“If you’ve paid attention, you can really start seeing historical arcs, like when an airplane reaches the altitude where the curvature of the Earth becomes visible.”

Max Ufberg
GEN
Published in
1 min readFeb 9, 2021

Kurt Andersen, author and co-founder of Spy magazine, displayed an eerie knack for political prophecy over the course of his career. His 1999 novel Turn of the Century imagined a future where Trump is running for office, and his 2017 non-fiction book Fantasyland foresaw a further rise in conspiracy theories — and was published months before QAnon first surfaced.

The secret to his forecasting savvy? Looking not at what’s ahead, but rather at what’s in front of his eyes. “The fiction I write is realistic and socially rooted,” he writes, “and conversely I approach non-fiction books partly as a fiction writer and satirist, giving myself license to connect dots oddly and change lanes at will.”

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GEN
GEN

Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Max Ufberg
Max Ufberg

Written by Max Ufberg

Writer and editor. Previously at Medium, Pacific Standard, Wired

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