I chatted with @torontolibrary's Shelve Under podcast before the pandemic about writing science fiction as a political act -- it was in honor of my (explicitly political) book Radicalized, which is a finalist for the CBC's #CanadaReads prize.
shelveunder.simplecast.com/episodes/shelv…
1/
shelveunder.simplecast.com/episodes/shelv…
1/
The interview is weirdly applicable to the moment we're in (as are the stories in Radicalized, dealing as they do with preppers trying to sit out the end of the world; everyday people trying to wrest control over their technology from distant, failing corporations...)
2/
2/
(...and the limits of individual action in addressing structural racism; and the fundamental evil of privatized health care)
It's one of those moments when I'm at pains to point out that cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion.
3/
It's one of those moments when I'm at pains to point out that cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion.
3/
But beyond that, we dug into the way that Toronto during my boyhood in the 1980s and 1990s offered the closest thing to a formal apprenticeship in science fiction writing the world has ever seen, thanks largely to the actions of Judith Merril.
4/
4/
