Listen to Novel Dialogue Podcast Episode with Masande Ntshanga | Machine, System, Code

Novel Dialogue just dropped a podcast episode with South African novelist Masande Ntshanga and Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, featuring a conversation about technology and the human imagination. Released on June 6, the episode titled “Machine, System, Code” is a fascinating listen for sci-fi lovers out there.

Novel Dialogue is a podcast where unlikely conversation partners come together to discuss the making of novels and what to make of them. Critics and novelists converse to break down the boundaries between critical, creative, and just plain quirky. It is hosted by Aarthi Vadde and John Plotz.

Masande Ntshanga is a South African novelist, short story writer, poet, editor and publisher. He is the author of two novels, The Reactive (2014), which was published in five territories and won a Betty Trask Award in 2018, and Triangulum (2019), for which he was nominated for a Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African. In 2020, Ntshanga released his third book, Native Life in the Third Millennium (2020), a collection of poetry and prose.

In this 45-minute podcast (Season 7, Episode 5), the guests discuss a variety of topics ranging from techno-futurism, South Africa, apartheid, African speculative fiction, and much more. Read the full description of the episode below:

Building parallels between technology and the human imagination, Masande Ntshanga’s conversation with Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra explains how cities are like machines and how South African history resembles some of the most sinister versions of techno-futurism . . . [Masande’s] responses to Magalí’s questions interweave autobiography and history, showing how when you venture into “underwritten spaces” in South Africa, realism starts to seem like speculation. Masande moves from playing bootleg Nintendo and hacking Lego sets in Ciskei, a “homeland” under the apartheid government’s Bantustan system, to data mining and novel writing in the global cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg. All the while, technology is never something “we’re resigned to experiencing” and “endorsing” in fiction—it can be a medium of contemplation as well as conquest. Masande and Magalí are also interested in the queer intimacies of young people busy forming their own “micro-tribes.” Especially young people who are reading the global phenomenon that is Stephen King by moonlight, when they might be just a little too young for it.

Listen to the podcast here.