Altruism and AI: A Q&A with Erika Swyler
An untouchable class, wide-spread house systems, a bio surgeon and her sentient AI at the dawn of a budding revolution. Erika Swyler’s We Lived on the Horizon is a razor sharp, speculative take on the future of artificial intelligence, a study of extreme altruism and hope for humanity at the end of the world. Read on for an exclusive Q&A with Erika on writing We Lived on the Horizon.
Hardcover $28.99
We Lived on the Horizon: A Novel
We Lived on the Horizon: A Novel
By Erika Swyler
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.99
The acclaimed author of the “dazzling” (Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Book of Speculation returns with an engrossing new novel about a bio-prosthetic surgeon and her personal AI as they are drawn into a revolution.
The acclaimed author of the “dazzling” (Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Book of Speculation returns with an engrossing new novel about a bio-prosthetic surgeon and her personal AI as they are drawn into a revolution.
IM: My name is Isabelle McConville, and I’m the blog writer here at Barnes & Noble. I am so excited to be here with Erika Swyler, author of The Book of Speculation, Light from Other Stars, and most recently, We Lived on the Horizon. Erika, thank you so much for being here today.
ES: Oh, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
IM: Can you please start by setting up the story of your new novel for us?
ES: It’s set in the far future. We’re in a walled and wired city called Bulwark, overseen by an AI called Parallax. Parallax determines everybody’s contribution to society through the work and labor that they do. Instead of a monetary system, it’s a stratified society where there is a class called the Sainted who have helped to build the city in the past and live off the previous altruism that their families have given. There are working classes as well, and then there’s a group of folks called Body Martyrs who engage in extreme altruism, donating organs and life hours to help keep society alive and thriving. From there, as with all stratified societies, some unrest takes place.
IM: Where did this novel really start for you?
“Influences come from a lot of different areas, but it really started from a place of extreme political anger.”
ES: It takes me a long time to write books. Influences come from a lot of different areas, but it really started from a place of extreme political anger. I was driving around, listening to a piece on NPR about extreme altruism. Folks who do things like blind kidney donations — they’ll go into a hospital and donate a kidney to a total stranger and encourage other folks to do so. The piece was exploring how altruists’ brains are shaped differently and how altruists are necessary for all societies. It really got me thinking about how governments exploit altruists in order to continue. At the same time, there was a lot of interest in large language models and AI building. So, I started to wonder, what would happen if an AI was designed from an altruistic perspective? What would be good for the largest amount of people, for the planet itself, for humanity, rather than tech profits? Combining these ideas is how this book came about.
IM: I’d like to talk about structure for a minute; this is a polyphonic novel, giving us multiple point of views and character voices. What made you want to write the novel this way, and did you know you wanted to write it like this from the start?
ES: I usually don’t have too much of an idea about structure from the start, because story for me is usually nonlinear. When I think about story, it’s usually the effects of an entire world on one person. In We Lived on the Horizon, I wanted to think about how to tell a story from the perspective of a world. When you’re in a novel that’s dealing heavily with class, it’s important to be able to show what life and existence is for all classes. Class only continues to exist because we’re not allowed to see each other. I wanted to explore what happens when those divisions become a little more porous and these classes start interacting together, how that changes everybody. It felt essential to have different perspectives, different voices, and for the city itself to have a voice. That felt like the story to me, and in some ways, became the plot. I wanted everything to interact with one another so that it’s a world moving forward, and not just an individual character.
IM: I really enjoyed reading from each different perspective. We have so many great characters in this novel. Is there a specific voice that you favored more over another?
“I wanted to play with the question of whether I could have sympathy and empathy for something that is born of a machine.”
ES: That’s difficult, because they’re all very different to spend time in. I think the most difficult one for me to write — and then became the one I ultimately have the most affection for — is Nix. Nix is a sentient house system, and they’re a plural consciousness, which is why they are a they. I was figuring out how to approach that in a way that felt both relatable and not human. I wanted to play with the question of whether I could have sympathy and empathy for something that is born of a machine. That became a really interesting place for me to play in and identify with. I think when I’m in my grouchy moods, it was very fun to write as Enita, because she’s older, she’s very set in her ways, very sure of who she is, while also discovering that she might also have room for improvement. That felt like a place I could understand and also see for myself as I move forward in aging.
IM: Yes, Nix’s chapters were really compelling to me. I think they were my favorite voice; I was really interested in watching their evolution into deeper consciousness over the course of the book. I wonder what it was like to write that and how you approached their evolving voice?
ES: I think what I’ve always wanted to see more of in speculative fiction — well, in fiction in general — is anyone that’s playing with the idea of a robot. The idea of an Android or an artificial intelligence hasn’t necessarily dealt with being in a body the way I really want to explore, because being in a body is a trauma in a lot of ways. Everything you ever experienced pain wise, and that includes emotion, you experience through the body. That’s something that an artificial creation, isn’t starting out with. My thought process for Nix and how they would change had to be directly related to physical sensation and exploration of this entire new way of being. That led to a natural progression of their character. I was thinking a lot about children and watching toddlers in particular when they’re just learning how to run. It’s this war against accepting and defying gravity at the same time. That felt very much like what Nix’s developmental process in a body had to be.
IM: I particularly enjoyed watching them study mannerisms. I thought that was so fun to read, and very surreal. I was also really drawn to Davet; they are a Parallax Assessor and Tomas’ part-time lover. They serve as kind of a foil to Nix; they’re a human becoming more and more like a machine. What interests you about that relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence?
“We’re not getting rid of tech in general, so the only way we can really conceive of a future is to think of people-forward tech.”
ES: I wanted to write about it because I think people don’t really understand what’s being presented as artificial intelligence right now. We’re being told that this is a search engine — it’s not. It’s something that will help you with a thought process — it’s not. I wanted to live in this world where we had machines and we had artificial intelligence that actually were those things, to highlight those differences. I think when we’re talking about artificial intelligence right now, there is a disconnect with the communication that this is a math problem, this is an algorithm. This is the thing that autocorrects your F words to ducks. This is it. It’s just that on steroids, at the moment. I wanted to highlight the difference between that and find ways where if you look at things from an altruistic perspective, how it could work in favor. That’s far, far in the future when we have established more moral and ethical frameworks around how to deal with technology and humanity. We’re not getting rid of tech in general, so the only way that we can really conceive of a future is to think of people-forward tech. The only way to do that is to have more humans involved on a more intimate level in a way that represents large amounts of people and not just technocrats.
IM: I do think that really comes through in the book. I’ve never read anything like it — who are your major influences for a story like this?
ES: I think from the political system to things falling apart and developing what utopias are, you really can’t go wrong with Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. I think as far as the community building and the revolutionary aspects, I’d say Octavia Butler. So much is built off her, and I wanted to see what that looked like in a farther future, because we are currently living in Octavia Butler’s imagined time. I wanted to blow that up and move it forward.
IM: Even back to ancient times, humanity has always looked ahead and looked forward to what we think the future might look like, especially with the uncertainty we’re dealing with now. Why do you think that we’re drawn to these kinds of stories about dystopian worlds and far away futures?
“We write about the future to promise ourselves that there is a way out of the current moment and to posit a way of being better.”
ES: It’s the easiest way to talk about the present without getting yourself thrown in jail. Everything that I was writing about when I first started thinking about this around 2014 or 2015 was current then, and it’s still current now. The only real change is that I’m extrapolating some tech and I’m extrapolating on the divisions that we’re currently seeing. We write about the future to promise ourselves that there is a way out of the current moment and to posit a way of being better. Most dystopias have a hero’s journey with a narrative built out of it, there’s a taking down of the government and whatnot. I think it’s a banner for people that says, ‘okay, I might not be the one, but I can participate. I can help see forward.’ That’s what I wanted to focus on with this book. There is no ‘the one’ saving the day single-handedly. It’s more of a communal effort, and it gives a sense of what actual movements look like.
IM: You saying that this book has more of a focus on the communal aspect of revolutions makes me think about the Sainted class and how they function in this novel. There’s a quote from the book here that says, “Being Sainted was akin to being dead; you needed no accomplishment, no action, all achievement had already been done.” That really floored me. What made you want to write about this idea of generational poverty versus wealth in the sense of these life credits and life debts?
“The way we connect with each other is ultimately far more sustaining than somebody isolated who has no real sense of accomplishment or value.”
ES: It came about because of the billionaire class at the moment. If you look at their behaviors, what money goes towards and what they actually do, it’s nothing. It is literally nothing. They produce nothing, and by and large, they seem like incredibly unhappy people. I wanted to take that apart and say, well, why? Can there still be a person in here and how do we shift that? As far as generational poverty, there is in a lot of spaces more social richness as far as mutual aid, people taking care of each other and just a sense of community. I’m not saying one will be happy when one is poor — society is not designed that way — but the way we connect with each other is ultimately far more sustaining than somebody isolated who has no real sense of accomplishment or value. Their value is literally digits in a bank account. I wanted to play with who’s living, who’s using their body for what, and who’s actually contributing to society.
IM: I liked how you used Enita’s character to really get that across. After being born into this privilege and influence, we get to see her grapple with the question of what she owes to society. I think that was a really great part of the book.
ES: Thank you. I think with Enita, I wanted to take apart that monolith and examine what happens if you’re someone who’s been born into privilege, but you have this real sense of needing to do something. What does that look like? How do you behave as someone who’s seeking to get outside of that bubble, outside of that walled space? For Enita, that creates a lot of friction. Ultimately, it was a real interesting place for me to be, as far as also being a middle-aged person and only getting older, thinking about what you want to have made of your life and do you want to let that be restricted by your class, your upbringing, and situations that you had no direct impact on. You were just born into them. It was a good place for me to be.
IM: I really loved seeing her interact with Helen as well, who has a different outlook on society and history, who is also born into this privilege and influence like Enita.
“History is cyclical, and this is why speculative fiction and science fiction are often seen as prescient, because we’re just drawing from history entirely.”
ES: Helen was an interesting character for me to write because Helen encompasses all my own personal paranoia at the moment, my own knowledge of history, and also a little bit of my theater background. There’s a speech that Helen gives towards the end of the book that is my own translation of a speech by Ismene in Antigone. History is cyclical, and this is why speculative fiction and science fiction are often seen as prescient, because we’re just drawing from history entirely, and history is cyclical. We’re looking at the past and understanding that these things rise again. Helen has all of those same fears that I have sitting in the back of my brain. She’s not me, but she’s that part of me.
IM: Lastly, who are you reading now?
ES: I have just finished reading Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die by Arianna Rebolini. I want everybody to get this book when it comes out. It’s a literary analysis of literature on depression and suicidality, and a life literary analysis. I think it will touch people who haven’t felt seen by books of this nature so far. It’s really, really good. For absolute fun, I am reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, and it’s a blast. I am very slowly savoring Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell and it is so good. I’m reading all over the map and these are just the wonderful books that are keeping me going and giving me a lot of hope.
IM: Thank you so much for doing this today, Erika.
ES: Thank you so much for reading. It’s lovely to be read so thoughtfully.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.