She reports the future. Then it happens. The Logoharp: A Cyborg Novel of China and America in the Year 2121 by Arielle Emmett Book Tour with Author Q&A, Guest Post

 

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Named Finalist in the American Fiction Awards 2024 (category Science Fiction: Cyberpunk), The Logoharp describes the extraordinary journey of a young American journalist who chooses to work as an AI-driven propagandist—aka "Reverse Journalist" who foresees and reports the future for 22nd century China. Naomi is surgically transplanted, giving her extraordinary powers of foresight and physical strength. She hears voices in her Logoharp, a universal translator of all world languages, allowing her to take the pulse of global crowds, predicting and broadcasting political and social events with deadly precision.

 

But Naomi also hears discordant voices coming from unidentified sources. She knows only that mysterious voices sing to her of other worlds, other freedoms. When she's tasked with finding a flaw in a State system that balances births and deaths —a system devised by a Chinese architect, Naomi's lover who abandoned her in youth—she experiences "unintentional contradiction." Suppressed emotions resurface, compelling her to rebel. Her decision has unexpected consequences for the men and women she loves, for her own body, and for the global societies she's vowed to protect.

 

Excerpt:

NEWS

新

华

快

讯

30 March, 2121: Western Chinese cities of Urumqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Hotan and Aksu in Xinjiang province were leveled yesterday by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, the most destructive in recent history. Thanks to mass evacuations organized by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Urumqi, the industrial center of Xinjiang, miraculously recorded fewer than two dozen casualties. Officials believe a “Futures” narrowcast predicting a geomagnetic pole reversal inadvertently saved millions of lives. Directorate scientists have yet to explain a twenty-two second loss in Coordinated Universal Time (CUT) during the quake, or why atomic clocks controlling Harmonious Recycling in Western China suddenly failed at the quake’s epicenter in Tashkent.

1

JANUARY 2110

THE MANDARIN

高

官

My lover Marco Hsu Yang luxuriates in our sleeping pod. He leans over, kisses me twice staccato on my cheeks, my lips, exclaiming, “Your country is China’s whore.”

My country, as he describes it, is “a spread-eagled bender over gifted with auburn hair and rouged lips. She’s covered coast to coast in white, her wedding dress antiqued with yellow snow and sprigs of spruce and gossamer.”

“Repeat that, please?”

“A spread-eagled bender over—”

“This is your country, too, Hsu Yang.”

“No, never. My parents dragged me here.”

Marco is literary, all right. Dark and puerile when he wants to be. His voice silky, then razor sharp, cutting into my bones, my throat, making me bleed with wanting.

For years I’ve craved his perfection, or at least my teenage notion of it: a doctor-to-be, cynic, exotically Chinese, someone drawn to my prosthetic, half-human allure.

My parents call me “prescient” (I foresee my father’s death). As though a shadow has fallen (Marco’s hand reaching for my shoulder, and then a blinding light), I foresee my lover’s rise to fame. His propensity for solving puzzles and beating every AI opponent in 3D chess games will propel him to algorithmic leadership in China’s Harmonious Revolution.

As for me, my future is unknown, blurry. I’ve had transplants, a nanofiber-ceramic hand, portals installed in throat and brain, my medical aspirations rendered gloomy. When The Laws of Ice came down from China’s Directorate in the form of tablets written in skywriting, my parents recognized my life would end on a surgical table where machines alter my insides or replace me entirely. I’ll work in underground cubicles, chatbots directing my every move. Marco, on the other hand, lives in the afterglow of Mother Country’s victory. He recognizes a new form of global shock therapy, both economic and psychological, imposed on us by talking heads, nightly ear drones we can never turn off and messages absorbed subliminally in movies, advertisements and holo-screens on our roads. All these inputs play to our fears of another war, another Ameriguan insurrection, convincing us that Mother Country has the better way.

*

I’m looking back on Marco now. Backward and forward. Time jerks forward, then stands still. Sometimes I resent his superior attitudes. Makes me feel worried, this resentment, maybe hate, recognizing he’s untouchable, hua qiao (华侨) overseas Chinese, superior by birth.

Marco says all the time he loves me, that I’m “exceptional” in my harlot country. But I think part of it is sexual passion, and maybe the red and gold highlights of my hair. Opposites attract. I’m taken by him, at least his gambler and alien Chinese parts. When he calls my name, Naomi, I just want to sink my bones inside of his, there’s such an ache.

Six months ago we married secretly inside a pauper’s chapel beneath the crimson and white sandstone cliffs of Zion Guojia (国家) Refuge. The roof above was caved in. My retinal screens captured clouds at sunset moving fast into night—violet swirls, grays and sparks of orange, yellows and whites, a Starry Night knock-off, then a clear blue shaft dropping down from the sky right in front of us. A sword, maybe. A carpet to Elysium. God knows I didn’t understand what it meant.

Shivering at the altar since the snow was icy against my feet and no one was there to marry us, not even a drone, I wondered why my wedding scene seemed like a stage set, hardly real. I guess he wanted to keep any serious thoughts of me from his parents. We exchanged jade rings purchased in Hualien, the Taiwanese marble city. Our vows consisted of silent, furtive looks, eyes toggling back and forth worriedly between the clouds and each other.

“This country has become Ameriguo, a pretty nation, a guo (国),” he wrote in his economics thesis just before our wedding date. “Ameriguo is a little winter paradise, primitive and greedy. Securitized now as a Chinese trading protectorate, addicted to pleasure. Mother Country floods our continent with cast-off consumer goods, contaminated food and transportation materials that disintegrate on contact. Ameriguans are grateful for the crumbs.”

Etcetera.

He likes to lecture me. “Evidence of Ameriguan weakness is in the teeth, Naomi,” he says, examining a batch of X-rays I’ve kept of my extra tooth pulled when I was a child. He squeezes my upper lip, then takes a pen light to my pallet, pretending he’s already a doctor, as though to see a hole left by the extraction. “A white supernumerary tooth grows abnormally long in 2.5 percent of Ameriguans’ soft palettes,” he says. “This represents the cast-off wisdom of her ancestors.”

I nod, recognizing bullshit. When he speaks like this, he slinks up against me like a cat.

Marco likes to mix stupid messages with nuggets of Chinese wisdom. His accent is perfect and I archive and emulate every tone: “Wuyuan jianmian bu xiang shi, you yuan qianli lai xiang huì” (无缘 见面 不 相识， 有缘千里来相会.) This nugget basically means “If Fate isn’t choosing you, you can bump into someone and never connect. But if Fate rules, a thousand li cannot keep you apart.” So romantic, I reflect back to him. Except he adds, “I doubt we’re really yuanfen (缘分)”—i.e., fated to be partners. “More like airships passing in the night, perhaps we meet only at this point, and then go separate ways.”

*

Friends knew us as Naomi and Marco when we lived together in a walk-up flat on Thompson Street in the Arbors, though we maintained separate quarters on campus to satisfy our parents. On occasion I called him Marco, when we were close; Marco Hsu Yang or just Hsu Yang when we were not. Periodically we’d fly to Zion Refuge in the Ameriguan West, and sometimes to Taiwan and, once, to Mother Country’s Lijiang old city in Yunnan province, a golden land of tigers and pagoda-shaped mountains of snow. Vacations were the good times. But recently he’s been in a dark, woe-is-me mood; I try to remind him that the Chinese paramilitary supports his elite education.

“Why are you so pissed off? You’ll come out of medical school as a doctor without debt,” I say, smoothing his sweaty brow. “Isn’t that good?”

“Yeah, no!” he says, ever contrary, covering his mouth with his delicate Mandarin hand.

We both know he’ll have to give four years of medical service in the military, just what his father wanted him to do, but his real desire is to play Blackjack in Las Vegas or even Macao to beat the system. Any system. It’s pointless to argue about it because his heart is set.

On Sunday winter nights, after long hours cramming for lectures and exams, he leads me out the door. Taking our cross-country skis, leaving the dorms and slipsliding down the hills to backcountry, we look for steep bowls and globes of snow.

“We’re a snowflake globe that China shakes,” he laughs, guiding me through the dark pines he calls Songshu (松树), a lovely seductive sound, “Song,” as though the pines actually sing a song. We head toward the lights of North Campus. Passing a sign saying Climax Molybdenum Corporation posted on a laboratory no longer in use, we stop a moment, shivering, making clouds with our breath.

“The Mandarins drink mojitos through a fire hose,” Marco opines, pouting as usual, his habit of appearing distant, regal. “Then they toss our globes in the fireplace, fucking us up the ass.”

“Stop talking shit!” I slap him. At least I do it with words, realizing I can’t stop his mouth no matter how hard I try. I push off, skiing away downhill. It’s impossible not to hear what he says.

Marco is the anomaly. I can’t figure out which country he hates or loves the most, or whether he confuses “nation” with my body. He’s fond of conquering my “nation” every chance he gets. He has slightly crooked teeth and a disarming way of rubbing his cheeks against mine, making fun of brightness and dullards alike, anyone aspiring to a tangible goal, even mine, ambiguous as it is. His resentments are barely disguised, but I sense they come from being surrounded by medical superiors who not so secretly resent China’s recalibration of our liberties. Do I feel sorry for him? A little. He’s a foreigner, neither here nor there. I can see he feels uncomfortable with all the Mandarins on the ski slopes, even though he’s one himself. His way of “talking story, jiang gushi”（讲故事）in Chinese is embarrassed, his lips pursed or screwed forward, as though sucking on a sour candy, his voice pitched low and humble.

“Time was,” he said, “China and Japan were slaves to the concessions of Europe and America. Now it’s the other way around. Even though China ‘owns’ us, the Directorate in Beijing doesn’t care about our local shenanigans. China just wants our markets—raw materials, cheap labor, technical expertise.”

“They don’t need our expertise,” I tell him.

“How would you know that?”

“I just do.”

He recognizes I suck up information with anything I read, but I also have these Aeolian vibes telling a story, too. It’s just as though my ears extend like antennae to his secret thoughts. I seem to hear harmonies in wind, waves, rotating cloud banks, street vendors arguing with customers in multiple languages 10 miles away. It’s music to my ears (literally), this extra sensory hearing born into me. Marco says I’m absorbing too much Greek tragedy from my parents (formerly actors) since I project their tragic thoughts. He says these thoughts still control me. Yet I detect his thoughts, feel his grief and joy as my own. Perhaps it’s my father who drives me toward Hsu Yang. A dying father envisioning immortality: his daughter, a brain surgeon. But every day I go to the university language labs and read and listen to everything I can about Mother China, too. I want to go there, maybe permanently, to be embraced in a Harmonious Society and warm bosom. This is something Marco and my parents might understand. Or not.

*

In our childhood, Mother Country began saturating us with patriotic messages about loyalty and personal sacrifice. There were arrests of dissidents in Detroit and Washington, D.C., on the intranets, but no one had an accurate count. Our cities transformed quickly into military fortresses de facto, most of them subjected to helicopters patrolling above and perimeters of razor wire to keep out gangs. Most skyscrapers had turned into blackened spires from arson or careless wiring, I’m not sure which, and smaller enclaves and even our water reservoirs turned muddy black from coal ash and leaks from molten salt reactors.

Our architects were clever, though. Designing breathing domes covering the cities—at least the big ones left—they created membranes which were practically invisible and gooey in texture. Membranes floated above the cities like egg whites before beating. Blocking ultraviolet and cosmic rays from above, the membranes absorbed and channeled spew from factories worldwide, so that the worst particulates escaped to the outer atmosphere. Before the domes, black spew from Asia traveled in the westerlies, and white ash clouds from the fires of Northern Laurentia, painting the sky in sulfur dioxide, arsenic, carbon monoxide and coal dust.

We called this exchange the “Air Trade.” China gave us new-style coal scrubbers, thorium reactors and high-throughput skymills whipping the upper atmosphere currents to produce our energy. Laurentia to the North gave us lumber and oil from tar sands. Ameriguo gave everybody movie stars, molten salt reactors breeding fissile uranium-233 and snow, the latter a highly valued commodity.

*

The night I met Marco Hsu Yang was a rare display of polar vortex in our Lake Erie community. Residents joked about the weather: “Ten months of winter. Two months of rough sledding,” although mostly we had rain and black ice. But that particular night, it was frigid. His brother Tommy invited me to a birthday party. I heard footsteps above his basement ceiling and suddenly a boy/man came bouncing down the stairs, blowing his nose with a handkerchief, his mop of straight black hair so long that he kept throwing his head back to tame it.

Immediately I noticed his buoyancy. He bounced as though his hips were spring loaded. He had inviting brown eyes, one round like a chestnut, the other almond shaped, more “Chinese.” He seemed drawn to my cascade of gold hair held back by a white silk bandanna I wore wrapped around my head, much like a 1960s hippie. He focused on my blue and emerald irises flecked with shards of red rust depending on the light, a retinal display embedded behind the cornea to provide “cloud vision,” a sharper 4D focus for storm events and fast-moving predators. Marco talked to me about his acceptance at medical school, describing a certain gynecology professor who labeled vaginas “beavers” in a preparatory class.

“Personally, I find this label disgusting, sexist, incredible, given how far we’re supposed to have advanced,” I retorted. His neck snapped back, mouth quivering a little, as though no blonde teen had ever talked to him that way.

“Chinese girls aren’t that blunt,” he went on, cocking his head, as though trying to weigh his confusion. “If they don’t like something, they snivel or toss their heads back and walk away.”

I shrugged. Surmising he was trying to account for failed hookups, mostly girls turned off by his dirty talk, I switched conversation to our life chances. I told him about wanting to be a physician or researcher or linguist. At one point when brother Tommy and the others piled into coats and rolled outside to throw snowballs, I excused myself and joined them. The boys tackled the girls in heaps and the girls took revenge by throwing icy hard pellets at the boys’ cackling mouths. We were red-faced, giggling and panting like dogs. Hsu Yang had a bad cold; he choked, excusing himself, but said he’d wait for me because Tommy mentioned that I had had a heart transplant and he had never met one.

“Half a transplant,” I corrected, returning inside to him within 15 minutes. I rubbed my hands and blew on them. “Just some valves and a leaky septum between ventricles, nothing that exciting. I’ll be full of replacement parts by the time I reach maturity.”

His mouth curled down.

“That’s too bad,” he said. He took my real hand. “But everyone gets replacement parts these days.” I wondered if Marco had any himself. “No,” he said, “of course not.” But someday, thanks to his reading of a familial genetic map citing his Dad’s intractable glaucoma, Marco believed he too would become blind.

*

At the time (and I didn’t reveal it), I had a port at the base of my brain, and another in my throat, the two housing all the wiring and firmware for the eventual installation of a Logos-harp (shortened to Logoharp for branding purposes). The harp’s workings are known only to a few medical elites and the Chinese and Ameriguan Singing Directorate masters (The Singing Directorate is the name of our highest government body in charge of harmonizing communication to the masses, both in China and Ameriguo).

Think of the harp as an instrument amplifying Aeolian music. On the earthly, practical level, the Logoharp conveys explicit, reasoned messages that the Directorate wishes to convey to the public. At the same time, the harp is believed to receive higher-order harmonies conveying both wisdom and warning from unidentified sources in Nature and the Divine. What these signals mean or how they’re identified I’m not sure. But I do know the harp enables universal translation of all human languages and, presumably, the extraterrestrial ones that will crop up, enabling the harp’s recipient to act as an Intermediary, a public communicator, also known as a Reverse Journalist (RJ), meaning a “journalist of future prospects.” As such, anyone who receives the Logoharp is blessed with great responsibilities on behalf of the State. Once installed, the Logoharp can’t be removed or shut down. You belong to the State.

Guest Post:

The Logoharp is a futuristic vision of media, disinformation, and the impact of innocent actors swept up in dystopian loyalties. The novel takes place in China, the dominant global power of the 22nd century in this novel. Ameriguo, a second-tier trading protectorate of China ravaged by pollution and insurrection, is the birthplace of the novel's heroine, Naomi. Abandoned in youth by a lover, Naomi decides to work as a linguist and Reverse Journalist for the Chinese government. Naomi is prescient. Her job is to foresee and script the global future–then it happens. Naomi receives a special instrument—the Logoharp—a universal, AI-infused "Harp of Wisdom" directing her every move. 

Initially, Naomi is a naïve student.  Hardened by betrayal, she decides to become an elite foreign journalist because she believes “Mother Country” will ensure peace and sustainability on the planet.  To this end, Naomi agrees to become surgically transformed—a half-human cyborg— equipped with the Logoharp, the neural instrument that doubles the size of her brain, allowing her to absorb government edicts but also mysterious voices from sources (she can’t identify. 

The mixed messages of the Logoharp eventually create conflict. She’s instructed to find the “algorithmic architect” who has allegedly designed a flaw in a “Harmonious Recycling” system that balances China’s births and deaths.  Despite being massive physically—she’s armoured, six inches taller, reinforced with diamond-fiber joints, and equipped to fight and fly short distances to elude terrorists and invaders—Naomi is haunted by memories of her past, and possibly her human conscience. When she discovers a terrible secret in Harbin, Manchuria  affecting millions, she rebels.  

Why did I write this?  I’ve lived in Asia and Africa—China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and most recently, Africa, monitoring radical change in the media over decades.  Attempts to make journalism as “objective” as possible—to adhere to facts, to get multiple sides of a story—have morphed into an obsession with prediction, statistical probabilities, partisan agenda and “winner-loser” celebrity.  You can argue that journalists, in the service of media bosses and the ideologies they serve, “write the future” by cherry picking facts, leaving out others, and predicting outcomes that reinforce existing power.  

It wasn’t much of an extrapolation for me to create an AI-driven journalist, Naomi, whose job for China is to report the future as though it has already happened—and then it does. RJs, in effect, do not report current events.  They are co-authors and guides to political and social events that have not yet come to pass.

If you’d like to read more about “Obsessive Futurism” in our media, please go to https://leapingtigerpress.com/2024/11/25/the-logoharp-journal/

Author Interview:

On writing:

How did you do research for your book?  

In the last decades I’ve taught and reported from Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Jatinangor (Indonesia) and Nairobi, studying the Chinese influence on media, human rights, and local economies. Before that, I wrote a doctorate on the impact of news photography, measuring how images affect the minds of readers and viewers. In all, I spent about 12 years researching material for this book.

Which was the hardest character to write? The easiest?  

Naomi, The Logoharp’s main character, was the most challenging. In this story, she starts as a vulnerable American journalist and morphs into an AI-driven media propagandist (aka “Reverse Journalist”) for China who eventually rebels. Why would she do this?  She lives in a severely weakened “Ameriguo” in the 22nd century.  Betrayed by a young lover, she believes that “Mother Country” (China), the dominant global power, will ensure peace and a harmonious existence for a troubled planet.  She chooses to become an elite Reverse Journalist (RJ), someone who doesn’t write about current events.  Instead, she “reports the future.”  Surgically transformed, she’s equipped with a “Logoharp,” a neural instrument that doubles the size of her brain, enabling her to hear government instructions but also mysterious voices from sources she can’t identify.  This sets up a conflict.  Her human conscience never leaves her…and then she discovers a terrible secret in Harbin, Manchuria. 

The easiest character to write was Lang Fei (Chinese for “waste of space”), based on an old Chinese doctor friend.  He’s eccentric, lovable, possibly a spy, who tries to help Naomi and her friend Miranda discover the truth about a broken system.  But all these characters have complexities and changes of mind.

In your book you make a reference to Reverse Journalism. How did you come up with this idea? 

Attempts in the past to make journalism an independent monitor of power, to adhere to facts, to get multiple sides of a story, have morphed over the last decades into an obsession with prediction, partisan agenda and “winner-loser” celebrity.  You can argue that journalists, in the service of media bosses, “write the future” by cherry picking facts, leaving out others, and predicting outcomes that reinforce the powerful.  It wasn’t much of an extrapolation for me to create an AI-driven journalist, Naomi, whose job for China is to report the future as though it has already happened—and then it does. RJs, in effect, do not report current events.  They are co-authors and guides to political and social events that have not yet come to pass.  

There are many books out there about dystopic futures.  What makes yours different?

My novel is cross-cultural, scientific, and political.  It deals with a verboten topic of family racism, the “disposal” of talent in middle and elder years, and severe media dysfunction on both sides of the Pacific. 

In the novel, Naomi, despite her cyborg transformation, retains memories of her parents’ instructions about right and wrong.  She attempts to find a grain of truth in a world where there is no objective reality and media becomes a blunt instrument of mass illusion. Her job is to entertain and quell rebellion in the masses.  As Andrew Singer, a China expert, wrote in this review:  

    "The Logoharp is a story of love and horror. It is relatable and disturbing. The grave issues facing us now remain potent: AI, drugs (fentanyl), and climate catastrophe to name a few....these all converge as the novel slides down the ice."

– Andrew Singer Talks about China.

What advice would you give budding writers?

Joyce Carol Oates noted recently that writers should deal with subjects that are taboo to them or their families. Another way to say this is to make the unseen seen. Also felt. Pay attention to close observation of the concrete, sensory world – how things appear, sound, smell, taste, touch…Believe in the power of time and unconscious thought (even dreams) to help solve narrative problems. Be honest about how much you love and hate certain people, places, and things. Allow yourself a gray area, too.  And be aware that acutely observing others doesn't mean you know yourself.

Your book is set in China, Taiwan, and America. Have you ever been there?

Many times, many years.  I’ve lived, reported and taught in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, parts of Indonesia, and, more recently, Nairobi, Kenya on a Fulbright Scholarship.  Also Italy and Ireland.

In your book you state, “…the connection between corrupt and inept is very strong.” Why is that?  

Naomi is speaking in her own voice to two of her bosses who become torturers, Dean Cheung and Dakota Sung.  Both exploit the corrupt and incompetent actors around them to hoodwink the public.  As Naomi says, “You are trained to exploit any gap in knowledge among the masses, leveraging their ignorance to mask the incompetence of officials all around you…”

If you could put yourself as a character in your book, who would you be?

Naomi, unquestionably.

Do you have another profession besides writing?  

I’ve been a Fulbright scholar and researcher teaching at universities and law schools in the U.S., China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Africa.

How long have you been writing?  

Since the age of four.

Do you ever get writer’s block? What helps you overcome it?

Generally, any “block” results from not knowing a subject or incident as thoroughly as I need to.  Deeper research helps.

What is your next project?

A sequel to The Logoharp.  Naomi's son grows up to be a pilot and later graduates as a military psychologist, refuting every value his mother stands for. Until he crashes, survives, and discovers the power of The Gyroscope.

What genre do you write and why?  

I guess I’m writing “literary” science fiction, but not the classic “alien invasion” or dystopic survivalist stuff.  I write political and scientific extensions of our lives right now. Though I’m a great admirer of many classic science fiction writers—among them, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Liu Cixin, William Gibson, Ursula LeGuin, Nnedi Okorafor, and many others—generally I write, or extrapolate from current scientific and social trends and developments.

What is the last great book you’ve read?

A toss-up between Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain.  

What is a favorite compliment you have received on your writing?

One of my readers said he was struck by ‘the humanity of the main character.  Several said the narrative was riveting.  “Grabbed from the beginning,” M. Monahan wrote. :I was amazed by the parallels between a fiction story and present-day happenings. I appreciated the succinct, interwoven prose that exposed how vulnerable we are to what could be the very near future.”

A few other observations below:

“Bold, brainy, and provocative fiction…exploring urgent issues of truth, mis-and disinformation, and what it means to be human, all from the perspective of a winged, part-cyborg “Reverse Journalist”(RJ) …Emmett is a talent to watch.”  —Publishers Weekly Booklife

“Wonderfully visceral and unique…The whole time I was reading these detailed passages I kept thinking "This would be an epic Cronenberg movie!" So take note David! The author lovingly inserts pieces of history, deep musical knowledge and a love for art and color throughout, making the premise more believable and enthralling.” – J. Bowie, an Amazon reader.

“This novel about Naomi, a half-human Cyborg journalist, may be as significant as Orwell’s 1984.” —Sonya DiPalma, Chair, UNC Asheville Communications Dept.

How are you similar to or different from your lead character?

Naomi and I are twins, but she is far more capable, in control, and much more powerful to affect the future.

In one sentence, what was the road to publishing like?

Choppy, extended, and fraught with highs, lows, and considerable cost and peril.

Which authors inspired you to write?

Joyce Carol Oates, Ernest Hemingway, E.B. White, Madeleine L’Engle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Styron, Han Su Yin, Ray Bradbury, John Hersey, Emily Bronte, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, H.G. Wells.

On rituals:

Do you snack while writing? Favorite snack? 

Classical music, coffee, green tea, pretzels, sometimes chocolate-covered cranberries, oranges (yum).

Where do you write?

My office, my dining room, library, guest house, airplanes.

Is there a specific ritualistic thing you do during your writing time?

In today’s tech savvy world, most writers use a computer or laptop. 

Have you ever written parts of your book on paper?

Yes, I drafted the first outline for The Logoharp in a paper notebook after returning from China in 2012.

If you’re a mom writer, how do you balance your time?

I’m a grandmother now. There was no such thing as balance.  I was a single mother for many years, writing at all times when my kids were at school or after they went to sleep.

Fun stuff:

If you could go back in time, where would you go? 

I’d go back to the 1960s when my parents were both alive and America was brimming with possibility and positive changes.

Favorite travel spot?  

Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa.

Favorite dessert?  

Salad of Gold.

If you were stuck on a deserted island, which 3 books would you want with you? 

I’d want my Kindle loaded with books.  But there wouldn’t be electricity or charging stations, right?

What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you? 

I was traveling on backroads with my Mom inside a little yellow school bus headed toward Nara, Japan.  Suddenly among the sea of Japanese faces I hear a voice calling out, “Arielle?” It’s Jamie, a Chinese language classmate from U-Michigan.  We had taken the same Japanese art class and here we were, on the other side of the world, meeting accidentally, trying to find the real temples of Nara.  We had a crazy, great time together that day, but I never saw her again.

What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?

I gave up my son at age 15 to his father when the boy was severely beaten by a school rival.  The hardest thing I’ve ever done.  Long story short: Today my “boy” is a postdoctoral fellow in neuropsychology, a terrific Dad and a Major in the US Army.

Any hobbies? Name a quirky thing you like to do.  

I play piano, swim, lift weights, hike, plant trees and speak Mandarin, French and bad Spanish wherever I can.

If there is one thing you want readers to remember about you, what would it be?

That The Logoharp was both memorable and scary.  As critic Andrew Singer described it: 

“Emmett's most biting social critique is not of the bland, authoritarian system that prevails a century from now. Rather, it is reproval of the America of today that let itself go and collapsed to such a system. The siren call of this lament is strong.”

What is something you've learned about yourself during the pandemic?

Keep up on your vaccines and wear masks.  Talk to people who are accepting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories as gospel.  In this case, the gospel is baloney.

Author bio:

Arielle Emmett, Ph.D., is a writer, visual journalist and traveling scholar specializing in East Asia, science writing and human interest. She has been a Contributing Editor to Smithsonian Air & Space magazine and a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in Kenya (2018-2019) and Indonesia (2015).

 

Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, The Scientist, Ms., Parents, Saturday Review, Boston Globe, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Detroit Free Press, Los Angeles Times Book Review and Globe & Mail (Canada), among others. 

 

Arielle has taught at the International College Beijing, University of Hong Kong Media Studies Centre, Universitas Padjadjaran (West Java, Indonesia) and Strathmore University Law School (Nairobi). Her first science fiction novel, The Logoharp, about China and America a century from now, is part of a planned series on dystopian paths to utopian justice.

 

Website: https://leapingtigerpress.com/

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216676221-the-logoharp

Praise:

 "In Arielle Emmett's fevered imaginings one great and ancient state is able to dominate the rest using an unbeatable secret weapon. Logoharps. Creatures able to see into the future, ensuring the state is always a step ahead. That is, until one rebels. Imagine Mona Lisa Overdrive meshed with The Wind-Up Girl. That's the kind of sci-fi ride you're in for with The Logoharp."

– Kevin Sites, author of The Ocean Above Me

 "The Logoharp offers a thought-provoking experience for those willing to confront unsettling truths. Some may find comfort in the familiar illusions of their own "Matrix," while others may feel a revolutionary spark ignited within them. Ultimately, this novel serves as a mirror, reflecting each reader's willingness to either accept the status quo or challenge it."

– Literary Titan

 “A hugely ambitious vision of a time in which America is a Chinese colony, almost anyone over 50 is sent off to die in a cozy ice-sled, and journalists are tasked with chronicling a future which then comes to pass.  If you're fascinated by technology and by glimpses of where we'll be a hundred years from now, look to a new hero, Naomi.  She's the half-human cyborg reporter who believes in truth, foresees the future and, in desperation, rebels against it."

–Beverly Gray (Executive Board Member, ASJA)

 "In the world of The Logoharp, there is no security, not even an objective reality, only the reality created by journalism in reverse. Emmett's' novel creates a troubling vision of media that borders on propaganda in an AI-filled future."

—Hamilton Bean, Ph.D., author of No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of US Intelligence (Praeger).

 "Prepare to be swept away by an imperfect yet wildly relatable heroine. This ancient, futuristic world will make you angry, frustrated, hopeful, in love, and inspire an uprising within."

—Grace Diida, L.L.M., Venture Capital Research

 "Loved The Logoharp! It's genuinely original, disturbing in a provocative way, occasionally funny and erotic, creative and well-paced — and I can't get those ice sleighs out of my head! Naomi is one strange —and beguiling—heroine."

—Laura Berman, feature writer, retired columnist, The Detroit News.

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