A few weeks back I interviewed Jeffrey Ford who mentioned Tom Purdom as his pick for the genre’s most underrated writer. So I decided to contact Mr. Purdom and find out a little more about him. I conducted this interview via email. Enjoy:

Back in the 70s a bloke by the name of Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock

Here’s a desciption from Wikipedia: Toffler argues that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society“. This change will overwhelm people

We’ve got a no book review policy at Meme Therapy (conflict of interest, plentiful excellent review sites already out there) but that doesn’t preclude us from shining the ocassional spotlight on some writer’s work that could use more attention. So this week we’re covering underrated writers. These are the people whose work you love but whom none of your friends seem to have read.

We kick the week off with an interview with Elizabeth Bear, 2005’s winner of the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. She’s a nice lady and I enjoyed picking her brains. Enjoy

If you had the power to resurrect a space program that was cancelled or never got off the ground which one would you choose?

Donald’s answer, included below, floored me and has made me rethink my position on manned vs. unmanned spaceflight:

If you had the power to ressurect a space program that was cancelled or never got off the ground which one would you choose?

My own answer is a bit sheepish and boring. All the space science missions that are currently being rolled back to pay for cost overruns in the manned space program.

I think I’ve done pretty well in avoiding the “What’s the difference between Canadian and American Science Fiction” question when interviewing Canadian SF authors. I think there probably is a difference but its really too subtle and minor to be worthy of much attention. Besides I figure every Canadian SF author gets asked that question a few hundred times a year already.

The question this week is on technologies with underated potential. I’ve asked a number of SF authors, scientists and bloggers to pick a technology that exsists today that has the most underrated potential. I’ve got a variety of very interesting answers but first I’m going to begin with my cautiously optimistic but very boring pic: solar power.

We kick the week off with an interview with Science Fiction writer David Moles. He’;s been in some of our Brain Parades and he also maintains a blog (link). You can read more about David along with links where you can read some of his work online here (link).

I was scratching my head for a way to introduce this Brain Parade when I came across a “Sex Slave Cult” story on the BBC. The “cult” (calling it a cult might be a bit much) is apparently based on the Gor books, a series of science fiction novels from the 60s. You can read the story here (link).