How Jodi Picoult’s New Novel Turned Out More Timely Than Planned
Pegged to the anniversary of 9/11, “Hollow Bones” now resonates with the riveting Lindsay Clancy trial.
Pegged to the anniversary of 9/11, “Hollow Bones” now resonates with the riveting Lindsay Clancy trial.
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How an ancient survivor of the unsurvivable became a triumph of the human spirit in a divided world.
"By reaching beyond the brain... we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively — to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone."
Her hit novel Station Eleven seemed to predict the pandemic, now the novelist is tackling the future of the US. She talks about chance, world-building and experiencing a ‘tiny bit’ of clairvoyance When Emily St John Mandel was a child she had a dream that would stay with her for decades. It was a nightmare in which “I was trying to find my dad in a crowd, and there were other people who looked like him but weren’t him”, she says. “It just kind of struck my imagination.” Forty-ish years later, Mandel’s seventh novel, Exit Party, opens with a gathering in Los Angeles, 2031, where bizarre things happen. Doubles of some guests appear. Someone else disappears altogether. The novel then alternates between two potential future Americas, one riven by the chaos of civil war, the other a surveillance state. Continue reading...
Technology is going to drastically reshape the economy, and it’s within our power to decide what that looks like The idea that autonomous, thinking machines may one day destroy property, hierarchy and inequality is as old as western political thought. In Aristotle’s Politics, the philosopher cites a fantasy from the Iliad, in which machines begin to act independently of human direction, concluding: “If every tool could perform its own work when ordered, or by seeing what to do in advance … if thus shuttles wove and quills played harps of themselves, master-craftsmen would have no need of assistants and masters no need of slaves.” The dream that automation could inaugurate a classless society is also present in the writings of Karl Marx. In 1858 he imagined the replacement of intellectual property with “socialised knowledge”, which would merge into a “general intellect”, blowing the foundations of capitalism sky high. Continue reading...
The book OPPENHEIMER was adapted from, a short story by a horror queen, Amish true crime, and more of today's best book deals
In “Redwood,” Ben Macintyre tells the story of a Russian spy in Iran who betrayed his country in exchange for an unusual request.