Andersen, Kurt
Entry updated 30 October 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1954- ) US publisher, editor, broadcaster, journalist and author who is of sf interest for his first novel, the Near Future Turn of the Century (1999), a Satire on the Media Landscape as it turns increasingly rancid, in New York and California, as the new century begins. One of the protagonists is involved in reality-show-like dramatizations of genuine events as they happen; his wife is developing a Computer capable of responding to, and creating, human emotions The setting of the tale in 2000 and the early months of 2001 – just before the culture-changing catastrophe of 9/11 – provide some ironic lessons in the necessary fragility of sf Predictions. His second novel, Heyday (2007), is a nonfantastic Western. One of his gonzo nonfiction studies of America, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (2020), inspired a Television collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, Command Z (2023), whose protagonists, employees of a narcissistic undead billionaire Brain in a Box in a Near Future devastated by Climate Change, travel back to 2023 via Wormhole (see Time Travel) in an attempt to change the future for the better. Complications ensue.
Andersen should not be confused with the American filmmaker Kurt Anderson. [JC]
Kurt Andersen
born Omaha, Nebraska: 22 August 1954
works (highly selected)
- Turn of the Century (New York: Random House, 1999) [hb/]
nonfiction
- Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year Story (New York: Random House/Ebury Press, 2017) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (New York: Random House/Ebury Press, 2020) [nonfiction: hb/]
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