In this special (virtually) live episode, recorded in the annual Icon Festival, we discuss the upcoming 2020 US election through a sci-fi eye. We take a look at some of the hot topics characterizing these elections - polarization, mail-in ballots, lizard people, etc. - and look through sci-fi to see if they could have - or did - predict that's going in.
We will also discuss current science fiction works, and see what they mean for the future of democracy!

Hosts: Naomi Karmi, Avner Shahar-Kashtan and Talya Vaish.

Links:

• Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica scandal
  - Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to “Make America Great Again"

Credits:

• The Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. 1953), and The Merchants' War (Frederik Pohl, 1984)

• Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler, 1993)

• Franchise (Isaac Asimov, 1955)

• Infomocracy (Malka Older, 2016)

• The Shockwave Rider (John Brunner, 1975)

Theme Song - Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive By The Prehab Messia, under the CCbyNCSA licence, Source: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Prefab_Messiahs/Keep_Your_Stupid_Dreams_Alive