Monday, March 22, 2010

Charles Stross

The Firedoglake book forum discussed the most recent Merchant Princes novel by Charles Stross yesterday via email with Stross attending and very famous economist Paul Krugman moderating.

I am sick with envy.

In spite of this, I am going to post Krugman's neat quote on science fiction.
...What drew me to science fiction, more than four decades ago – before I got into economics, and in fact part of the reason I went into economics – was a certain kind of possibility: the creation of fictional worlds, different from our own but not too different, as a way to play with ideas about who we are and where we’re going. And I do mean “play” – not being too serious, mixing ideas about society, economics, politics, and so on with derring-do and romance is crucial to keeping things light enough to tolerate.

This is the kind of science fiction I like to read and want to write, though I wouldn't have added "not too different." Seriously strange can be good. But I agree about the playfulness and the romance.

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