Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Fun-House Glasses and Love that Goat!

Paul Goat Allen interviews Paolo Bacigalupi in a web-exclusive for Publishers Weekly today. Even if he hadn't started off by referencing me, I'd be directing you there for these words from Paolo on the importance of science fiction: "SF has tools for writing about the world around us that just aren’t available in other genres. Reading good speculative fiction is like wearing fun-house eyeglasses. It shifts the light spectrum and reveals other versions of the world, mapped right on top of the one you thought you knew."

Update 2/21/08: Paolo is also interviewed by environmental journalist Michelle Nijhuis on Grist: Environmental News & Commentary today. More choice words, such as this explanation of how science and science fiction go hand in hand: "
scientists are inherently conservative, and science journalists are inherently conservative, because you don't want to be wrong. But that's where I can get involved as a science fiction writer. I don' t have to be right, exactly, [but] I need to illustrate. I need to illustrate a feeling or experience so that people can say, 'Does that seem like something we want to be going toward?'"

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