How much Byzantium can fit onto a planet in an outer space, in a distant future? How do we build future storyworlds out of past civilizations? How would you like your entire cultural memory wrapped and handed down? Can meeting a linguistic alien make us ponder on the foundations of our own culture? Are we translatable? And what draws us so much to Empires we strongly dislike?

Listen to Arkady Martine (aka AnnaLinden Weller), the author of the Hugo Award winning space opera A Memory Called Empire, in conversation with Ingela Nilsson, for the occasion of the exhibition “What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!” Byzantium in Popular Culture at the Pera Museum in Istanbul.