These days, we're living with a lot of uncertainty. And that can be scary. So we turn to science, to mathematical models and policy makers, all to try to understand where things are going.

But fiction can also offer us insights into not what's going to happen, but who we are.

Novels can remind us that no matter how scary or uncertain things are, others have dealt with similar feelings.

Over the years at Spark, we've spoken to many authors who have imagined the future, and where our strengths and weaknesses could lead us. And while none of them predicted what we're going through now, they still offer insights on being human in strange times. And for where we may be headed.

+ Gary Shteyngart is an American author, and we'll have part of a 2010 interview about his book Super Sad True Love Story.

+ David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, from 2015 about his novel Slade House, which began as a story called "The Right Sort," which he released on Twitter.

+ William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, in a 2015 interview about how our sense of history is changing.

+ Ian McEwan, who won the Booker Prize for his book, Amsterdam, in a 2019 interview about his most recent novel, Machines Like Us, which explores a romantic relationship with a robot.

+ Margaret Atwood, Booker-Prize winning author of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, and the MaddAddam trilogy, in a 2014 conversation about robots and our relationships with them.