Immaculate Conception, a cyberpunk story from the award-winning author of Natural Beauty, touches upon the dangers that exist within the developing gray areas as technology advances. The novel follows the newfound friendship of aspiring artists Enka and Mathilde, who meet in art school and become fast friends. Enka’s growing obsession with Mathilde and her burgeoning fame fuels chaos even further, as a new piece of technology on the market could allow for creating a permanent link between the friends, enabling them to share everything.

Nicole Ransome: Immaculate Conception is a cyberpunk-ish listen about the evolution of a newfound friendship between the main protagonist and her schoolmate. What was your biggest inspiration in creating this story?

Ling Ling Huang: There are a couple of seeds for this book. The first is very personal—my best friend and my boyfriend had an affair for 11 months. Much of this book was processing and trying to understand the choices she made, which hurt me, even though she loved me. It was also an examination of my love for her, the fact of its continuation in the face of betrayal, and a look at the systems that compelled us to compete with each other.

Another seed for this book began with a quote by Tristan Harris: “With technology, you don’t have to overwhelm people’s strengths. You just have to overwhelm their weaknesses.” I wanted to write a book about love being tested by technology, how it would or wouldn’t overwhelm the weakest parts of the people involved, and what would remain of their identity and love afterward.

Immaculate Conception is set within an art school where there is an intersection of art and technology. In the age of artificial intelligence tools and the digitization of art, in what ways do you feel Immaculate Conception addresses some of the positive and negative aspects emerging in creative spaces from these advancements?

In Immaculate Conception, I created what I called the Stochastic Archive, an application where anyone can upload and copyright their generated artwork. I was shocked when, a few months later, very similar technology came into existence and became pervasive. AI has been touted as being something that will democratize education and the arts, and it does that in my novel, but the result isn’t necessarily good. If everyone is an artist, does that mean no one is? And how does that affect the people who make art for their livelihood? How does that affect their expression, does it make their art more or less honest?

All technologies that promise agency, empathy, and growth can just as easily be used to exploit and degrade our autonomy. AI is clearly here to stay, and this book is, in some ways, a call for creators and consumers of art to establish an ethics of making.

This story highlights a struggle between new technology and the deepening bond between Enka, a new art student, and her friend Mathilde, a burgeoning art celebrity. Featuring technology that creates a deep artificial connection between people, how does Immaculate Conception lend itself to the ongoing conversation on tech’s effects on influencing toxic parasocial relationships?

So many applications and technologies were started to bring humans closer—the device I invented in Immaculate Conception does the same, promising a new level of empathy: complete knowledge of the other person. But even connected by the device, there are times when Mathilde and Enka don’t know each other at all. In real-life interactions, constant recalibrations and adjustments are being made. We accommodate one another, compromise, etc. It can be exhausting, but it’s a reminder that we are all different people in different circumstances: no one is completely knowable.

The way we encounter people online is through static representations of them, which make us believe that it’s possible to know them completely and that we do. One of many dangers with parasocial relationships is when we give more reality and care to that static presentation of an individual, who is an illusion we’ve co-created. That can result in the type of thing we’ve seen in recent years where certain fan bases limit—or worse, control—the lives of pop artists they love because of their expectations for them. In Immaculate Conception, Enka, using the technological device, constantly believes herself to “know” Mathilde, and makes choices on her behalf that render change and growth impossible, as well as robbing her of autonomy. In that sense, Enka isn’t so different from a content-generating algorithm.

Narrator Carolyn Kang performs Immaculate Conception. She also performed your authorial debut listen, Natural Beauty. What drew you to again choose Carolyn to be the voice of your story?

I just love Carolyn Kang’s voice. When I first heard it, I thought, "That’s my voice." Or, how I wish I sounded. I’m so thrilled that she is performing Immaculate Conception. There’s something about the depth of her expression that makes me feel as if I’m listening to someone from inside of them, versus outside. Does that sound creepy? I mean like being onstage instead of in the audience! Listening to her feels as intimate, or private, as physically turning pages with my thumb and first finger, and while she has a strong and clear interpretation of the material, she always manages to convey it without being prescriptive.

Now that you’ve officially finished your second book, how would you compare your experience between writing Natural Beauty and Immaculate Conception?

I wrote Natural Beauty for myself, not thinking anyone would read it. No agent, no MFA or literary connections of any kind, why would anyone bother? And then I wrote Immaculate Consumption knowing that people would (hopefully!) read it! Each process was terrifying in its own way. I was afraid of disappointing people who connected with Natural Beauty, which obviously isn’t a fear I could have had with the first book. But it was undeniably amazing going into a second book with an agent, an amazing editor, and team (Dutton!). Then again, I wrote it with the knowledge that it was going to be packaged for consumption, versus Natural Beauty where I could really let myself go wherever I wanted. Luckily, my team really advocates for me to be myself as much as possible. I feel extremely grateful to be where I’ve landed, and it often surprises me that I get to write for a living.