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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
Can science fiction help us imagine a way through climate crisis, runaway corporate power, and the rise of AI?
This week, we talk with John Feffer about Songlands and Portia Elan about Homebound, two speculative novels that ask how we can make a livable future in an age of crisis.
Songlands, the final novel in Feffer’s Splinterlands trilogy, takes us into a climate-ravaged world where nations have fractured and a biotech corporation holds enormous power. Yet poetry, collective action, and a conscious, caring AI offer another way forward.
“Love is an important kind of operating system, if you will, to define one’s relations with the world.” — John Feffer
Portia Elan’s Homebound travels across 600 years, connecting a queer coder in 1985 with a smuggler in 2585. Their stories come together through grief, a mysterious video game, found family, and the moral choices that shape history.
“[AI] is a reflection of the values of the creators. I’m afraid of the human choices, not so much of the LLM choices.” — Portia Elan
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[Episode 1036]
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