HIGH TECH LOW LIFE (fieldnotes)

Caitlin Jacobs writes science fiction and has a book in final edits that she is about to start querying. We get into why hopeful sci-fi is harder to write than the apocalyptic kind, and a law that says any useful idea about the future has to sound ridiculous first. Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/hopeful/Full interview on Patreon Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!

Wesley Herche spent years reading satellite imagery for the government and he works in solar now, and he’s building something he calls sovereign futures, which looks at centralized versus distributed technology and what that does to your sense of agency. We get into Snow Crash inspiring Google Earth, what Pakistan did with a pile of cheap Chinese panels, what sovereignty looks like for a town the size of mine, and why we should be talking about the future in the plural. Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/sovereignty/Full interview on Patreon Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!

Cyberpunk always imagines fighting the machines with better tech. Krissa is doing it with a paintbrush. She’s a watercolor artist who owns a studio in a historic building where everyone is welcome. We talk about making art feel possible for grown-ups, why bad art is still good for you, the pumpkin spice latte of sci-fi, a data center that runs on human brain cells, and why her shop’s new buttons say “support human hands, not AI.” Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/bluebird/Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!

What if the most important part of a Moon rocket is the people on the ground holding their breath? Nick helps put the Orion capsule on top of the rocket at Kennedy Space Center, and he calls himself the Lorax for Orion because he speaks for the spaceship. Cyberpunk almost never shows you who keeps the ships flying, so we get into what stacking a Moon rocket actually means (explained like I’m five), holding your breath at separation, fourteen plants and a lemon tree, and what has to stay true for space to belong to everyone. Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/orion/Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!

Fieldnotes are the minisodes between full episodes where I answer your questions and ramble a bit. Shayari Mukherjee, a scholar in South Asia, sent me a three part question I haven’t stopped thinking about. Is “low life” a required part of cyberpunk? Can the main character come from the high life? And can the high life ever not be the villain? So I take them in order and detour through Westworld and Frankenstein, and end up somewhere I wasn’t expecting. Tell me where I’m wrong, I love to hear it!! Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/high-tech-low-life/Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!

This is a show about where we’re actually headed as humans and about the people already building that future. It’s not the version where everything is fine or where it’s all over, but something slightly better every day. Guests are futurists, scientists, engineers, writers, and people in small towns quietly doing the work. There’s a lot of sci-fi lore mixed in, because the stories we tell about the future are part of how we get there. Show notes: aslightlybetterpod.com/episodes/hello/Free book club and more on Patreon Hosted and produced by Kire, better known as githugs PS I think about my patrons every time I hit record. Thank you for believing in me!!