New stories by authors including Neal Stephenson, Rose Eveleth and Robert Harris imagine a techno-apocalypse precipitated by the internet. Some even hint at how we could dodge it
Humans
24 June 2020
Stanton Sharpe/SOPA Images/Lightrocket via Getty Images
THE nuclear blast that takes out Moab, Utah, in Neal Stephenson’s 2019 novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is “epistemic ground zero”. That is because it doesn’t actually happen. It is an online-only 9-11, a viral conspiracy theory that becomes the fault line along which the US fractures in two.
On one side, the people who believe that Moab is a no-go zone, and that the event has been covered up by swamp-dwelling politicians. On the other, the people who can freely travel …