https://doctorow.medium.com/welcome-to-the-palmerverse-c456be1241e2
"Today in
Wired, Gregory Barber profiles my friend, colleague and
collaborator Ada Palmer, an extraordinary writer, librettist, historian,
scholar, activist and performer:
<
https://www.wired.com/story/ada-palmer-sci-fi-future-weird-hand-progress/>
Palmer has just wrapped up
Terra Ignota, her four-volume series depicting a
deeply weird and uncomfortable future that is informed by her world-class
scholarship into Renaissance history (she’s a tenured U Chicago history prof
who specializes in the suppression of forbidden knowledge during the
Inquisitions).
https://us.macmillan.com/series/terraignota
The
Wired profile gets into the book’s odd contours — the deeply alien and
marvellously plausible social norms it depicts — and connects them to Palmer’s
historical work. As she is fond of saying, “We know less than 1% of what
happened 500 years ago, and at least two-thirds of what we know is wrong.”
Terra Ignota depicts a world where our major problems — climate, war,
shortage — have been addressed, where nation-states have been replaced by
sprawling affinity groups (you can live anywhere and be an EU citizen, but you
can also be a “citizen” of FIFA), and where distance has been conquered by
hypersonic sub-orbital flying cars.
And yet, this is a fraught place, and one where the social conventions are as
far from our own as the mores of the Renaissance. People in Palmer’s world do
not discuss gender or religion, and have a taboo on discussing which gender
they identify with. They live in “bashes” — communal polyamorous households —
and tolerate invasive censorship in the private and public realm as the price
of peace."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
