Humourous fiction articles
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Does science fiction shape the future?
Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic about hackers and computer viruses set in an Orwellian Los Angeles. Jeff Bezos cites Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, which unreel in an utopian society of humanoids and artificial intelligences,...
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Is there humour left in the White House? – podcast
The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns this Saturday for a night of comedy ‘roasting’ – where the great and the good are ruthlessly mocked in celebration of the freedom of the press.In recent years, however, the night has taken on a different tone, with the atmosphere of warm self-deprecation and bipartisan bonhomie replaced by something more scathing and serious.This week Jonathan Freedland is joined by Jeff Nussbaum, a former senior speech writer to Joe Biden, to...
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Data, Desire, and Where Fiction Goes Next
Rose D’Amora The Nation speaks to Jessi Jezewska Stevens about her new short-story collection, which dramatizes late-capitalist living.