We kick the week off with a chat with Robert Charles Wilson author of Spin.

MTHow is work coming along on Axis? I realize its probably too early to ask you about it, but… Can you tell us anything about it?

RCW Axis has been a hard one to write, and it’s taken an unconscionably long time to get started, but it’s well on the way to finished — as I wrote my understandably impatient editor today, “I’m typing as fast I can.” As difficult as it was to beat into shape, I think it’s a good book. Without going into too much detail, it looks beyond the Arch that was put in place by the alien “Hypotheticals” in Spin — linking Earth (by sea!) to a new and resource-rich world, for inscrutable purposes. We learn a little more about a universe a few billion years older — and more complex — than the one we currently inhabit.

MTHave you met any notable real world characters that seemed like the jumped out of the pages of a science fiction story?

RCW None that I’ve personally met, or at least none I care to name, but a lifetime of reading science fiction has left me with the impression that the world we live in is only one of the many possible outcomes of historical events. We are our own parallel world. One of the wackier ones, it seems to me. Turn on the news. Tell me I’m wrong.

MT What’s the weirdest/most wonderful reaction you’ve had from a fan of your work?

RCW You mean apart from “I loved your Illuminatus Trilogy?”

MT You’ve been seen associating with other Canadian Science Fiction writers. For the record, is there or is there not a secret handshake?

RCW It’s not a handshake, exactly. We just make knowing references to the great figures of Canadian history, like Louis Riel or Mr. Dressup.

MT Has reading and writing science fiction had a signifigant impact on your world view? And if so how?

RCW Sure it has. The one compelling idea that recurs constantly in science fiction from H.G. Wells onward is human contingency — which boils down to three statements: The world in the past was a very different place than it is now; the world we live in could have been very different place than it is; and the world will inevitably become a very different place in the future. These assertions may seem obvious, but I believe they’re counterintuitive, like the idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Our lives are simply too short to give them real visceral meaning. So we have to use our imagination, we have to literalize the possibilities, we have to engage the truth that dinosaurs really did once wander over the prairies, that the Confederacy really might have bargained with England and won its independence, that human activity really might change the climate or sterilize the seas.

Internalize this deeply enough and you do end up with a slightly distanced worldview. You learn not to trust appearances, which is always a valuable lesson, and you realize that no human institution, good or bad, secular or religious, cultural or technological, is fore-ordained or guaranteed to last.

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Robert’s homepage (link)

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