Gene Wolfe interviewed
Interesting stuff from the one of the League’s favorite science fiction writers. Of particular note is his pessimistic conservatism (“The government in Home Fires is doing the thing that I expect them to do now at any minute: to grab hold of General Motors and General Electric and whatnot, and say, ‘You’ve got to hire more people. Understand us: You’ve got to hire more people.’) and his belief that there’s a 200-to-1 chance that we’ll develop an interstellar star drive in the near future.
Pessimistic conservatism is the only kind for me. Good stuff, thanks for the link.Report
Pessimistic conservatism is the only kind, period.Report
The excerpt on Home Fires puzzled me. Man has discovered a interstellar drive and the Earth is overpopulated with continental powers fighting over resources? How does that logically work? If you open up faster than light travel then you unlock the limitless mineral and elemental wealth of the solar system to the economies of Earth. Resource scarcity; wouldn’t they have a glut? Why would you scratch around for nickel or iron or what have you on the surface of the Earth when it’d be floating around in more accessible form in space? And what would constitute overpopulation? Even ignoring livable planets you’d be have limitless space in artificial habitats. I’d think people would become one of the scarce resources rather than a burden.Report
@North: You think? Or you think, as Wolfe discusses in the interview, that the interstellar drive might become more or less government property, used for ends that don’t necessarily align with common sense and the well-being of the human population at large?
Not to mention: There are aliens in space in the book, and we’re at war with them over habitable planets. And most of all, the drive is relatively new, so it’s not like there’s been a lot of time to develop outer-space mining technologies or livable habitats.Report
Hmm that seems a possability at least.Report
I’ll have to read it.
Interstellar war over resources makes very little sense. For other reasons, yeah, it makes a ton of sense. It’ll make for an interesting read…Report