Jeanette Winterson: ‘I didn’t see this coming’
The novelist on the threats posed by AI, having ‘northern moments’ and why she reads A Christmas Carol every year
Jeanette Winterson has written 11 novels, as well as nonfiction and children’s books. She was born in Manchester in 1959, the adopted daughter of Pentecostal parents, which she wrote about in her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), and then again in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011). Now 60, Winterson is a professor of new writing at Manchester University, but spends most of her time in the Cotswolds. Her latest book, Frankissstein, which was longlisted for the Booker prize, reimagines Mary Shelley’s gothic novel for the AI era and is out in paperback next month. She is married to the psychotherapist, Susie Orbach.
Frankissstein is about the troubling ramifications of artificial intelligence. What concerns you most about our technological advancements?
I wanted to make the future accessible and show how near we are to that future. What with Brexit and Trump and climate breakdown, the development of AI and how it will impact on our lives isn’t getting the right kind of attention. People don’t think about the profound implications of where we’re heading Because we are profoundly stupid, we’re going to share the planet with a self-created non-biological lifeform smarter than we are! Well done, human race!