What if, in the end, we are done in not by intercontinental ballistic missiles or climate change, not by microscopic pathogens or a mountain-size meteor, but by … text? Simple, plain, unadorned text, ...

A few years ago this month, Portland, Oregon artist Darius Kazemi watched a flood of tweets from would-be novelists. November is National Novel Writing Month, a time when people hunker down to churn ...