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Setting the scene
Welcome to Imaginize World, where we hear from forward thinkers, activists and sci-fi visionaries. Today I am with Wole Talabi from Nigeria, author of some extraordinary science fiction stories with ideas that will stay with you for a long time. Well, hello, Wole. I’m so, so happy that we were able to arrange this.
WOLE
Me too. I’m very excited to talk to you. Thanks for reaching out, by the way.
JANE
You know what’s interesting? There’s a lot of discussion about Twitter and X, and if it weren’t for that, I could not have reached you.
WOLE
Yeah, it still serves that basic function of connecting people. There’s so many people I wouldn’t be able to reach outside of Twitter or X. It’s not as good as it used to be for connecting people to each other, for building communities, but it still has some residual function despite everything that’s happened to it.
JANE
I have been, as you know, doing some reading of your work, especially the Convergence Problems, and I have found myself really more than most people I read, most science fiction writers, completely immersed in a different world.
How Wole sees himself
I wanted to ask you first a question I ask everybody, how would you describe yourself, Wole, in one sentence? If I were to say to a friend of mine, “I met this guy, or I talked with this guy yesterday. He’s a…” How would you want me to finish the sentence?
WOLE
I’ll do you one better than a sentence. I usually use three words, engineer, writer, editor. Mostly in that order.
JANE
Engineer, writer, editor. That’s very interesting that engineer comes before writer.
WOLE
I see myself that way.
JANE
It sheds light somewhat on the detail in your stories and the angles you take. You have, I would say, a very real approach to things even though you’re in worlds that are far from real.
An underlying engineering mindset
In a sense, that’s kind of the central thrust of a lot of my formative thinking, is I tend to think of problems with an engineering mindset, which is trial and error is the way you fix things, right? You just need to try. And continuous improvement is usually the objective, not always a perfect solution, but something that works.
And I think of it in terms of practical problems. I think of it in terms of theoretical problems. I think of it in terms of people problems as well. How can we do things better at every point without always thinking of a perfect way? Just a way that works. And then, once we have a way that works, a way that works better every time. Thinking iteratively. So, that’s the foundation for a lot of my thinking process.
Converging to a better world
Is that part of the thinking behind the concept of the way you use the word convergence?
WOLE
In a way, yes. I like the term convergence and I like the term convergence problems even more. In the introduction to the book, I talk about a specific class of convergence problems, which is things you can run into when you try to simplify a more complex problem, and then you solve it, and it’s difficult to converge to a solution because you’re solving iteratively. You’ve made simplifications and you’re basically iterating to try to reduce the error between the real solution and your estimated or approximated solution. And sometimes it doesn’t always work, but people usually see that as a negative, right? If you run into convergence problems, it’s usually a negative. It’s something to be solved.
I generally find that convergence problems, yes, they can be annoying, but they can also be useful. They can tell you about bad assumptions. They can tell you where you have made a simplification that simply won’t work. Where you have made inconsistent foundational assumptions about the problem, and then you can go back and fix them.
So, yes, I tend to think of everything about converging towards better. One term I’ve used before is, I don’t think we’ll ever have a utopia, but I think we can asymptotically tend towards one, which is just constantly converging towards a better world that never achieves any kind of perfection, because it doesn’t exist, but you can constantly keep coming close to it even though you never get there. So, we are converging towards something that we will never actually reach. But in striving to do that, we will always be better, and that’s my optimistic take on humanity in general.
Is Africanfuturism limited to Africa?
Is that influenced in any way by what many people call Africanfuturism? A lot of things I’ve read about Africanfuturism seem relevant to all of us everywhere.
WOLE
Africanfuturism is a bit of an interesting term because if someone asks you, “What are the defining literary features of Africanfuturism?” It would be very difficult to point to specific markers and say, “It’s stories that contain this, that contain that. That use this particular style.” There’s no unifying literary feature of it. It’s more of a geographically influenced genre, where it’s focused on the continent of Africa, on the history, on the culture. It basically centers Africa and moves outwards.
And I think, sometimes that’s a misconception some people have is that they think every Africanfuturist story is only about Africa. But I think in my work, especially, in my Africanfuturist stories and in other Africanfuturist stories as well, some of Nnedi Okorafor’s works and Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s as well, the central focus of the story is African, but the theme that we are working with, the larger theme is something that applies generally, globally.
Finding the general in the specific
And that’s one of the things I love about reading science fiction from different parts of the world is finding the general in the specific. You read a story about a very specific cultural practice, a very specific philosophy that’s local to a very regional area, or a certain group of people, or a certain religion. And you realize that at the end of the day, the core foundational questions that they’re asking or problems you’re trying to work through are general human problems. But then, by looking at it through a very hyper-focused lens from one point of view that maybe you haven’t encountered before or just isn’t the dominant one that we’ve grown up with or been educated with, you get to see the problem from a different angle.
And I really enjoy that process. And I think, I try to read as widely as possible, translated stories, stories from all over the world, Latin America, Asia, not just books, but film. I think absorbing as much as you can from everywhere, even though those things might be hyper-specific, there’s a lot of general learning and important thinking that you can get from reading and consuming those kinds of stories from across the world.
JANE
Well, I saw that you have a story in this new anthology that just appeared called-
How Encore is a sequel to Debut
Deep Dream.
JANE
Deep Dream. And I was struck, although I realize you didn’t choose the title, you’re not the editor of the anthology, but I was surprised it was Deep Dream and not Deep Dreams with an S.
WOLE
It’s a reference to a bit of computer science history. I think Deep Dream was the name of the first computer program that was built that could generate, I think, art, or that attempted to generate art. It’s a play on that because the subtitle of the anthology is Science Fiction About the Future of Art. So, by referencing the first computer program that was used to try to create art, I guess it’s talking about the intersection of art and technology.
JANE
Your story is called Encore, and the first story in your Convergence Problems is Debut.
WOLE
And in fact, the two stories are related. Encore is a sequel to Debut. It takes place three million years after Debut. So, it’s a far future sequel. And I wanted to do something really different because a lot of my science fiction tends to be relatively near future, like 20 to at most, 100 years out from where we are.
JANE
Yes.
What is art in a world with no humans
I tend to imagine relatively near futures. So, I wanted to write a story that thought a bit really far past all that and jumped three million years in the future and play a lot with cosmic physics, but still trying to get at the heart of what art itself is and what it means. And in fact, the reason I chose to write a story that’s set three million years in the future is … It’s not really a spoiler to say there are no humans in this story. I wanted to remove humanity because I had a lot of discussions with friends and even when I was writing Debut, I had a lot of discussion with friends and other science fiction writers, philosophers, technologists in the field.
And two things that are extremely difficult to describe are artificial intelligence … Or, to define clearly are artificial intelligence and art. What is art? And it’s almost the impossible question. So, you’re dealing with two nebulous concepts that are very difficult to define. And every time I ask people to try to define art, they almost always defaulted to something human. And for this story about the future of art, I wanted to write about art in a general philosophical sense that was nonspecific to humans. So, Debut has an element of talking about art created by artificial intelligence. So, I just extrapolated that as far out as my brain would take me to have non-human characters and sentient beings creating art and what that would mean for them.
Transhumanism and a single living entity
It made me stop and think quite a lot. I bet it does that for other readers too. I came across a term recently called transhumanism. And you talked just a couple minutes ago, a couple seconds ago, about no longer any humans. And the whole transhumanism movement goes beyond humans as we know them today. And it has a second dimension from what I understand, of bringing humans together into like a single living entity that reflects all humans. And of course, that makes me think immediately of one of your stories. Could you talk a little bit about the ideas you have in A Dream of Electric Mothers? That’s a story that really grabbed me. What lies underneath this story for you? How did it happen?
WOLE
Right. So, several interesting things. The first one is a lot of people think that this story is a kind of futuristic story, set maybe a few hundred years in the future. It’s actually an alternate history story. It takes place in an alternate version of present day.
Consulting our ancestors with technology in a non human world
And so, how I arrived at this story, I’ll tell a bit of how I got here. A few years ago, I don’t know what happened, I barely remember it, but apparently I woke up in the middle of the night and sent an email to myself called ancestral computer, and that’s all that was in the email. And I don’t remember doing this, I just have the email with a timestamp and everything, and it was about 3:00 AM in the morning. And I woke up and I started trying to figure out, “What did I mean? What was I thinking? What was I dreaming about when I wrote this email to myself?” Because that’s sometimes how I take notes is I email myself things so I don’t forget them. So, apparently this made such a strong enough impression that I did this in my sleep. Right?
But then I started thinking about what would it mean to have an ancestral computer? What is an ancestral computer? And I started thinking about two things. The first one was the intersection of a lot of traditional African philosophies and technology. One thing that’s a big feature of traditional African cultural practices is consulting with the ancestors, ancestor veneration and ancestor consultation. And it’s very common to hear people say, “We’ll consult with the ancestors before we make a big decision.” So, I thought, “Okay, what if we took that from out of a mystical way of thinking, trying to reach spirits of the ancestors?”
Because the logic is sound, right? You want to learn from those that came before, people that care about you, that have a vested interest, but they’ve passed on. Let’s say we don’t go through a spiritual realm, we want to go through a technological one. That would mean we’d need a way of recording all of their thoughts, personalities, whatever their minds were. We need some system of recording it. So, I thought, “Okay. What if there was a computer, some kind of artificial intelligence made from the recorded brain patterns of the humans that have come before?” That’s basically an ancestral computer.
And then, the second thing I started thinking about was, in what kind of world would that approach of trying to merge a traditional African philosophical concept and cultural practice with modern technology, in what kind of world would we have arrived at that point? Because if you try to go to any modern computer science lab today and say, “I want to build a program based on ancestor consultation,” people will not take you seriously.
An alternate world where colonization never happened
So, I kept thinking, “What kind of world would they take that seriously?” And I thought, “An alternate world.” A world where say, the large scale colonization of Africa and the Americas and Asia never took place. That’s when these different cultures encountered each other instead of colonizing and essentially imposing language and belief and religion on each other, people had sat down and said, “You know what? You tell me what you think about the world. Share your philosophy with me and I’ll share mine with you.” And in that kind of world, you could have arrived at that point where there would be a merging or an attempted merging of African traditional practice and modern computer science techniques.
So, I decided I’m going to write it in a world where colonization never happened. So, you would see in the story Nigeria as a country doesn’t appear. I refer to the ancient Oyo Empire, which was the entity that occupied what is now western Nigeria at the time. And I imagine they’ve remained as a political entity. They’re now like a federated republic with a king, but also with ministers and a political structure. It’s democratic with a kind of semblance of monarchy remaining. And they use the traditional Yoruba calendar, which is why the dates it’s called the Kojoda. So, when I refer to the 15th year or the 30th year of the Kojoda, the Kojoda is like the traditional Yoruba calendar. And the years I refer to are actually the equivalent of 2018.
So, it’s an alternate history present day story about that idea of merging African traditional practice with what we think of as modern computer technology, to arrive at this idea of consulting with the ancestors through a computer.
How can we consult our ancestors today?
Don’t you think it would be a wise thing if more of us could what you call consult our ancestors before we make certain decisions?
WOLE
Absolutely.
JANE
I mean, the past, you can’t understand the future unless you are aware of the past. I believe that strongly. There must be ways.
WOLE
That is true.
JANE
Is there a way I can do that? Can you give me a recommendation? How would I do it?
WOLE
Right now, I’m not sure how you would practically do that, but we have ways where we attempt to do this. For example, basically recording information is already a kind of ancestral consultation. Right? There are lots of records remaining. Records are kept about things that were learned, how things work. Even the internet, in a sense, is a kind of reduced order ancestral consultation, because we are taking the lessons of history from the past.
A Dream of Electric Mothers and The Regression Test
But then what it’s missing is that kind of direct care because when information is recorded, it tends to be more generalized. My parents can leave me guidelines on, let’s say, a recipe, or how to take care of their house, or things that were important to them, but it’s difficult for them to leave me enough information to know what they would have wanted me to do in a specific unique situation that arises 20 years after they’ve passed on, for which they never experienced. And that’s the kind of thing that I’m thinking about in the Dream of Electric Mothers.
Now, it is possible that eventually we will develop enough technology to record our brain patterns, to understand how our minds work well enough that we can actually record them and save them and then use them for that kind of consultation. But I think that’s a future that we need to approach very carefully.
JANE
Isn’t that what underlies … As you’re speaking, that makes me think of your story, The Regression Test.
WOLE
Yes, indeed. And fun fact, there are shared characters between The Regression Test and A Dream of Electric Mothers. The main character names are actually the same. The woman who created the electric mothers, the computer, the ancestral computer is the same name of the character that is the one being consulted in The Regression Test, because I kind of imagined them as twin stories just on opposite sides of two different realities.
Stories outside time and space – Saturday’s Song
Something that comes across in a number of your stories is the times, the past and the future are like layers in the same space. It felt like it was under underlying your story of Saturday’s Song where I felt that the past, the present and the future were coming together in different layers, that they were experiencing going through the layers.
WOLE
Absolutely. Yeah. The main narrators of Saturday’s Song are embodied days of the week. And what they do is they tell stories. They tell stories of things that have happened, things that will happen, things that are happening. And the whole idea is when I think of these characters, I think of them as characters that sit outside of space and time.
JANE
So, I was going to ask you what those characters … Because I couldn’t get my head around what or who they were.
WOLE
They are representations of an abstract concept, which is the concept of storytelling itself, because that’s another one of my interests is, I strongly believe that the entire world and everything we experience and our entire reality is a story. It’s a story that we tell ourselves. Right? Our entire experience of the world is heavily dependent on the story that we tell ourselves about the world. Whenever anything happens to us, we construct a story about what happened, in order to give it meaning, in order to give our lives some kind of meaning, some kind of purpose. And it’s entirely possible two, three people experience the same thing and tell each other different stories about it. And when they tell the story of what happened to someone else, they will tell completely different stories because of that, because of what they believe. And what they believe is essentially the story they’ve told themselves.
Humans are all made of stories and stories can always converge
So, in a sense, I believe that humans are all made of stories. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but in a sense, there’s no objective reality. What we have is a consensus negotiated reality that basically sits on the parts of all our stories that we agree on, and that is what becomes our reality. So, to me, by having these beings that represent the process of storytelling itself, sitting outside of space and time, telling you the story of characters in Saturday’s Song, that gives me the ability to talk about the past, about the future, about the present, all at the same time, and tell stories from a different, sometimes more interesting way.
JANE
I was just struck, Wole, while you were speaking, of politics. When I think about the fact there’s such a split in the United States today, if we want to simplify things, it seems to me that each side or each version is a different story, very simply.
WOLE
Yes. Yes. Essentially, yes.
JANE
So, as an expert in stories, how can opposing stories that actually are creating dangers because of their opposition, I’m going to use your word, how can they converge? Or, can they?
WOLE
I think stories can always converge. I think what essentially needs to happen, and again, I’m not an expert on politics, but I think what needs to happen is people need to first of all, find the commonality in their story. Whatever that is, it has to be the touch point. It’s the part where you tie things together. And then, from there you can start negotiating the rest.
Usually, what I found, when you talk to people that have been on opposing sides of something for a long time, what you tend to find is they might describe the exact same event, which is, “Someone said something to me.” Or, “This person said this word,” and then the thing that matters about the story diverges. Somebody says, “The word you said was wrong.” And somebody says, “Well, the way you responded to me was really aggressive and made me feel threatened, so I needed to do something else.” And then the other person says, “Well, you did something and because of that, I had to protect myself.” And that’s where the story start to diverge, right? You have this root event that they both agree on, but everybody disagrees on how it impacted them. And then, they move apart and it becomes a cycle of reacting and reacting to that reaction, and reacting to the next reaction. And you just see-saw all the way.
Social media locks you in your echo chamber
So, if it’s possible to come back to that original point where we agree on what happened and finding some commonality in what we agree on, and then try to negotiate from there. That’s usually the point where the reconciliation can happen. The problem is it takes effort. It takes effort, and it takes a willingness to step back and listen to the other person’s story. And unfortunately, I think in particular, technology and social media, technology in particular, has made that more difficult, because it’s very easy to sink into your own, everybody says it, the echo chamber.
Social media algorithms are designed to basically lock you in your echo chamber, to keep showing you the things that you like specifically. You like things, the algorithm learns what you like and shows you more like that. And in fact, it drives more towards an extreme, right? If you like something that’s slightly right wing, it will show you something more right wing next time, hoping you like it even more. And then before you know it, you’ve shifted all the way full right. Or, if you’re even slightly left, it will keep showing you more and more in that direction until you’re all the way to another extreme.
JANE
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when you like something, they show you something slightly different, in a different direction? And if you like that, maybe they take you in a different direction. And they could do it if they wanted to. I say they, sort of this abstract they, could make sure that the algorithm is not digging deeper into what you like, but it’s taking you along different paths.
WOLE
I believe it would require a fundamental rethinking of what social media is and what the function of the internet is. And I think that’s the discussion a lot of people are avoiding having, because right now it is being treated as a profit-generating tool. But if you think about it, this is the natural end point of that. It is the number one currency online with social media and with all algorithms is they want engagement.
JANE
Yes.
WOLE
They want you to engage with something. They don’t care how you engage. The quality of the engagement is not important, it’s quantity. They want you to spend time watching, commenting, whatever it is.
Looking for enragement, not engagement, an end point
Now, if making you angry will do that, perfectly fine. That works for them too. If making you fall in love with something will do that, they’ll do that too. It’s completely irrelevant how you respond. What matters is that you respond and you respond frequently and to a high degree. The more extreme the reaction, the better. I remember reading a book that described it not as looking for engagement but actually looking for enragement. The more they enrage you, the better it is, because enragement is guaranteed to produce a response. Angry comments. You want to troll other people. You want to get back at them, so you follow what they’re writing and you comment on everything. The current structure of social media algorithms is designed to be divisive.
It can help connect people to each other. Tools in general are neutral. Right? I strongly believe that technological tools are neutral, but the application that we put towards them, the objective function that we set for any tool will dictate how it’s used. And if the objective of social media algorithms is to generate ad revenue by getting people’s attention or engagement, then this is the natural endpoint and no one should be surprised that it is divisive, producing extreme reactions, making people angry, stressed out, unhappy, because those are all things that get you reacting.
Something that makes you relaxed and thoughtful could produce a response, but it’s not a quick, rapid, frequent response. Something that makes you thoughtful, you go away and you think and you relax a little bit and maybe you write a nice essay that you’ve thought about for a few weeks and processed, but that’s not what they want. They want angry comments, three to five angry comments every day. You see stuff and you’re like, “Yes,” or, “no,” or, “This is terrible.” Or, “This is the worst thing in the world.”
A ministry of the internet
That fundamental rethinking, I think has to happen, in which case, my personal thoughts on it is that you almost need to set up a ministry of the internet, a kind of global entity whose job is to maintain the internet as a tool for education and connection, not for profit. And that ministry could be made up of individuals from all over the world, from different companies that have vested interests, internet service providers, service providers on the internet, everyone. Some kind of consortium that will naturally negotiate for what the internet should be doing. So, there will be some aspect of ad generation and engagement. There will be some aspect of education. But there will also be some aspect of connecting people, some aspect of breaking people out of their usual echo chambers. All of that will naturally come out, the more people you have trying to make that negotiation. But right now, all we have is a bunch of CEOs trying to generate profit through engagement.
JANE
I presume you’ve read Kim Stanley Robinson’s book The Ministry for the Future?
WOLE
I have, yes. Great book.
JANE
When you were speaking, of course, I thought of that, because I was just going to suggest that you write one of your stories … You’re optimistic about the future. Why not write a story about how social media is used or has been used to completely transform the world? I say has been, because I’m putting myself into the future, the present and the future, like you do. I think that could make a very interesting story.
WOLE
Me too. I would love to write it as well. I’ve been thinking about it. I have been thinking about it quite a bit. I’ve read a little bit on how social media has been used in the last 10 years or so, and there’s seeds for a story. So, don’t be surprised if you see one in the next year or two. I’m busy working on my next novel now, but once I’m done with that, that’s definitely a story idea I want to pursue.
Science fiction leads to STEM careers and economic development
Good. I’ll wait for it. I wanted to change directions a little bit. You talk about how people who are interested in or write science fiction often end up in STEM professions.
WOLE
That’s probably referencing an essay I wrote about almost 10 years ago now, I think.
JANE
2016, it was, I think. Yes. Yes.
WOLE
2016. Yes, eight years ago. Called Why Africa Needs to Create More Science Fiction. In that essay, I cite several studies, so it’s not a conclusion I made up myself. There have been several studies asking people in STEM careers whether they read science fiction as children and if they believe that it influenced their choices. And in almost all of the studies, the answer is yes. There’s a significant majority that felt that science fiction influenced their choices.
I am one of those people. Reading science fiction as a child definitely had a big impact on my interest in engineering and trying to understand how the world works. Not just engineering, but even philosophy generally. My interest in that came through science fiction as well. And I also did an informal poll among certain people I knew, right? Not that many people, it was a small sample size, but many of them agreed that science fiction had influenced their choice to go into STEM careers. And having a lot of people in STEM careers is also directly linked through multiple statistical studies to having a higher development index. Yeah, national development index. So, I was trying to make this link between science fiction and development, and that’s how I made it is through these two related studies.
And then, I cited a story that was actually told by another author, Neil Gaiman, who had been invited to a science fiction event in China. Apparently he had been approached by a Chinese official, and he was asking them … Because he knew that previously in China, science fiction had been looked down on. It was thought of as being too floating in the air, too far out. It’s not practical. They wanted people to be thinking about the here and now. And so, he was asking these Chinese officials, “So, why now? Why are you embracing science fiction now?” And the answer was something to the effect of, “China has already caught up to a lot of technological development right now. They’ve learned a lot by working with other countries, manufacturing, moving as quickly forward as they could, and they believe they’re competing at present with a lot of technological developments, but now they want to think about how they can come up with things that haven’t been done before.
Science fiction stimulates the imagination
They’ve been able to copy and do as well as what already exists, but they want to come up with new things. And they found that their students were very bad at coming up with new ideas. They were very good at executing existing ones or applying existing theory, but not coming up with new ones. And so, they thought science fiction, things that stimulate the imagination would be important for China’s future development.”
And that struck me as well as seeming very true, because even in my own personal experience, I had classmates that studied engineering and I could always tell the difference between the more imaginative ones and the ones that basically just read the textbook, followed the same old formulas and just reproduced what they had been taught. And there were a few of us that liked to think, “Well, what if you change the basic assumptions? What if we try it a different way?” And almost invariably, we tended to be the ones that loved science fiction, film, literature, things like that. There seemed to be a correlation there. And so, it fits with this anecdote from Neil Gaiman about his trip to China and what this Chinese official said.
So, I strongly believe that not just science fiction specifically, even though it’s the best example, but any of the imaginative sciences and practices are important for us to be able to dream up better futures, to converge towards a better future. We need to be able to imagine it and then move towards it.
JANE
Well, that’s the motto of my website Imaginize World, that you have to be able to imagine it before you can create it. I know a number of people have said it in the past, but I got it specifically and personally from Stanley Chen Qiufan, the Chinese science fiction writer, who was actually my first guest. We met together physically face-to-face in Paris. It was an incredible afternoon. I have sort of taken that quote for the Imaginize website. And I like the fact that you talk about imagination quite often in your conversations and writings.
Society stagnates when people stop imagining
I think it’s absolutely essential. Coming from Nigeria, one thing I quickly realized was one way that a society stagnates is when its people stop imagining things. And I noticed a lot of people were so beat down by the political situation, by the economic situation that they couldn’t imagine anything, right? They were so, understandably, occupied with the fundamental issues of food and safety and shelter that there was no time to imagine. And because there was no time to imagine, there was very little resistance to what existed in the country. It was all just about, “How do I survive in the current space?”
But I think imagination is necessary for resistance because resistance sometimes requires sacrifice. And if you can’t imagine what you’re sacrificing for, then it will never seem worth it.
Less might be better than endless growth
Right. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you that are considered … I position them to be like a quick question and a quick answer. One of my questions is, what’s a major misconception that people believe about the future?
WOLE
I think a major misconception is that the future looks like the present but with more of what we currently have. I strongly believe that less might actually be the better way to go. And when I say less, I mean less skyscrapers, less hectic traffic, less metal and glass in the sky. Thinking more of reducing and going back to a kind of balance as opposed to this idea of endless growth. I think a lot of people believe that the future represents endless growth and some sense of development meaning more, but development can mean less.
Everyday acts of thought, kindness and imagination
What is one thing that gives you hope for the future?
WOLE
One thing that gives me hope for the future, it’s definitely just people. Like seeing everyday acts of kindness and everyday acts of thought and imagination from people. That’s the source of all my hope is actually people, because as much as the world can seem difficult sometimes, you can always find someone trying to help others, trying to come up with something that will make other people’s lives better, sacrificing themselves to help other people, and that always gives me hope.
Alternate energy sources are critical
What is one innovation that you think will be really important that will help define our future in the next 50 years?
WOLE
I won’t get into anything too specific, but I strongly believe that the development of alternate energy sources, large-scale, industrial energy sources will actually be critical in the next 50 years. They will facilitate the energy transition, which we are currently in. When we get them out large scale and scale them up, they will make a significant difference in the world.
Each generation improves connectivity and communication
Can you think of one thing that the next generation will be better at, will do better than we do?
WOLE
I believe every generation has been better at the previous at communicating, communicating at scale. And I think the next generation will take the lessons we have learned from social media, which is basically a mass communication tool, and they will do it better. They will find better ways to apply it. They will be able to form cross-national societies. They will be able to take action and organize themselves. They’ll find ways to use this connectivity, almost instantaneous connectivity across the globe, to do better things than we have.
Wole’s work in the future
Okay. Those are interesting answers. I want to just close with a couple questions about you and your future, if I may dare to ask a futurist about his own future. First of all, what are you the proudest of in your work so far?
WOLE
That’s a really hard question. That is a really hard question. I’m proud of almost everything I write. If not, I wouldn’t publish it. Every story has different things I’m proud of in them. Some of them, I’ve challenged myself to do different things.
I suppose if I had to pick one for today, my answer will be my novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, which is not even a science fiction novel at all, but it’s a fantasy novel. And I guess, I will say I’m quite proud of it because … And number one, I never thought I would write a novel. I’ve always been more drawn to short stories and the short form. So, writing the novel represented an achievement of sorts for me, that I could even do it. And two, it’s been incredibly well received. It’s been nominated for, I believe, nine major awards now.
JANE
Wow. Congratulations. I didn’t realize that.
WOLE
Thank you.
JANE
That’s wonderful.
WOLE
Yeah. Well, I’m surprised as well. It’s won two of them. And yeah, it seems to have really struck a chord with people. So, I would say yes, that’s one I’m quite proud of that.
JANE
I like the fact that you say it really struck a chord with people. My impression after this short conversation is you’re very much a people person. And so, if one of your works strikes a … No?
WOLE
I am, in a sense. Let’s say, I believe in people. Am I a people person in the traditional sense that I like to be out and about and talking with people and all of that? Perhaps, no. I can be a bit of an introvert. I can be very focused on myself at times. But I like the idea of people. Let’s say, I’m an idea of people person. I believe in people as a concept. I believe in connection and connectivity. Do I revel in it? Maybe not.
JANE
How do you see your career continuing? What are your next … Well, you said you’re writing a book now or a story.
WOLE
Yes. I’m writing a novel, yes, a science fiction novel. So, that’s probably what’s going to be next for me. I do have a few short stories coming out soon. One just came out today, which we talked about earlier, called Encore. I have another short story, which is more of a literary horror story, coming out later in the month, closer to Halloween. It’s called Unquiet on the Eastern Front. And it’s set during World War II, in East Africa during World War II. Features a monster from East African myth. So, that’s a story coming out later this year. And then, yeah, hopefully after that something will come out next year. I don’t know. But then beyond that should be the novel.
Looking at connection in unique and different ways that change the fundamental human experience
Do you see your work evolving in any particular direction? I would say philosophically or idea-wise, where are you moving to?
WOLE
I think my work is definitely evolving. I think, I started very much as a near-future science fiction kind of author. And the more I write and the more I think, the more I think a bit about the far future. So, my work is drifting a bit in that direction, but not just the far future. Even when I still write near-future stories, I’m thinking a lot about human connection and connectivity and how technology enables that and what it can make us. Right? So, you talked a bit about transhumanism, about post-humanism. Those are things I’m thinking about quite a bit. And they’re showing up more and more in my stories about technology enabling connection in unique and different ways that change the fundamental human experience.
JANE
Well, that’s an interesting path you are on, or interesting, I don’t know to call it a path or a direction. It sounds too linear talking to you, when I talk about a path or a direction, but maybe a flow. I’m going to call it a flow. Interesting flow that you’re in.
WOLE
Yeah. Thank you very much for this very engaging, and I actually think, yeah, fun conversation. Very thoughtful questions. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate talking to you. And hopefully more people imaginize the world as we go on.
JANE
Thank you. I think Imaginize World people will be delighted to discover you.
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