Mom has asked me if I think that AI will take things over. What things? I ask. Everything, she says. Like Mary Shelley. Like Mary Shelley what? She sighs at me for being obtuse. They say you can tell AI to write stories in the style of, say, Mary Shelley. Well, that’s a trick I won’t bother with, I tell her. Mary Shelley is not someone I choose to read if I’m not being graded.

Now be advised, my 97-year-old mom is not a fan of science fiction, has always considered it to be a waste of time. Mine, Dad’s, and anyone else sitting around with a pulp-fiction volume in their hand. So, no, she hasn’t read Philip K. Dick or Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin or Harlan Ellison, or any of the other giants of the genre, no matter which generation. They are, in her dismissive shorthand, not her thing.

But over the years she’s becoming less snarky about it. Sure, still a waste of time, but not irrelevant. Not stupid. Think about that — she’s complicated. Because what she does understand is that science fiction is a large part of our lives. There are many things she admits, grudgingly, she might be mistaken about. She is quick to tell me that an idea might be silly (way back in the day, she was amazed by the IBM “type ball” typewriter, yet thought word-processing would never catch on), but when something turns out to be so, like the fact that I have recently taken a call from her on my smartwatch, you know, like Dick Tracy, she acknowledges that she didn’t see that coming, because it wasn’t something she needed, or that anyone else might, either.

We have talked about technology over the years of my adulthood, and although she doesn’t appreciate the value of computers, robots, or drones, she does like digital music (albeit she’s still a CD person and not ready for Spotify), microwave ovens, and wireless telephone handsets, though, so there’s that. Sometimes she forgets to hang up her handset to recharge. She is still amazed by rechargeable batteries. Gotta love it.

But we don’t do Zoom calls together, which is unfortunate. (Many years ago, I bought Dad a laptop, and showed him how to use it, and he called me a few days later and told me it was broken. It turned out he’d gone online, opened a few hundred tabs, kept opening more as he wandered the internet, and locked up the poor device’s memory, which was substantial but not that substantial. Dad, I said. Shut some things. Nah, he said. You can keep it, and he went back to his Smith-Corona for his typing.) I wish she watched something on a streaming service, or accessed e-mail, or knew what I meant when I said I went walking with my earbuds in. But it’s not really that important. Mom thinks computers, even ones that will let you do Face­time, were not worth her trouble learning. And that was when I still worked in the industry. She fretted about me being hacked, catching viruses, and not being safe with my passwords so someone might steal my identity, and no amount of saying “they’re welcome to it” could dissuade her from thinking that I would end up on the side of the road, in debt up to my ears, and unable to get back in to my bank account. We’ve crossed and recrossed that bridge, believe you me. Now, however, she has relaxed enough to let me order food for her online and send it tout de suite via DoorDash. She’s fond of Belgian shortbread cookies. And malted milk balls. And, she has stopped calling it a waste of money, because she is a full-on disciple in the church of Time is All We Have, and Don’t.

And, more importantly, because we don’t play on our phones, but use them as the tools they were intended to be, we are more intentional in our conversations. I cannot show her anything by sharing my screen. I cannot forward her a poem or essay. I have to describe that which I want her to “see,” using my words. I have to read her the poem aloud. Which is a good thing.

So basically, Mom and I are living in the nineteen-seventies, most of the time. We talk about the current world, but we do it in an old-fashioned, sometimes slow way. Aren’t you afraid that someone will steal your stories and publish them under their own name? she asks. Or that AI will render you irrelevant? Oh, Mom. I doubt it. But if it does, it will be OK. There are always more stories where those came from.

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