The importance of being Analog and more with Eliot Peper

“Everything we do, everything we believe, everything we are, we think it’s ours to choose ... But even something as inconsequential as wanting a lawn in front of our homes isn’t a true choice. It’s the product of a never-ending series of historical accidents. We take the world we’re born into for granted. We imagine we control our thoughts and dreams. We think we’re free to be who we want to be. But there’s this hidden architectute that shapes us, and we don’t even know it. It’s like we’re actors in a play who don’t realize we’re working off a script.” ~ Quote from Bandwidth

What if a someone had access to your most private moments, and used them to influence, not only what you buy, or who you vote for, but your very moral compass? What if they used it to make you do “good”? What if a corporate entity that the world depends on started taxing countries -- say for their carbon emissions? What if they announced themselves a separate nation, and in the process created radical changes in the world -- open borders, a curb on climate change, experimented with fixes for economic inequality? What sort of world would this create? Would the ends justify the means? With his Analog series, Eliot Peper digs into these uncomfortable questions.

“After responding to natural disaster after natural disaster you eventually start to realize that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster. There are only human disasters revealed by nature.” ~ Quote from Veil

In Veil, he steps up the thrills. Not satisfied with hacking people, he wonders what would happen if we hacked the climate, and comes up with a thriller that is epic in scope and yet deeply personal.

In this session, we’ll discuss the Analog series (Bandwidth, Borderless, Breach) and Veil with Eliot Peper.

About the speaker: Eliot Peper is the author of Veil, Cumulus, Neon Fever Dream, the Uncommon Series, and the Analog Series. His speculative thrillers have been praised by the New York Times Book Review, Popular Science, San Francisco Magazine, Businessweek, io9, BoingBoing, Polygon, and Ars Technica. He has helped build technology businesses, survived dengue fever, translated Virgil’s Aeneid from the original Latin, worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm, and explored the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Mustang. His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, the Verge, Tor.com, TechCrunch, VICE, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he has been a speaker at Google, Comic Con, SXSW, Future in Review, and the Conference on World Affairs. He publishes a blog, sends a monthly newsletter, tweets more than he probably should, and lives in Oakland, CA.

About the moderators:

T G Shenoy is an SFF enthusiast, a columnist and critic. Shenoy hosts To Boldly Go, a fun SFF quiz every Saturday.

VIjayalakshmi Harish is a columnist, writer, and author of Strangely Familiar Tales.

Participation is via Zoom for registered participants. Alternatively, you can watch the livestream here and post comments on https://hasgeek.com/bookclub/eliot-peper/comments

Contact details: For queries, write to info@hasgeek.com or call 7676332020