Rob Reid (left) wrote After On, a sci-fi novel, after consulting with neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley.
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Rob Reid and Adam Gazzaley on putting the science in sci-fi

Two of our speakers at GamesBeat Summit 2017 really embodied the confluence of tech, science fiction, and games. Rob Reid, founder of Listen.com and author of science fiction novels such as the upcoming After On, held a fireside with Adam Gazzaley, brain researcher at UCSF and cofounder of Akili Interactive Labs.

Their talk was entitled, “Putting science into science fiction. Literally – and literarily!” Reid goes to great pains to see that his “speculative fiction” is grounded in science. He regularly talks with Gazzaley about the brain, and that helped Reid write his upcoming novel After On, which grapples with issues of digital consciousness.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.