Interview with M. Rickert
Strange Horizons just published my interview with M. Rickert, whose collection Map of Dreams was recently published by Golden Gryphon (and which you should all go buy immediately).
Go read!
Tag: Interviews
Interview with Matthew Hughes
Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with Matthew Hughes, author of the new and excellent novel Majestrum, as well as several other fine novels and terrific short stories.
[Excerpt:] I keep an “ideas” file on my hard drive. When I decided, back in 2003, that I should try selling short stories to the magazines in order to raise my profile before Black Brillion came out, I looked through the file and came across a snippet that said something like “Suppose you came to suspect that you were living in a world that was the result of someone’s three wishes going as wrong as they always do?”
I thought, “That’ll do,” and began to sketch out a story set in my Archonate milieu. It needed a point-of-view character, and out popped Henghis Hapthorn, a Sherlock Holmesian sleuth. He is hyper-intelligent, hugely successful as a “freelance discriminator” and gloriously vain about his ability to unravel mysteries. Then he suddenly finds himself transformed into an impoverished toad of a fellow whose shining intellect has been turned down to about 15 watts.
He sets out to investigate, aided by his acerbic integrator, an artificial intelligence he designed and built to be his Dr. Watson. Their search leads him to an unlikely answer–the cause of his disabilities, which are shared by every handsome, wealthy and intelligent man in Olkney, is magic. But magic, as Hapthorn well knows, is all a lot of humbunkery.
This causes a cognitive dissonance for Hapthorn, even as he solves the case, which would not have amounted to much except that when Gordon Van Gelder read the story, entitled “Mastermindless,” he quite loved it, and I recognized that Hapthorn was too good a character to use once and throw away.
Go read the rest and tell me what you think! And go buy Matt’s books!
Interview with Matthew Hughes
Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with Matthew Hughes, author of the new and excellent novel Majestrum, as well as several other fine novels and terrific short stories.
[Excerpt:] I keep an “ideas” file on my hard drive. When I decided, back in 2003, that I should try selling short stories to the magazines in order to raise my profile before Black Brillion came out, I looked through the file and came across a snippet that said something like “Suppose you came to suspect that you were living in a world that was the result of someone’s three wishes going as wrong as they always do?”
I thought, “That’ll do,” and began to sketch out a story set in my Archonate milieu. It needed a point-of-view character, and out popped Henghis Hapthorn, a Sherlock Holmesian sleuth. He is hyper-intelligent, hugely successful as a “freelance discriminator” and gloriously vain about his ability to unravel mysteries. Then he suddenly finds himself transformed into an impoverished toad of a fellow whose shining intellect has been turned down to about 15 watts.
He sets out to investigate, aided by his acerbic integrator, an artificial intelligence he designed and built to be his Dr. Watson. Their search leads him to an unlikely answer–the cause of his disabilities, which are shared by every handsome, wealthy and intelligent man in Olkney, is magic. But magic, as Hapthorn well knows, is all a lot of humbunkery.
This causes a cognitive dissonance for Hapthorn, even as he solves the case, which would not have amounted to much except that when Gordon Van Gelder read the story, entitled “Mastermindless,” he quite loved it, and I recognized that Hapthorn was too good a character to use once and throw away.
Go read the rest and tell me what you think! And go buy Matt’s books!
Interview with Cory Doctorow
Science Fiction Weekly published my interview with Cory Doctorow today.
[Excerpt:] We’d been briefed, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on trusted computing by Microsoft, under an arrangement where they would give us a prepublication briefing and we would agree to a moratorium on commenting on it until they went live. But we would tell them what we thought of it so that when they went live they could have their responses ready, but we could have our critique ready. It was a little bit of nice detente. So after the moratorium ran out I published a story on called “0wnz0red” on Salon. It was up for the Nebula and so on. That story was a critique of trusted computing and was really well received. And I got an email from one of the of trusted computing people at Microsoft saying “How can I rebut a short story?” And I thought, “I found an avenue of attack for which they have no defense. I think I’ve got to pursue it.”
Go read it and tell me what you think!
Interview: James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel
Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, which is focused on the release of their new slipstream anthology, Feeling Very Strange. This one’s a full-length Q&A, not one of the short pieces I do for SCI FI Wire.
Here’s an excerpt:
Kessel: I’ve been interested in fiction that bends the genres for a long time, and have tried some of it myself. Ever since Bruce Sterling’s essay of 1989 gave a new name to such fiction, I’ve wondered if it might become a recognizable form. One thing that I wanted to do in the anthology was show some of the writers not normally associated with SF or fantasy who are writing this kind of work. By putting some of their stories next to ones from writers normally associated with genre fiction, like Howard Waldrop and Ted Chiang, I hope that we can see more clearly what slipstream fiction might be. Although part of me objects to trying to take the magic these writers practice and turn it into a mundane genre, another part of me would not mind seeing a “Slipstream” shelf in every bookstore. We could debate which books belong on it and which should absolutely not be allowed to sully it.
Go read it, then come back and tell me how awesome it is.
Interview with Nick Sagan
Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with Nick Sagan. This one’s a full-length Q&A, not one of the short pieces I do for SCI FI Wire.
Here’s an excerpt:
Sagan: Without a drastic change to human nature, I think it’s reasonable to doubt that world peace will ever be anything more than a pipe dream. Thousands of years of recorded human history, and look at where we are today. Look at what we are. Genetically, we’re not so far from chimpanzees. Are chimps capable of cooperation, compassion, tolerance and compromise? Yes, but they’re far more likely to form tyrannical hierarchies and then persecute, rape and kill chimps from other groups. That’s deeply ingrained primate behavior. It goes back millions of years. A few thousand years of human culture and philosophy have a hard time standing up to “might makes right.” In the animal kingdom, might typically prevails, and our genes know this. They tell us to fight or flee, lead or obey, exploit or be exploited. We can talk about egalitarian utopias all we like, but the aggression lurks within us just the same.
Go read it, then come back and tell me how awesome it is.
Interview with John Scalzi
Science Fiction Weekly just published my Interview with John Scalzi. This one is a full-length Q&A interview, not one of the short pieces I do for SCI FI Wire.
Go read it!
NOLA Writers Interview
Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with New Orleans-residents Albert Cowdrey, Andrew Fox, and Poppy Z. Brite. They were asked to talk about their evacuation of New Orleans and to speculate on the future of their beloved city.