Bruce Sterling (and Others) on the State of Contemporary Science Fiction
With a hat-tip to Jonathan Strahan,who shared this link on Facebook, the Nerds of a Feather blog series where they’re interviewing cyberpunk authors about the current state of SF is awesome, particularly the section where the interview Bruce Sterling: It’s true that the mid list has dwindled and more money and attention goes to fewer science-fiction creatives, but that’s also true of movies, nonfiction books, acting, pop music, all kinds of pursuits. Even heads of corporations have a one percent of ultra-wealthy moguls towering over them. I dunno why, but it’s clearly something broad and systemic, it’s not about some personal injustice done to some particular writer somewhere. I would also argue that popular writing kinda needs a lot of dross available. Popular writing needs room for badness. You don’t get great writing without a lot of just, writing. When I look at a bookstore rack and it’s all junk I feel a sense of relief: it’s like the swimming
