Machines Like Us S1E13 — Emily St. John Mandel Imagines The Future

October 8, 2024

What kind of future are we building for ourselves? In some ways, that’s the central question of this show. It’s also a central question of speculative fiction. And one that few people have tried to answer as thoughtfully – and as poetically – as Emily St. John Mandel.

Mandel is one of Canada’s great writers. She’s the author of six award winning novels, the most recent of which is Sea of Tranquility – a story about a future where we have moon colonies and time travelling detectives. But Mandel might be best known for Station Eleven, which was made into a big HBO miniseries in 2021. In Station Eleven, Mandel envisioned a very different future. One where a pandemic has wiped out nearly everyone on the planet, and the world has returned to a pre industrial state. In other words, a world without technology.

Speculative fiction carries tremendous power. The AI we have chosen to build, and our visions of what AI could become, have been shaped by acts of imagination.

So I wanted to speak to someone who has made a career imagining other worlds, and thinking about how humans will fit into them.