It Could Happen Here: CZM Book Club – Hermetica (Interview with Alan Lee)

Podcast: It Could Happen Here
Host: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Date: September 21, 2025
Guests: Alan Lee (author of Hermetica), Hazel (CZM Book Club regular), Margaret (host)

Episode Overview

This episode of Cool Zone Media Book Club dives deep into Hermetica, a speculative fiction novel by Alan Lee. The hosts, joined by Lee and book club stalwart Hazel, discuss the book’s inspiration, the impacts of social control and surveillance, intersections between fiction and activism, and the challenges of both writing and publishing radical literature today. Touching on lived experience, genre, and contemporary relevance, the conversation offers insight both into the novel and into the broader role of storytelling in anarchist, anti-authoritarian thought.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Origins and Inspiration of Hermetica

[04:31-06:10]

• Alan Lee describes the book's birth during the intense early month of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting how feelings of lockdown and social isolation influenced its claustrophobic tone.

• Lee’s focus was less on pandemic dynamics than on “evolving technologies of social control and surveillance,” particularly the ways social media isolates while simulating connection:

  “The compartmentalizing, siloed effect of social media … really limits and cuts down on people’s social interactions while giving the illusion of having more … it could be AI, it could be robots on the other end… it’s not tactile … you’re so rarely actually in the room with people.” (Alan Lee, 04:55)

• The book also grew from ruminations on state responses to ecological crisis and forms of contemporary totalitarianism.

Prescience about AI and the Nature of Frustration

[06:10-07:34]

• The hosts marvel at how Hermetica predicted the rise of AI-bots in online arguing, with Margaret noting that, “these days, if you’re arguing with someone on the internet, there’s really a good chance you’re just straight up arguing with a cell phone somewhere that's running a program.”
• Lee reflects, with dark humor, on the recurring frustrations of seeing social warnings go unheeded:

  “It’s like seeing people you care about jump joyfully onto a sledge... right into a trash compactor. …Do that over and over again. Every year, every century.” (Alan Lee, 06:36)

Fiction and Nonfiction: Two Tools for Change

[08:14-11:11]

• Hazel underscores Lee’s dual life as a nonfiction and fiction author, and how fiction complements direct critique:

  • Lee’s experience: Nonfiction is easier to publish, especially outside the monopolized world of speculative fiction.
  • Both fiction and nonfiction are ways “to interact with and understand the world” and “acts of joy, of desperation, of rage, of curiosity.”

  “The real world can’t exist without the imaginary world … We need imagination. And imagination can also really allow us to better understand or change the world.” (Alan Lee, 09:59)

• Margaret quips about Marx and materialism, leading Lee to comment on constructs like money:

  “It seems like money … it’s almost as though money were not that material.” (Alan Lee, 10:57)

• Hazel links this tradition to a lineage of anarchist fiction writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, highlighting the movement’s emphasis on creative imagination.

The Trash Compactor World: Metaphors of Control and Possibility

[12:25-19:09]

• Conversation delves into the book’s core metaphor: illusory choices in a totalizing, controlled society.
• Margaret observes a disconnect between the book’s sense that “all choices are totally illusionary” and the lived experience of resisting oppressive systems in the real world.
• Lee explains:

  • The book is not just strict metaphor but an attempt at a working world, in which the protagonist Daze’s unique perspective and limitations are core.

  • Daze’s end is “where this character would end up based on who they are,” but Lee is careful to distinguish the fictional limits from the real:

    “In the real world, there is always an outside. … The state’s goal and their practice is to make sure that there is never any outside … and at the same time, the state always fails in that goal, that there has always been an outside.” (Alan Lee, 23:07)

  • Key takeaway: Even the most totalizing systems cannot capture all forms of freedom, which may exist in rebellion, liminal spaces, or personal acts of autonomy.

Reflections on Prison Society and Personal Experience

[19:09-24:48]

• Lee discusses surviving real prisons, and how carceral systems are simply extreme versions of broader societal control:

  “There was nothing about the experience [of prison] that didn’t remind me about the psychiatric ward … high school itself, all these other institutions. We really do live in a prison society… that’s not just a hyperbolic metaphor.” (Alan Lee, 21:54)

• The limits placed on choice in maximum security become metaphors for broader struggles—yet individual autonomy always finds cracks.

The Anarchist Tradition in Speculative Fiction

[30:59-37:48]

• Hazel observes that Hermetica feels like classic, golden-age sci-fi but with a modern anarchist spin: “What if we took the tone and theme of [Orwell or Huxley] and gave it a fresh, modern, anarchist, anti-authoritarian twist?”

• Lee credits magical realism (Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita), classic dystopias (We by Zamyatin, 1984, Brave New World), and Vonnegut as inspirations.

• They critique how current publishing industry conventions constrain genre fiction, with Lee noting:

  “If we differentiated between a tool and a machine… with the machine, we just become adjuncts to the machine… feed material into it, following parameters set by the machine.” (Alan Lee, 33:29)

• Margaret describes how publishing does allow for radical content but often demands specific genre conventions in form and character, while the legacy of major dystopian fiction is rooted in anarchist and anti-authoritarian thought:

  “All of these classic works of dystopia … were written by people who have this set of values — they believe in both socialism and freedom, take care of each other but also be in charge of ourselves…” (Margaret, 37:05)

On Publishing, Algorithms, and Representation

[37:48-39:33]

• Lee explains how big publishers now "algo-decide" what gets promoted — most titles are essentially buried, serving mainly as potential IP for blockbuster adaptation.

• Notable advice for writers: Pre-orders and buzz matter more than ever for a book's survival in traditional publishing.

• Despite industry failings, the field is more open to marginalized voices than in the past.

Book Recommendations and Endorsements

[39:33-43:09]

• Alan Lee: Recommends Arkady Martine (A Memory Called Empire), Emma Mieko Candon, Hilary Mantel (The Mirror and the Light), and classic Calvin and Hobbes.
• Margaret: Just read Morsel by Carter Keene (upcoming horror novella with radical politics).
• Hazel: Recently enjoyed cozy novellas:
  • A Song for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (gentle, post-apocalyptic reflecting on burnout, nature, and healing)
  • A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandana (about disability, grief, and found family)
  • The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (“violent in a cathartic way … is what Star Wars and Avatar ripped off”)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We need imagination. And imagination can also really allow us to better understand or change the world that we live in.”
  — Alan Lee, 09:59

• "As an anarchist, I feel like that’s a part of our lot is being incredibly frustrated … seeing people you care about jump joyfully onto a sledge … into a trash compactor.”
  — Alan Lee, 06:36

• “The real world can’t exist without the imaginary world. And that’s true on a mathematical level. That’s also true on the level of how societies organize themselves.”
  — Alan Lee, 09:59

• “We really do live in a prison society. That's not just a hyperbolic metaphor. … It's not exceptional. It's so similar to all the other institutions that make up our society.”
  — Alan Lee, 21:54

• “Freedom is not like, I am an island, a sovereign island that is unencroached by other islands. ... It’s that we are all influencing each other, but without undue pressure or constraint…”
  — Alan Lee, 23:09

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:09] – Intro and welcome; the structure of this Book Club
• [04:31] – Alan Lee on inspiration and the writing process
• [06:36] – On AI, social control, and anarchist prescience
• [08:14] – Relationship between fiction and nonfiction in radical writing
• [12:25 / 19:09] – Metaphorical vs. literal constraints, agency inside and outside systems
• [21:54] – Personal experience with prison as informational backdrop
• [23:07] – Possibilities of “the outside” and limitations of state totality
• [30:59] – Discussion of genre, influences, and the machinery of publishing
• [39:33] – Book recommendations and personal reading habits
• [43:09] – Alan Lee teases upcoming trilogy, Mad Hatter

Episode Tone and Feel

The conversation is relaxed, a touch irreverent, and deeply thoughtful — blending personal anecdote, political critique, and literary analysis, with frequent wry humor about podcast ads and genre conventions. The hosts and author make radical ideas accessible, rooting them in lived experience and contemporary cultural dynamics.

Further Reading/Listening

• Hermetica by Alan Lee (the subject of the discussion)
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• A Song for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
• The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Morsel by Carter Keene (forthcoming)

Coming soon: Mad Hatter trilogy by Alan Lee