Tom Lin, Babylon, South Dakota + Omar El Akkad on Gaza

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform. What do we learn to live with, and when do we decide we can’t accept it anymore? This week, we talk with Tom Lin about his novel, Babylon, South Dakota. It follows a Chinese immigrant family whose new home shares its landscape with a nuclear missile silo. We talk about magical realism, family stories, belonging, dementia, and the relationship between science fiction and the weapons people build. I think the power of magical realism is to introduce amazing things which are treated as totally ordinary, which I hope encourages people to think, ‘what about my life that I actually do live is amazing and magical and lucky that I’ve gotten used to?’ — Tom Lin Then, on the third anniversary of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s genocide of Gaza, we revisit our March 2025 conversation with Omar El Akkad about One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. In this selected excerpt, we discuss the genocide in Gaza, Western complicity, and his argument that people will eventually claim they always opposed an atrocity they tolerated while it was happening. Our conversation explores language that sanitizes violence, restrictions on dissent, and the failures of mainstream liberalism. El Akkad also explains why genocide became an absolute moral boundary for him. It just seemed to me a particularly self-evident thing that when it’s too late to do anything about any of this, it’ll just be acceptable…to talk about how you’ve always been against it. — Omar El Akkad Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast. Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show! You might also like: U.S. Media’s Gaza Failure with Robin Andersen, Daniel Ellsberg, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE Read The Transcript Tom Lin on Babylon, South Dakota KEY TOPICS Babylon, South Dakota and Chinese immigrant family life Family stories as material for fiction Magical realism and everyday wonder Chrysanthemums, inheritance, and putting down roots Aging, dementia, and the limits of shared experience Nuclear missile silos and ordinary life on the Great Plains Science fiction’s influence on technological development Imagining futures beyond familiar dystopias Omar El Akkad on Gaza and Western Complicity KEY TOPICS: Historical hindsight and the rewriting of moral positions Gaza and personal complicity Western liberalism and the gap between words and actions Generational differences in the costs and rewards of conformity Media pressure and language that sanitizes violence Boycotts, dissent, and restrictions on rights Democratic Party failures and lesser-of-two-evils voting Genocide as an absolute moral boundary