This past weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a talk by renowned Russian science popularizer Alexander Panchin at the London Russian Book Fair. As someone whose fiction often explores the boundaries between reality and perception, listening to a scientist who specializes in making complex concepts accessible was both enlightening and inspiring.
Panchin’s presentation on the intersection of neuroscience and human belief systems was particularly fascinating. He discussed how our brains are wired to find patterns and create narratives, even when confronted with random or ambiguous information. This cognitive tendency serves us well in many contexts but can also lead us astray when we draw connections that don’t actually exist.
During the Q&A session, I asked about the ethical implications of emerging neurotechnology, which led to an engaging conversation about the potential future where our thoughts and memories might be directly accessible or even manipulable. After the formal event, I was fortunate enough to speak with him one-on-one about how scientific advancements might influence our understanding of consciousness and identity.
What stayed with me most was our discussion about how science and literature serve similar functions in different ways – both attempting to make sense of human experience and our place in the world. While science provides empirical frameworks, literature offers emotional and philosophical contexts for the same questions.
This conversation has sparked an idea for a potential new project – a novel exploring a near-future society where memory has become an external, editable medium. Unlike the technological speculation in “Shattered Horizons of Tarveran,” this story would focus more intimately on questions of authenticity and selfhood when our most private experiences become malleable. What would it mean for human relationships if we could selectively edit our shared histories? How would we define truth in such a world?
These questions feel particularly relevant in our current era of information manipulation and increasing digital mediation of experience. Perhaps by exploring them through fiction, we might better understand the real challenges we’re already beginning to face.
I left the event with a notebook full of ideas and a renewed appreciation for the dialogue between scientific inquiry and literary imagination. Sometimes the most interesting stories emerge precisely at these interdisciplinary intersections.
Warmly, Writer Anastasia Dubinina