A whole lot has happened since Emily St. John Mandel published her literary science-fiction novel Station Eleven ten years ago this week--including certain global disruptions that made the book appear startlingly prescient. Station Eleven traces the aftermath of a swine-flu pandemic that kills most of the human population, following a group of traveling players who tour the Great Lakes region performing Shakespeare. Station Eleven sold over a million copies, was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and recently secured a top spot on the New York Times readers' list of the best books of the century. The 2021 miniseries, creatively adapted for HBO by Patrick Somerville, scored several Emmy nominations and the deep, abiding love of television critics. This list of accolades still fails to represent how many readers connected to this particular story of postapocalyptic society, going so far as to get "Survival Is Not Enough" tattoos--a reference to a motto the Traveling Symphony favors in the book.

AI expert Marva Bailer explains how, even though there are currently laws in place, the average person has more access than ever to create deepfakes of celebrities. Ridley Scott, director of sci-fi classics like "Alien" and "Blade Runner," is terrified about AI technology running away with society. In an interview with Rolling Stone promoting his film "Napoleon," Scott was asked if artificial intelligence worried him, and the answer was an emphatic yes. "We have to lock down AI. And I don't know how you're gonna lock it down," he told the outlet.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness is about a planet where the genetically-engineered inhabitants randomly become male or female for a few days each month. Science fiction professor Lisa Yaszek says that the book is one of the genre's most important explorations of gender. "This stuff was all in the air, so I think that Le Guin is definitely thinking about it at the right time," Yaszek says in Episode 464 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "No one had really put it together into a sustained novel--well, I think some people had, but they hadn't been published yet. She was definitely the first to the punch. So this is the first person to pick up some things that were beginning to happen in some of the edgier, more avant-garde science fiction."