Stories are good; stories are dangerous. We know this, if from nothing else, then from stories themselves. Stories save Scheherazade; stories drive Don Quixote mad. How do we tell the difference?
Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters came out in November 2019. She is a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and her opinions can be found in The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and NBC THINK, among other places.
Stories are good; stories are dangerous. We know this, if from nothing else, then from stories themselves. Stories save Scheherazade; stories drive Don Quixote mad. How do we tell the difference?