective. Try the episode Do we want democracy or two-day shipping? with Matt Stoller from the Open Markets Institute.
On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Malka Older, author of “Infomocracy” named one of the best books of 2016 by the Washington Post and author of sequels, “Null States” and “State Tectonics.” The full trilogy was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award for Science Fiction.A humanitarian aid worker, an expert, Older was a fellow for technology and risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and has supported global programs in agency wide strategy for disaster risk reduction from Africa and Asia to the United States.Today's subject is high tech dystopia and our guest is the preeminent writer of science fiction political thrillers.
Rezensionen zu "Null States" von Malka Older, "Oathbringer" von Brandon Sanderson und "Jade War" von Fonda Lee
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.
Bienvenidos a un nuevo capítulo del podcast de los VerdHugos.En esa ocasión tenemos como invitada a Malka Older, autora de Infomocracy y Null States, con quien hablaremos de sus libros, su trabajo y el mundo editorial. En la segunda parte del programa, haremos un pequeño homenaje a la gran Ursula K. LeGuin.(0h : 00m) Entrevista a Malka Older(0h : 20m) Infomocracy no estaba previsto como una trilogía(0h : 33m) Sinergias entre la escritura de ficción y la escritura de no ficción(1h : 04m) Recomendaciones Malka Older(1h : 07m) Tributo a Ursula K. LeGuin.(1h : 45m) Recomendaciones VerdHugos(1h : 50m) Planeamos nuevos invitados para el programaRecomendacionesMalka OlderAn Unkindness of Ghosts de Rivers SolomonAn Excess Male de Maggie Shen KingAutonomous de Analee NewitzJosep María OriolI am Providence de Nick MamatasElías CombarroSemiosis de Sue BurkeArmando SaldañaThe Snagglepuss Chronicles de Mark Russell y Mike FeehanMiquel CodonyHistorias de Terramar de Úrsula K. LeGuinLeticia LaraThe Tea Master and the Detective de Aliette de BodardBSOEpic Mountain Goat Related Music by Son of Robot is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Malka Older's Centenal Cycle Series begins with Infomocracy followed by Null States and State Tectonics, and takes readers through a world of micro-democracies. I love how she's using the series to create small laboratories in which to investigate social technologies and structures as well as the diverse characters moving among them. Basically, you will feel smarter after this conversation with Malka, and especially if you dive into this series . . . I know I did! Mentioned in this episode (with additional show notes at Storypunks.World): Malka Older's Website Detroit's Digital Access Divide (New York Times) Brave New World Conference Neil Harbisson - Cyborg Moon Ribas - Cyborg Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion
Microdemocracy! We review and discuss "Null States" by Malka Older.
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 […]