In The Logoharp, a human-cyborg hybrid, dissatisfied with her life and the abuse of political power, works as a journalist tasked with foreseeing and reporting on future events. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I was a science journalist and later, a multimedia and journalism studies professor in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and most recently Nairobi on a Fulbright Scholarship (2018-2019). With the emergence of the Internet and the rise of disinformation, deepfakes and AI-authored news stories, much of journalism has morphed from a fact-based practice into a mishmash of opinion, partisan backtalk and skewed predictions about election outcomes, candidates, policies and ideas. Too many media organizations jump to “report the future” by cherry picking present-day events and personalities. Meanwhile, important information and context are being ignored.

Our collective media obsession with ‘eyeball’ count and celebrity allowed me to imagine a world in which there is little security and no objective reality, only the reality of trumped up journalism in “reverse.” As communication and security expert Hamilton Bean described it, “The Logoharp creates a troublesome vision of media that borders on propaganda in an AI-filled future.”

There is a lot of time and care spent with descriptions and building the setting and tone of the story. Was this out of necessity to develop the depth of the story, or was it something that happened naturally as you were writing?

The descriptions from China, Hong Kong and “Ameriguo” in The Logoharp come from deep-seated memories of these countries. I’ve lived and worked in all of them. To me, developing authentic physical landscapes in the novel was a necessity to convince readers that my heroine Naomi’s story was both believable and important.

I think it’s important for writers to pay attention to the concrete, sensory world. I started early, right after college, studying both classical and modern Chinese language and culture in Taiwan. From there, I had an extraordinary opportunity to travel and work throughout Asia, then Europe, then Africa, taking notes and photographs, producing a surround-sound mental canvas on which I populated my characters. Establishing the novel’s setting and tone was entirely organic (lots of drafts), though the descriptions of sky tunnels and ocean luges came right out of my imagination. Of course, I was inspired by the likes of Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son), Ursula LeGuin, Liu Cixin, Doris Lessing, Harper Lee, Manuel Puig and so many others. All these writers display both an acute visual and kinetic sense in their work.

Is there any moral or idea that you hope readers take away from the story?

I hope readers will think about our world’s future, our climate crisis (no, it’s not a hoax) and whether we, as denizens, should do a better job educating ourselves, researching and vetting multiple sources of information and news rather than relying on this or that media channel to do our thinking for us. When government, political parties and corporate media bosses collude, the results can be illusory and very dangerous.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

I’m working on a sequel text about a pilot, Naomi’s son, taking a “dystopian path to utopian justice.” A meeting with a lost sister. Unexpected revolution. Change in China’s destiny.

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