Literary fiction is increasingly using AI and non-human narrators not as sci-fi devices but as a mainstream technique for exploring consciousness — the first major formal innovation in two decades, and a signal about what the culture is processing.
The dominant imaginary in climate fiction has shifted from catastrophe to adaptation in 36 months — a meaningful signal about where cultural consensus on climate probability is actually moving.
First-person nonfiction has become the dominant literary form of the past two decades. What this says about what we want from reading — and what we may be losing.
Every decade announces the death of serious fiction. Every decade is wrong. What the current moment in American letters actually looks like — from inside it.
When historians write about the past, they are always partly writing about the present. The current wave of popular history reveals what we are most anxious about — and what we are most determined to avoid seeing.