“My feeling about science fiction is that it ought to expand the scope of things that are possible to think. When Steampunk succeeded it did a little of that. If it’s just costume-drama or a merchandising tag, that’s not the end of the world, but it’s not a pursuit of a lot of use to anybody. Wells
“None of us ever live in dystopia. That’s an imaginary extreme. They just live in shitty cultures. And these societies [in my books] seem dystopian to middle class white people in North America. They don’t seem dystopian if you live in Rio or anywhere in Africa. Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl.“
Click on over; plenty of brain food in exchange for five minutes of your time. [image by fugin]
JV – “The main thing is, the internet and the way memes move now, there is no monolithic thing called “genre” or “literary mainstream” any more. There’s all of this fascinating cross-pollinations and collaborations that you never really saw before. […] I think I like to write stuff that can connect with different kinds of readers in different ways. Like, a fantasy reader is going to perceive The Situation one way, whereas somebody who works in front of a computer all day but doesn’t read fantasy is going to take something else out of it, for example.”
You can find out more about PS Publishing (an excellent UK-based bespoke small press) at their website – why not order something while you’re there? [Cover art image lifted from Wired interview]
BLDGBLOG has an excellent in-depth interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, in which he discusses his attempts to redefine utopias, the ideological bankruptcy of primitivism, how rational design in architecture and technology is one of the crucial keys to surmounting the problems presented by our changing environment, and much more.
A brilliant interview with a brilliant thinker … and hosted on a brilliant blog. You may think you’re not really interested in architecture, but I think an exploration of BLDGBLOG‘s archive would prove you wrong. Go read. [Image from Wikipedia]
[tags]Kim Stanley Robinson, climate change, science fiction, interview[/tags]
Regular readers will be aware of my status as a card-carrying fanboy for Commandant Bruce Sterling.
Just in case you hadn’t noticed, 
