Elvia Wilk

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  interviews Mar/Apr/May 2022

  Every Witch Way

  ELVIA WILK: I wanted to tell you that I had a dream in the Dark Star universe last night.

  MARLON JAMES: Oh, wow.

  It was intense. I’ve been rereading your books in anticipation for this meeting. I think some hyenas visited me last night.

  Hopefully they came in solidarity. You really don’t want to be on their bad side.

  They were definitely chasing me toward this interview. I guess they knew that I was excited to talk about your new book.

  Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead, $30) is the second in the Dark Star Trilogy. The first book, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, set up a sprawling universe and

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  culture Summer 2020

  What’s Happening?

  IN 1974 DORIS LESSING PUBLISHED MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR, a postapocalyptic novel narrated by an unnamed woman, almost entirely from inside her ground-floor apartment in an English suburb. In a state of suspended disbelief and detachment, the woman describes the events happening outside her window as society slowly collapses, intermittently dissociating from reality and lapsing into dream states. At first, the basic utilities begin to cut out, then the food supply runs short. Suddenly, rats are everywhere. Roving groups from neighboring areas pass through the yard, ostensibly escaping even worse

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  fiction Feb/Mar 2019

  Net Loss

  In his recent book New Dark Age, James Bridle describes the current internet era as one of draconian, top-down control. Blind belief in computation has led to a disastrous imbalance of power, networked technology is being weaponized for mass surveillance, and algorithmic governance is sapping political agency from citizens. Tim Maughan’s novel Infinite Detail takes up Bridle’s thesis by imagining its antithesis: What if the internet kill switch were flipped? Assuming networked technology is the primary enabler of our ongoing political nightmare, what would happen if it just—shut off? As it