This is a bit unusual but I’m actually doing a normal blog post today. Please bear with me, this feels a bit strange. I’m reacting in large part to a ball that’s being kicked around today, largely by Lou Anders who is Getting Medieval on Reality’s Ass (and just to show you how incestous the […]

Is it becoming harder to imagine a plausible utopia evolving from the world as it stands today? Which do you find more compelling, the carrot of Utopia or the stick of dystopia?

MT: I think the idea that we’ll ever get close to a utopia is a pretty dubious one given human nature and fallibility, and personally I can’t think of any that I’d actually want to inhabit (even Aldous Huxley’s Island would grate after a while despite the sex and psychedelics).

Today we cover odd facts that authors dig up when they’re researching stories. Here’s the question I posed to todays commentators:
What’s the oddest thing that you learned while researching a story?
Find out what weird factoids our pick of authors have discovered while researching for their books.

We kick the week off with a Brain Parade that got suggested to me by Lou Anders at Pyr.

What is the job of contemporary SF? Does it have a job?
I found it hard to come up with comments for this one, it’s much easier to answer your own questions.
Read the second part of this brain parade here

With his debut novel Infoquake, David Louis Edelman constructs a believable yet highly imaginative vision of the future where nanotechnology and the science of bio/logics has erased the boundary between the real and the virtual. The first book in the Jump-225 trilogy, Infoquake focuses on Natch, a ruthless bio/logic programmer and head of a ‘fifecorp’ as he strives for commercial success.

Today we take a crack at an old chestnut: Is it worth maintaining the thin red line between Science Fiction and Fantasy? My two cents is that for adults this question is largely irrelevant. Experienced Science Fiction and/or Fantasy readers know what they want and where to find it.

I have to confess to having a crush on utopian visions. I suspect that’s a side effect of a happy childhood and reading too much science fiction growing up. On the flipside however whenever people get the idea in their heads that the world would be perfect if only we did X, Y and Z then they tend to be a bit ruthless in their pursuit of it.

Today we get a head start on the week with an interview with science fiction author Mark Budz. I talk to him about science ficiton, writing, military robots and his latest novel Idolon.

Times are-a-changing, it wasn’t that long ago (four weeks in fact) when I probably couldn’t name a single Australian science fiction author. Now I’ve corresponded with two, the first is Russel Blackford and the second is Joel Shepherd who I’ve just interviewed.

I don’t pretend to have a crystal ball but I’m very optimistic about the effect of reputation systems will have in opening up new ways of doing business that sidestep Big Capital. Which isn’t to say that I think that market capitalism is somehow about to vanish but that we’re probably going to see more and more enterprises running on a different economic model.

Today we interview Keith Brooke the British science fiction author behind Genetopia (link), Green Party candidate and the man behind curtain at Infinityplus.co.uk. I asked him a few questions about his work and his politics.

Oh, wow. This is an easy one. Easy and ubiquitous access to space, in all its forms. Great spinning Lagrangian colonies filled with bright white curving hallways. Moonbases with gritty miners and frontiersmen. Mars colonists, building the foundation a whole new world.

Hal Duncan is a Scottish writer author whose debut novel Vellum has been generating a lot of very good buzz lately. He was kind enough to oblige us an interview. Enjoy.

I invited a number of science fiction authors to be mean with a silly question:
Is there a character depicted in a science fiction story who survived to tell the tale who you would have liked to have seen killed. If so, how would you have liked to seen him finished off?

TodayI bring you the fruition of my latest bit of science fiction author pestering. My latest victim is american SF author Nick DiChario. Nick has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award, the World Fantasy Award, and two Hugo Awards. His first novel, A SMALL AND REMARKABLE LIFE has just come out.

Has reading and writing SF changed your world view? And if so how?

MT: As usual you have to read my answer before we get to the really interesting people, please bear with me but I can sum it up very simply.

Lest you think we’ve forgotten that we blog about speculative fiction as well as speculative politics I bring you an interview with science fiction author Adam Roberts. I asked him a few questions about his latest novel Gradisil and his writing in general.

We wrap up a heavy week of blogging with Chris Roberson a young turk who has been making waves with Paragea a new SF novel that’s getting quite a buzz on the SF blogosphere. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get my hot little hands on a copy on this side of the Atlantic yet but I’m a big fan of pulp and Chris Roberson is at the forefront of what seems to be a resurgence of 21st century pulp action in SF.

Today we do some more reminiscing (we’ll get more intellectual later honest) with a Brain Parade that basicaly gives us another opening to talk about our favourite books. Here’s today’s question:

What’s your favourite death scene in a science fiction story?

Today we pick David Louis Edelman’s brains. He’s the author of the brand spanking new novel Infoquake (link) an active blogger who maintains his own blog (link) and also has his fingerprints on Deepgenre (link) and SFnovelists (link)

What is your favourite characteristic or quirk of an alien depicted in SF?

MT: My favourite trait comes from one of Niven’s creations, the Moties. Specificaly their idiot savant like ability to repair, modify and improve technology based on their perceptions of what it is intended to be used for.

You’ve probably noticed that blogging Canadian SF writers are overepresented here. Well that trend continues. Today I bring you Mark Rayner a hilarious blogger and new kid on the block in the Canadian SF scene. His debut novel is Amadeus Net, you can read more about it here (link) Here’s our exchange:

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?

John Shirley is the author of numerous novels and books of stories, including the novels Cellars, Wetbones, City Come A-Walkin’ , Eclipse, A Splendid Chaos, the collection Black Butterflies (which won the Bram Stoker award and which was chosen by PW as one of the best books of that year), and the collection Really Really Really Really Weird Stories from Nightshade.

Today I pester science blogger Jennifer S Griffin on biological and molecular kinds of things.

MT How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

JG There is a very wide range of science fiction, and some of it is brilliant and fascinating.

Today we take a different tack and interview an editor rather than a writer on the subject of science fiction. John has his fingers in a lot of different pies, he’s assistant editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction

As promised I’m following up on reader feedback from our Brain Parade on Underrated Science Fiction writers (link). One of our readers nominated Susan, I’d credit him here with a link but he commented anymonously. Susan was gracious enough to submit to a few pesky questions about her work

We kick the week off with an interview with Jeffrey A. Carver. Jeff’s novel The Infinity Link was the first science fiction hardcover I ever owned so this interview was something of a treat for me. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work and his take on the writing life.

Being the hard sf geek that I am I decided to run a Brain Parade where I questioned some science types on how they felt about the way science is portrayed in the genere. Here’s the question I posed:

How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

As promised here’s the second part of our Underrated Technology Brain Parade. Just in case you missed it the original is here (link). Here’s the question I posed to our commentators:

Out of our currently exsisting technologies, is there one that you feel has the most underrated potential?

We kick the week off with an interview with fellow Canadian Robert J. Sawyer. Rob writes hard sf that likes to tackle big philosophical questions. He’s a Hugo and a Nebula award winner and I don’t doubt that readers in Canada and the United States are already familiar with him. I am suprised at the number of Brits who haven’t though.

Sorry for the lack of content for the past 48 hours (and the lack of images) but blogger has been playing silly bugger. However I’m making up good today with an ace interview with Rudy Rucker. Rudy has always taken his writing into some very interesting directions. To get a taste of it I strongly reccomend that you check out his photo heavy blog

The end of the world has always been a hot topic in Science Fiction. And in the last ten years there’s been a flood of movies with end of the world themes. A Canadian film critic called it “Apocalypse Porn”. I’ve always found stories built around these scenarios fascinating myself, its a sub genre of science fiction where a societies collective anxieties are just underneath the surface.

Evil scientists were always a rich goldmine of villains for comic book writers. But even as a child fed on a steady diet of Superman, Batman and Fantastic Four comics I never thought that real world scientists were the scourge of mankind that they were made out to be. And eventually the evil scientist as villain fell out of fashion, psychopath, drug dealers and evil mutants took their place.