Innovations Talk with Malka Older - The Symbiosis of Science and Speculative Fiction

Abstract

Malka Older, aid worker, PhD candidate, and author of the acclaimed science fiction political thriller Infomocracy, will discuss how her academic work in disasters, risk, technology, and organizations informs her creative writing, and how her novels impact her research. Narrative informs scientific research from the initial inquiry through the communication of findings. Speculative fiction draws on existing science, pushes research in new directions, and searches for the truth in alternative scenarios. Older will talk about her experience balancing and sometimes combining the two approaches to dealing with crucial issues for the present and the future.

Bio

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate. Her science fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is also the author of the sequels, Null States (2017) and State Tectonics (2018), as well as short fiction appearing in WIRED, Twelve Tomorrows, Reservoir Journal, Fireside Fiction, Tor.com and others. She was nominated for the 2016 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011.

Lunch will be served.