Category: science fiction
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My interview with Nick Harkaway was longlisted for the BSFA Award
My interview with Nick Harkaway about writing Gnomon was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award. It came as a complete surprise but probably shouldn’t have because Nick is a brilliant writer and you should all read Gnomon. If you already have, the BSFA longlist is full of mind-bending science fiction, as are my reading recommendations.…
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What sci-fi can tell us about the future
Tom Standage wrote a thought-provoking article about the feedback loop between science fiction and real world tech for The Economist. He happened to quote from an essay I wrote a few years back: “Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2017, Eliot Peper, a novelist, argued that science fiction is valuable ‘because it reframes our perspective…
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In Praise of Sci-Fi Determinism
Maize Magazine interviewed me for a feature on futurism and science fiction: Now that technology is changing our world at an unprecedented pace, science fiction is building a mythology of the 21st century—a mythology shaped by technology and climate change. Complement with imagining new institutions for the internet age, using science fiction to understand the…
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Government is a technology, so fix it like one
The Roman Empire, the Iroquois Confederacy, and the United States of America are human inventions as surely as airplanes, computers, and contraception are. Technology is how we do things, and political institutions are how we collaborate at scale. Government is an immensely powerful innovation through which we take collective action. Just like any other technology,…
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Cory Doctorow on dystopia as a state of mind
It feels like we’re barreling into dystopia. We elect demagogues who seek to destroy the very institutions they nominally lead. We acquiesce to mass surveillance. We dismiss corruption as “the way things work.” We condemn our grandchildren to suffer accelerating climate change because we can’t get our own act together. We rationalize economic inequality as…
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Annalee Newitz on who owns the future
Ownership often feels like a natural law. We all know what’s ours, and sometimes covet what isn’t. Hedge fund managers trade against each other in an endless cycle of one-upmanship. Kindergarteners refuse to share. Some master bathrooms have jealously guarded twin sinks. The pursuit of rational self-interest is what fuels the economy, right? Where would…
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Omar El Akkad on how to avoid American ruin
It feels like America is tearing itself apart. The federal government is alternatively self-destructive or deadlocked. Filter bubbles enclose us in their comfortable but toxic embrace. Most Americans struggle to eke out a living even as corporate profits surge. Propagandists reverse engineer algorithms to deliver automated misinformation at scale. Outrage is the new normal. The…
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Malka Older on the future of democracy
The best science fiction writers can bring down the most powerful of institutions with a single sentence, and erect new ones in a paragraph. In her debut science fiction thriller Infomocracy, Malka Older mines her extensive experience in governance research to craft not only a nuanced vision for the future of democracy, but a globe-trotting…
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Geekiverse interview
I talked to Pete Herr at The Geekiverse about writing the Analog series: https://thegeekiverse.com/books-conversation-science-fiction-author-eliot-peper/ “The Analog series is about how ubiquitous digital feeds shape our lives and politics. It’s about power and love and alienation and kindness and courage and adventure and perseverance. It’s about the decline of the nation-state and the rise of the tech…
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Kim Stanley Robinson on how to spark hope in a future ravaged by climate change
Maria Popova says that critical thinking without hope is cynicism and hope without critical thinking is naïveté. Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 finds the golden mean between the two. He challenges us to reevaluate our own assumptions and priorities with a vision of the future that is at once hopeful and pragmatic. The novel follows…