In the alt-universe of writer Kate Folk’s slightly stranger-than-real-life San Francisco, handsome male androids — or “biomorphic humanoids” — have infiltrated the city’s most popular dating apps.
These “blots” in the title story of Folk’s debut story collection, “Out There,” hide their devious programming while appearing to the vulnerable women they date to be successful and polite, if overly solicitous new boyfriends — until they get close enough to steal all their personal data.
“Out There” was a hit when it ran in the New Yorker in March 2020. Then Folk, who grew up in Iowa City and moved to San Francisco in 2008, decided during her Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 2019 to write a companion piece, “Big Sur,” that bookends the new collection. In the new story, Folk explores even more deeply the creepy, humorous and altogether timely idea of what is at stake when we try to ascertain who and what is “real” in this age of tech-mediated everything.
Folk’s stories are tethered closely enough to reality to be relatable, but have absurdist, speculative elements that make them feel strange and strangely comforting at the same time. It’s a quality she said she admires in writers like George Saunders, Kelly Link and Franz Kafka.
With their indelible images, like a house with a beating heart, or a subculture of people who fetishize each other’s internal organs, and their sly, low-key humor, it’s no surprise the TV rights to Folk’s new stories have already been snapped up by Hollywood. (A screen adaptation based largely on “Big Sur” is currently in development.)
Folk spoke to The Chronicle recently via video call from her home in the Richmond District about her terrifically absurdist debut, out Tuesday, March 29.
Q: Tell me about developing the title story, “Out There,” and the idea of blots, men who appear real but are actually AI-generated androids. Was it inspired by a period of using dating apps yourself?
A:是的。我写的第一个版本故事2016 when I was doing a lot of chatting with men on the apps, and not very fruitfully. It came out of this sense of alienation, of making small talk with 10 different people at the same time and having what felt like interchangeable conversations. I started to feel like all these guys on the apps weren’t quite real, or were almost the same guy, and it occurred to me that if one of them was a bot of some kind, I probably wouldn’t even notice. And it wouldn’t even matter because it was still fulfilling the same purpose of just having this hit of validation and intimacy to feel less lonely.
Q: The blots in your story all have a kind of tech bro vibe. They’re handsome and charming and rather bland. Was this an intentional comment on San Francisco’s dating or tech scene?
A:Well, it does feel like just by living here you’re part of a giant beta-testing project for all these startups without really consenting to it. All these apps are collecting our data all the time and analyzing our personalities and interests, constantly scrutinizing us in the background. It seems like if blots were to exist, they would probably start here.
问:es incorporating elements of fantasy make it somehow easier to comment on real life?
A:I think so. All the stories are unified by an atmosphere of strangeness. Those are the type of stories that I’m drawn to, both for my own writing and also books I’m reading, and movies and shows. Speculative fiction feels like a different and exciting way to explore big abstract ideas like the search for belonging.
问:you think it’s fair to read a degree of cynicism into your work, in terms of how futile the pursuit of meaningful connection can seem to some of your characters?
A:Yeah, maybe a cynicism about what’s advertised as the ideal connection.
In “The Void Wife,” (the narrator) holds out against this idea of there being an eternity that you can be with someone if only you’re touching each other at the moment of absorption. She just thinks that’s silly. My characters do want things, but maybe it’s shrouded by that defensive cynicism. I definitely relate to that.
Q: What are your thoughts on internet dating during the pandemic, when people weren’t supposed to get together but still wanted to connect?
A:I actually did do some online dating in early COVID days, which I hadn’t (done) for a while. Being single, living in a studio apartment during shelter-in-place, I needed to have some human interaction. I think it lowered my defenses in a good way, but it was strange because the guys I was talking to on the apps at that time had no intention of meeting up in person. And I didn’t either, because I was taking COVID seriously. So it became an exaggerated version of that phenomenon of just endlessly texting someone who, because you never meet, was like a fake person. Just someone to text, send photos to and talk to about my day. They could have been bots and I wouldn’t have known.
“Out There”
By Kate Folk
(Random House; 256 pages; $27)
Solid State Books presents Kate Folk’s book launch and conversation with Anna Weiner:Virtual event. 7 p.m. Thursday, March 31. Free.www.solidstatebooksdc.com
Kate Folk in conversation with Ploi Pirapokin:In person. 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7. The Booksmith, 1727 Haight St., S.F.www.booksmith.com