�鶹��ý

Skip to content

Comment

What if you could erase your political opponents? Sci-fi has answers

Empty Hearts is an exciting thriller with a disturbing way of dealing with people you disagree with politically, says Helen Marshall in her latest sci-fi column

By Helen Marshall

31 July 2019

�鶹��ý. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — A string of novels this year explore the destabilised Western political psyche
Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos

Books

Juli Zeh (trans. John Cullen)
Penguin Random House

Becky Chambers
Hodder & Stoughton

WHAT would you do if you could push a little red button to erase everyone you don’t agree with politically? Empty Hearts by Juli Zeh is set several years in the future in a Germany where the political shocks of Trump and Brexit, exacerbated by a second financial crisis and the growth of an ultrapopulist movement, have undermined the will towards democracy. Given a…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with �鶹��ý events and special offers.

Sign up

or

Existing subscribers

More from �鶹��ý

Explore the latest news, articles and features

Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky, in the centre of the photograph.

Space

What to read this week: Emma Chapman's mind-expanding Radio Universe

Culture

How To Talk to AI

Technology

�鶹��ý recommends Jamie Bartlett's insightful How to Talk to AI

Culture

Sci-fi show The Miniature Wife underwhelms – despite the big names

Comment

Sci-fi show The Miniature Wife underwhelms – despite the big names

Culture

2R2EXK8 Cyborg woman face detail in dark space.Metaverse AI artificial intelligence data analysis technology.3d illustration.

Technology

Two excellent new sci-fi novels tackle robots in very different ways

Culture

1

The biggest threat to Chernobyl is no longer radiation

2

Neanderthal infants were enormous compared with modern humans

3

Exclusive report: Inside Chernobyl, 40 years after nuclear disaster

4

Largest ever map of universe captures 47 million galaxies and quasars

5

Collapse of key ocean current may release billions of tonnes of carbon

6

How to spot the Lyrid meteor shower tonight

7

The man who crawls into the perilous heart of the Chernobyl reactor

8

A key solution to climate change isn't happening – and that's good

9

Particles seen emerging from empty space for first time

10

Monkeys walk around a virtual world using only their thoughts