Join X Artists’ Books at Acid-Free Book Market at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, on Sunday, June 18 at 2:30 pm for a reading and discussion around Use Me at Your Own Risk, a new novel by Anuradha Vikram, between the author and Nora Khan. Use Me at Your Own Risk takes place in 2046, a near-future where both automation and climate collapse are more advanced. In five provocative sections, Use Me at Your Own Risk confronts the ethical challenges inherent in our unprecedented shift to automation. Vikram sets the stage for these imagined futures in vivid detail, describing environments, complex characters, and events in disparate locations from New Delhi to Los Angeles. Described by Vikram as an activist art project, this speculative novel asks us to question our role in the destruction of our environment, the impact of automation on society, and impending heightened inequity across class, race, and gender.

The author and Nora Khan will discuss the themes presented in the book and the impetus for writing this first novel. Concerns represented in the book include climate change, queer sexuality, media saturation, intergenerational conflict, and financialization.