What If: The Fiction of the Future

Fantasy and science fiction stories have long embraced the darker themes of a dystopian future, and our fascination continues unabated in recent films and TV shows such as Children of Men, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Do these narratives speak to our fears of what the future will bring, or do they reflect the current reality in which the authors live and write? Is futuristic fiction pure escapism, or can it alter our destiny? Discussing these questions and more will be Bay Area authors Charlie Jane Anders (All the Birds in the Sky; The City in the Middle of the Night), and Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife), in conversation with Nilgun Bayraktar, a writer and professor at California College of the Arts.