It Still Moves! - Science Fiction in the Age of UnReason

Gardner Dozois is interviewed by John C. Snider of SciFiDimensions talking about his recent Pyr anthology, Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition. Both the book itself, and Dozois in this interview, have some very important things to say about the current anti-science environment prevalent in America today:

"...the United States is busily turning itself into a Third World nation, and at the worst possible time, too, at a time when many other nations are becoming increasingly progressive and scientifically sophisticated. American workers are already at a severe disadvantage in the global marketplace, because they're just not as well-educated, particularly in the sciences, as workers from other countries; see the recent book The World is Flat [by Thomas L. Friedman] for a discussion of this. It certainly isn't going to help that their science education is going to have to be watered-down and distorted even further to make room for stuff like 'Intelligent Design' because of political expediency."

Meanwhile, the Guardian ran a very cogent article by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne arguing that allowing "Intelligent Design" into the classroom may have seriously detrimental long term effects. At the risk of sounding like a true believer, I think that science fiction's position as a literature of rationality, skepticism, and an open mind has never been more potentially important than it is today.