Listen to Stranger Than Fiction No. 1 with Tim Wu and Neal Stephenson by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Welcome to Stranger Than Fiction, a new six-episode podcast from Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Each week, Tim Wu—a Future Tense fellow at New America, the author of The Master Switch, and a professor at Columbia Law School—talks to a contemporary science fiction writer about whether we’re living in the future.

In the debut episode, Wu talks to Neal Stephenson, the award-winning science fiction author of Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and more. They discuss the purpose of science fiction, geek culture, and whether—contrary to our constant hand-wringing about “everything changing so fast”—innovation has really slowed down.

Here are links to some related material:

• With Project Hieroglyph, Stephenson and Arizona State University hope to use science fiction to inspire scientists, technologists, and others. Hieroglyph is presented by ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination.
• “Innovation Starvation,” by Stephenson, World Policy Journal
• “Space Stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation,” by Stephenson, Slate, Feb. 2, 2011.

Check back every Monday for the next five weeks for a new Stranger Than Fiction episode, as Tim Wu speaks to Margaret Atwood, Cory Doctorow, and other leading science fiction writers.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University.