near future – Rob Wolf: Recent Episodes
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https://traffic.megaphone.fm/LIT2189420364.mp3 Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for a New Day explores how society changes following two plausible disasters: a surge in terrorism and a deadly epidemic. In the Before, people brush against each other in crowded cities, gather in stadiums to watch baseball games, and hang out in clubs to watch live music. Read excerpts from […]
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/LIT9145026606.mp3 In science fiction, “near future” usually refers to settings that are a few years to a few decades off. But Craig DiLouie’s Our War—about a second U.S. civil war that starts after the president is impeached and convicted but refuses to step down—feels as if it might be only weeks away. Born in the […]
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/LIT6904544093.mp3 In The Last Astronaut, David Wellington turns his prolific imagination—which is more often associated with earthbound monsters like zombies, vampires, and werewolves—to the threat of an alien invasion. Set in 2055, the novel introduces a NASA ill equipped to respond to the arrival of a massive object from another star system. The agency no […]
https://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scifi/075scifipeper.mp3 It seems clear that our dependence on the internet will only grow in coming years, offering untold convenience. But how much control will we have to surrender to maintain access to this digital wonderland? That’s one of the key questions animating the first two books in Eliot Peper’s action- and idea-packed Analog trilogy. In […]
https://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scifi/067scifimiller.mp3 Sam J. Miller loves cities. He lives in one, has a day job dedicated to making urban life more humane and fair, and has set his new novel, Blackfish City, in a teeming metropolis full of people who are grateful to be there. The fictional metropolis is Qaanaak, which floats in arctic waters like […]
https://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scifi/051scifimanney.mp3 Artificial intelligence has long been a favorite feature of science fiction. Every robot or talking computer or starship operating system has contributed to our idealized image of the bits-and-bytes brain. In (ID)entity (47North, 2017), PJ Manney further expands our vision of A.I. by uploading her human protagonist to a server; from there, he is […]
https://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scifi/044scifinaam.mp3 My new podcast for New Books in Science Fiction is an interview with Ramez Naam. Here’s my write-up that goes with the interview: In the fictional battles between humans and machines, the divide between good and bad is usually clear. Humans, despite their foibles (greed, impulsiveness, and lust for revenge, to name just […]
https://files.newbooksnetwork.com/scifi/034scificambias.mp3 For his second novel, James L. Cambias chose one of the most challenging settings for a science fiction writer: the near future. Unlike speculative fiction that leaps centuries or millennia ahead or takes place on other planets, a book about the near future presents a world that varies only incrementally from the present. The […]
