This program origionally aired on 8-29-17.
Great advancements in technology certainly assist everyday life, but these advancements often inflict people with dread.
On this edition of Talk of Iowa, Charity Nebbe speaks with two novelists, Benjamin Percy and Alissa Nutting, who reflect these anxieties in their work.
"Right now, we don't understand how our technology works, despite how heavily we rely on it," says Percy. "You spend most of your day turning your face toward a screen, but you have no idea how your smart phone functions. And all around us, there are these signals flowing through the air. It occurred to me that we are living in a new kind of wilderness, a digital wilderness, and there haven't been that many stories that have wrestled with it."
Percy's most recent book is titled "The Dark Net," that mixes old fashioned horror, high tech monstrosities, and current events. He will be reading at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City tonight at 7 pm and Pioneer Bookshop in Grinnell at 6 pm on Thursday. He’ll also be leading a round table discussion as part of the Writers at Grinnell series.
Nutting is the author of "Made for Love," which looks like a romance novel, but is dark, smart, scary, and funny. Nutting's book recently received a rave review in the New York Times book review. Nutting is also a faculty member at Grinnell College.
