Jen: What inspired you to write Followers, a futuristic novel about an internet-obsessed world? Megan: The original kernel was me thinking about how my kids and grandkids won’t be able to read cursive, and wanting to explore a futuristic story that would be more about those human differences than straight up tech and sci-fi. But as I got further into the book, it became clear to me that social media was the thread that held everything together–I knew I had to push what we have today to its limits, imagine how that could blow up, and sort of clean up the mess that would follow. I wanted to show not just what could happen if social media really ruined us but also who we’d be, as a people, afterwards, and how we’d approach technology again once we’d been burned by it en masse. The story focuses on the friendship of three women. Let’s start by discussing Orla. What challenges does she encounter in the workplace? Orla wants to be this famous writer, and she’s frustrated by the fact that she’s stuck writing about celebrities, trying to gin up Internet content about them. She thinks her job is real bottom-feeder stuff….
