Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman argues that smartphones have eroded sustained reading habits in much the same way that modern technologies reduced everyday physical activity. Citing declining literacy and James Marriott’s concerns about people’s ability to follow complex arguments, she describes reduced reading as a public-health crisis of intellectual health and criticizes governments for failing to regulate harmful technology features. She proposes an eight-week, couch-to-5k-style programme that gradually rebuilds reading habits, with tracks for different levels of time and difficulty. Early participants report improved concentration, calmer responses to stress and renewed enjoyment of books.

Naomi Alderman explains why she bought the studio behind Zombies, Run!, the exercise game she co-created with Adrian Hon. She argues that games should prioritize compelling, distinctive stories over inflated word counts and warns that replacing writers with AI language models risks producing generic work. Zombies, Run!’s cooperative, community-focused post-apocalyptic world illustrates her belief that storytelling helps people feel connected and seen. She also outlines possible future storylines centered on rebuilding, creativity and collective survival, before recommending games and writing about contemporary and retro titles.

Naomi Alderman argues that digital communications have created a third major information crisis, comparable to the upheavals caused by writing and the printing press. Information overload, misinformation and algorithmic exposure to opposing views are making people anxious, angry and more likely to dehumanize one another. She recommends using trusted fact-checkers, pausing before sharing emotionally charged content, correcting others privately, resisting shame and “hate reading,” limiting smartphone and social-media use, preserving in-person relationships, taking a gradual approach to children’s access, campaigning for stronger technology laws and avoiding pointless culture-war arguments.

Naomi Alderman recommends six cultural interests: Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne mysteries, Sean Baker’s film Anora, the mystery game The Rise of the Golden Idol, the Royal Court play Giant about Roald Dahl’s antisemitism, her studies with the Open University, and George Saunders’s literary Substack. She praises works that offer complexity, intellectual engagement and enjoyment, while highlighting Giant’s unresolved questions about artistic achievement, antisemitism, Israel criticism and whether audiences can separate creative work from a creator’s views.

Naomi Alderman argues that hope should be understood as a collective project rather than a private feeling. Drawing on the end of the Cold War, the fall of apartheid, environmental progress and the promise of COVID-19 vaccines, she says societies have previously solved seemingly overwhelming problems through cooperation. Communities do not require friendship or ideological agreement; they require people to work together on shared goals despite personal differences. She warns that political polarization, media bubbles and pandemic isolation have weakened tolerance, and contends that hope becomes destructive when it is passive or unrealistic. Meaningful hope is instead created through practical collective action on issues including climate change, inequality and social division.

Naomi Alderman explains that the experience of living through the September 11 attacks helped her recognize the need to leave her legal career and write Disobedience, a novel about love, faith and sexuality within the Orthodox Jewish community. Although she remained frum while writing the book, publishing it prompted a gradual process of leaving Orthodox Judaism. She reflects on the novel's adaptation into a film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, the lack of simple solutions for LGBTQ+ people in Orthodox communities, and the importance of communal change to create a genuinely happy outcome.

Naomi Alderman praises Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and KeshetUK for publishing pioneering guidance on how Orthodox Jewish schools should support LGBT+ children. The report avoids forcing agreement on contested religious interpretations and instead uses Jewish principles against bullying, suicide risk and cruelty to promote kindness and compassion. Alderman argues that respectful engagement and compromise can gradually reform reactionary attitudes and offer a model for overcoming wider culture wars.

Naomi Alderman recommends seven cultural experiences and activities: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, OJ: Made in America, an exhibition of Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun, Hidden Figures, the Warburg Institute, Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Other Minds, and carpentry. Her commentary emphasizes games as emotional refuge, the continuing relevance of questions about race, gender, domestic abuse and celebrity, the artistic value of selfies, women’s achievements in science, the alien intelligence of cephalopods, and the grounding satisfaction of making things by hand.

Feminist science fiction uses imagined societies to question which ideas about gender, power and human behavior are innate and which are socially constructed. Examining works by Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy and others, the piece shows how dystopian fiction can anticipate authoritarian politics, economic inequality and attacks on women’s rights. It argues that every utopia may exclude or oppress someone, and concludes that the most responsible goal is a society that works continually to identify and include those it leaves behind.

Electricity has long occupied an imaginative space between science and magic, inspiring stories about extraordinary power, creation and liberation. Literary works including Frankenstein, She and The Coming Race linked electrical or electrical-like forces to female agency and the overturning of conventional power structures. The Wellcome Collection exhibition Electricity: The Spark of Life explores these cultural associations alongside the history of batteries, electrical medicine and domestic technology. Electrification also helped reduce the importance of physical strength and mechanized household labor traditionally assigned to women, contributing to changing expectations about gender and domestic life.

Naomi Alderman imagines a feminist society in which sex and gender do not determine people’s opportunities, emotions, work, clothing or family roles. She proposes equal, non-transferable parental leave, shared parenting after divorce, workplace and community childcare, public gender-pay audits, emotional-intelligence and nonviolence education for boys, and universal self-defence training for girls. She also criticizes the burden placed on women to prevent violence and the disproportionate depiction of women as sexual-violence victims in television. The broader argument is that rigid gender stereotypes harm everyone and must be dismantled through coordinated legal, educational, workplace and cultural changes.

A range of writers, poets and musicians nominate the songwriters they believe best demonstrate the literary power of lyrics. Andrew Motion defends Bob Dylan’s Nobel recognition, while contributors praise artists including Cole Porter, Connie Converse, Leonard Cohen, Nicki Minaj, Lou Reed, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Nick Cave, Jake Thackray, Tamara Lindeman and Steve Kilbey. The selections argue that songwriting can achieve poetic concentration, narrative force, formal sophistication and emotional depth, while also acknowledging that melody, performance and music often form an inseparable part of a song’s meaning.

E. Nesbit’s adult ghost stories are far darker than her beloved children’s novels, exploring dead children, thwarted love, sexual jealousy, vengeance, guilt and moral responsibility. Stories including “The Shadow,” “John Charrington’s Wedding” and “The Violet Car” use supernatural events to expose ordinary callousness and destructive human motives. These themes were also present beneath the surface of Nesbit’s children’s fiction and reflected the difficult experiences of her own life.

A collection of writing advice from novelists, poets, academics, literary agents and publishers. Contributors recommend carefully selecting ideas, observing behaviour, understanding characters, planning endings, revising from a reader’s perspective, starting over when necessary, embracing surprise, researching deeply, writing under a pseudonym, finishing manuscripts and maintaining a regular practice. The publishing advice stresses a strong story, concise pitching, a distinctive voice, authenticity, originality, audience and appropriate agent research.

Video games are the world’s biggest entertainment medium yet receive far less serious cultural coverage than film, television, literature and theatre. Naomi Alderman argues that older cultural gatekeepers, the medium’s lack of celebrity creators and lingering suspicion of games all contribute to this neglect. She also criticizes the games industry for making review copies difficult to obtain and for not providing advance versions, limiting mainstream media coverage. Although greater cultural attention may not increase sales, the industry should still help games receive the serious analysis they deserve.

Fully conversational artificial intelligence could make video-game characters seem genuinely autonomous, but that realism might create awkward or disappointing relationships with players. A fictional scene set in 2166 depicts intelligent game characters continuing their adventures without the player, developing shared experiences and preferences that leave the returning player feeling excluded. The scenario humorously suggests that more lifelike characters could challenge traditional player control and even require safeguards against emotional harm.

Randall Munroe’s Thing Explainer adapts the accessible science and technology explanations of his XKCD comic “Up-Goer Five” into an illustrated book using only the thousand most common English words. The review praises its elegant diagrams, scientific accuracy, humor, and ability to make complex subjects—from rockets and skyscrapers to human cells—clear and engaging. Although the restricted vocabulary occasionally makes concepts cryptic, solving those puzzles is part of the book’s appeal, making it an entertaining and educational choice for both children and adults.

The column argues that games should not be defined narrowly by shooting, competition, difficulty, points, levels or formal win conditions. It criticizes gamers who dismiss experimental and casual titles, as well as consultants who reduce games to gamification and reward systems. Alderman proposes that anything creators or players call a game should be treated as one, with the more important question being whether the experience is meaningful, exciting, surprising or creatively valuable.

A 2015 Observer technology Christmas gift guide featuring gift ideas involving robots, meteorites, magic snow and Wi-Fi-enabled products, along with a competition offering Yamaha electronic drums and headphones.

Video games should not need to improve intelligence, resilience or other measurable traits to justify their existence. Their value lies in experiences that other media struggle to provide, including emotions of agency, immediate identification with a player-character, and unpredictable personal encounters created by interactive systems. Games such as Red Dead Redemption, A Dark Room, Assassin’s Creed and Heavy Rain demonstrate the medium’s distinctive artistic and emotional possibilities.