Eliot Peper: Science Fiction & Culture

In this conversation, we talk with Eliot Peper the novelist behind great science fiction books like Reap3r, Veil, Cumulus, and Bandwidth.

Mentioned in this conversation

• Our World in Data
• Nadia Asparouhova's tweet
• Man in Space
• Oliver Morton's The Moon

Chapters

00:00 Introducing Eliot Peper
01:05 Curiosity about the present
04:32 Writing an absorbing story
07:22 Reap3r and the reader’s experience
10:55 Questions instead of a message
13:41 Ambition across different lives
16:21 Speculative technology in Reap3r
18:17 Progress, gratitude and dissatisfaction
24:05 Agency in a complicated world
28:26 How fiction influences builders
31:18 Borges and the imagination of the internet
33:10 Spaceflight and its cultural prehistory
37:16 Institutions, technology and scrutiny
40:03 Finding a bias toward action
42:28 Data, culture and patronage
44:39 Eliot’s books and where to find him

Links

• Eliot Peper — books and newsletter
• Our World in Data
• The Moon — Oliver Morton

• twitter
• Nadia Asparouhova's tweet
• Man in Space

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Build the Future Podcast. This is a project by World's Fair Co. You can learn more at worldsfair.org.