Álvaro Enrigue and critic Maia Gil’Adí begin their conversation considering translation as a living process, one that is internal to the novel form. Álvaro, author of the trippy You Dreamed of Empires, explains how the opening letter to his translator Natasha mirrors the letter to his editor, Teresa, in Spanish, and how both letters become partContinue reading “9.6 We Better Laugh About It: Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí”
Tag Archives: season9
9.5 Who Owns These Tools?: Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)
In an essay about her recent book Searches, a genre-bending chronicle of the deeply personal ways we use the internet and the uncanny ways it uses us, Vauhini Vara admits that several reviewers seemed to mistake her engagement with ChatGPT as an uncritical embrace of large language models. Enter Aarthi Vadde to talk with VauhiniContinue reading “9.5 Who Owns These Tools?: Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW)”
9.4 “That In Between Time:” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)
Fernanda Trías’s Pink Slime (Mugre rosa) was first published in Spanish in October 2020, several months into a global pandemic that had bent our world into something uncannily similar to the one imagined in the Uruguayan writer’s fourth novel. Here, an environmental disaster that begins as red algae bloom in the oceans has produced aContinue reading “9.4 “That In Between Time:” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT)”
9.3 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP)
In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established aContinue reading “9.3 Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP)”
9.2 Monstrous Dreaming: Lauren Beukes and Andrew Pepper (RB)
What work can genre do today? And can the genre system become more than a method of reductive containment and market segmentation—can it be a generative source of imaginative chaos? Few are as qualified to address these questions as Lauren Beukes, whose simultaneous embrace of genres from science fiction to crime to horror and refusalContinue reading “9.2 Monstrous Dreaming: Lauren Beukes and Andrew Pepper (RB)”
9.1 Novels are Like Elephants: Ken Liu and Rose Casey (SW)
It’s a bit surprising to hear a writer known for building worlds that incorporate deep historical research and elaborate technological details extol the virtues of play, but Ken Liu tells critic Rose Casey and host Sarah Wasserman that if “your idea of heaven doesn’t include play, then I’m not sure it’s a heaven people wantContinue reading “9.1 Novels are Like Elephants: Ken Liu and Rose Casey (SW)”
9.0 Writing Against the System (EH, CH)
We kick off Season 9: TECH by talking with our very own Aarthi Vadde, the E. Blake Byrne Associate Professor of English at Duke University. Hosts and co-producers Chris Holmes and Emily Hyde ask Aarthi about the role of the novel in relation to the mass writing platforms that dominate our digital lives. Aarthi isContinue reading “9.0 Writing Against the System (EH, CH)”
Novel Dialogue 