She is the first Indonesian author to earn recognition from the prestigious Nebula Awards, given annually by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

“This story is about resisting oppression both epistemic and material but above all it's about kindness. It's my way of saying that I hope we'll always find a way to be kind even to those we cannot understand,” she said during her acceptance speech.

The story revolves around a human doctor who is only permitted to use artificial intelligence when treating patients, as performing a manual diagnosis would be illegal. Her challenge begins when she encounters a rare alien species that has survived genocide, but the diagnostic machine provides no relevant health data, and their communication depends entirely on a translation device.

Despite the difficulties in understanding the alien, with many terms lost in translation, the doctor chooses to help, listen and sit with him, showing kindness to someone vastly different from herself.

In a recent interview with The Jakarta Post, Anselma said the story addressed the politics of knowledge amid the growing use of AI, despite the fact that machine learning has issues such as inaccuracy, insufficient data and biases that can perpetuate discrimination.

“If we over-rely on AI for everything, we risk allowing it to monopolize our knowledge, while AI isn’t free from bias. So there must be forms of knowledge that cannot be included, for example, the knowledge that exists in our bodies, experiences and emotions. In the story, that is represented by the alien’s medical data, which the AI can't provide because it comes from a species that’s been erased by genocide,” she explained.

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Resisting oppression with speculative fiction: Anselma’s path to Nebula Awards