fiction by paolo bacigalupi
Yes, I’m going to Worldcon. But no, I will not be on any programming. Why? Because I’m an almost pathological procrastinator and never got around to signing up to be a participant. Amazing how that works.
In any case, I will still be in attendance, slacking, bar-flying and dealers-room pillaging instead. Hope to see you there.
I’ll be at Readercon this year, July 17-20. Here’s my schedule:
Friday 11:00 AM, ME/ CT: Talk / Discussion (60 min.) Science Fiction as a Mirror for Reality. Robert J. Sawyer with discussion by Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael A. Burstein, Lancer Kind, Hildy Silverman, _et al_
Science fiction has always been a powerful vehicle for commenting on the here-and-now, letting us explore the burning issues of today in the guise of talking about tomorrow. Sawyer is currently under contract with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to host and co-produce a pilot for a web-based new-media series based on this idea. He’ll talk about sf as a mirror of reality, discuss the project, and brainstorm with audience members about recent sf that comments on the here and now and might be worth spotlighting should the CBC series go beyond the pilot stage.
Friday 6:00 PM, Salon F: Panel If All Men Were Tolerant, How Would You Shock Your Sister? Paolo Bacigalupi, Rose Fox, Barry N. Malzberg, James Morrow (L), Cecilia Tan
Once upon a time “a glimpse of stocking” was a dangerous vision. What is the future of transgression and the shocking in a society that prides itself on its ever-increasing tolerance? What value do shocking and transgressive texts have? How do they read once their shocking element becomes passé?
Friday 7:00 PM, Salon F: Panel Waking Up Sober Next to a Story Idea. Paolo Bacigalupi, Jeffrey A. Carver (L), David Anthony Durham, Kay Kenyon, Barry B. Longyear, Jennifer Pelland
Really, it seemed absolutely beautiful once upon a time. Now that you’ve had intimate knowledge of it (say, midway through the novel), you can see all the less-than-flattering sides. You may even wonder, _What the hell was I thinking?_ How do you recover enthusiasm for the work? Now that you see the flaws, how do you begin the process of fixing them?
Friday 9:00 PM, VT: Group Reading (60 min.) _Wastelands_ Group Reading John Joseph Adams (host) with Paolo Bacigalupi, Dale Bailey, Elizabeth Bear, John Langan, Jonathan Lethem.
Readings from the reprint anthology (subtitled _Stories of the Apocalypse_) edited by Adams and published by Nightshade Books in January.
Saturday 1:00 PM, Salon E: Autographing Paolo Bacigalupi; Kay Kenyon
Sunday 11:00 AM, Vinyard: Kaffeeklatsch Paolo Bacigalupi; Sarah Beth Durst
Sunday 1:00 PM, NH / MA: Reading (30 min.) I read either a new short story or an excerpt from my novel-in-progress.
NPR’s Weekend Edition featured me this morning. I wasn’t actually awake for the four-minute event (Arjun slept in, for once), but thanks to the glory of the intertubes, it’s now available for late risers.
The segment focuses on my collection Pump Six and Other Stories along with my somewhat bumpy writing career. Also featured are Michelle Nijhuis, the environmental journalist whose reporting has inspired a lot of my writing, and Jeremy Lassen, my fine publisher at Night Shade Books.
Where it is apparently hot and sweaty.
Going to be doing a group signing and QA in Columbus along with Tobias Buckell, Charles Coleman Finlay, Sandra McDonald, Paul Melko and Sarah Prineas before heading off for a week of novel critique and drunken stupor at Blue Heaven.
The details on the signing are: 7 p.m. Barnes & Noble Bookseller, 1739 Olentangy River Rd. Columbus, Ohio; 614-298-9516, if you happen to be in the area.
“The Calorie Man” just got nominated for the Seiun Award. Nifty!
I’ll be going out to I-CON this weekend at Stonybrook University and I’ve got my schedule from the organizers. Lots of stuff to do:
The Essence of Pure SF: what exactly is it?
Bacigalupi(M), Bear, Malzberg, J VanderMeer, Calvin
Fri, 7 S302
Sat 11-12 Signing
SF Kaleidoscope: SF as a Lens on the Past and Future
Bacigalupi(M), Malzberg, Collins, Kyle, Videbaek
Sat, 3 S311
Bad Stories from Good Writers: what can be learned?
Malzberg(M), Bacigalupi, McGarry, Buchanan, Williams
Sat 4, S311
(topic suggested by Barry Malzberg, based on an idea from Alice Sheldon)
Horror As Social Commentary-in many media, notably fiction and film, the horror story is used to explore and/or explain real-life horrors
Madonia(M), Gordon, Freedman, Bacigalupi
Sun, 11 S311
Where Writers Fear to Tread? Economic, Environmental and Cultural Issues left unexplored
Bacigalupi(M), Spinrad, Malzberg, Macdonald, Beagle
Sun, 12 S302
Lies and Myths About Getting Published-a surprising take on “accepted” ideas about publishing
Rosenberg(M), Crawford, Bacigalupi, Gorinsky, Bilmes
Sun, 2 S302
This must be my fifteen minutes of fame. I’m quoted along with Charles Stross, Walter Jon Williams, and Ian McDonald. Nifty.
Here’s my take on writing optimistic SF– just don’t make it consolatory pap. That’s what advertising, TV and suburban sprawl are supposed to sell.
As an example, here’s the latest on the global warming front. (note: the link is changed to point directly to the Washington Post article as the MSNBC version expired) No big news, but here’s the money quote:
Steve Gardiner, a philosophy professor at the University of Washington who studies climate change, said the studies highlight that the argument over global warming “is a classic inter-generational debate, where the short-term benefits of emitting carbon accrue mainly to us and where the dangers of them are largely put off until future generations.”
When it comes to deciding how drastically to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, O’Neill said, “in the end, this is a value judgment, it’s not a scientific question.” The idea of shifting to a carbon-free society, he added, “appears to be technically feasible. The question is whether it’s politically feasible or economically feasible.”
A lot of sci-fi focuses on the technical aspects of a problem. And completely ignores or soft-peddles the human aspects. If you’re going to write realistic optimistic science fiction story about global warming (for example), you have to jump past the bullshit test of human greed and short-sightedness.
It’s not impossible, but first you have to explain how all the yogacizing organic carrot munching Baby Bjorn wearing liberal types who drive four blocks to the video store to get another DVD rental (real person, btw) are going to wake up and smell the coffee. I mean, if a supposedly supportive person (She buys local organic, yay!!!) is still clueless and destructive, how are you going to get the coal miner with the “Piss on Hippies” bumper sticker on his 4×4 (another neighbor of mine) to think sustainably?
Sci-fi’s urge seems to mostly go after the consumer/tech solution, ie we’ll design a better product (we love you Prius) so that we can keep doing our same old destructive things… but now, automagically, it won’t be bad. Makes me think of artificial sweeteners. Sometimes it’s not a magic bullet, no matter how much we wish it was.
So I see the central problem of realistic optimistic sci-fi as being at least two-fold:
These two things seem to apply across the board, the difference between a liberal greenie in a Prius and Redneck cowboy in pickup is basically zero. If you’re driving, it’s a problem. And the last time I checked… all of America is driving, regardless of our political leanings. I’ve met a few fringe people who really do make a pretty good stab at living sustainably, but even they get on airplanes. Myself, I’ve got four cross-country flights scheduled this year. How’s that for hypocrisy?
In order to surmount this, fictionally, it seems that one would either have to pretend that the majority of people are not in fact lazy, self-serving, and most importantly short-sighted (which seems difficult given that these aspects are precisely what has driven us to the edge of the cliff), or you have to come up with a plausible set of reasons for people to change. Kim Stanley Robinson does this by making global warming a crisis. But what if it’s actually a death of a thousand cuts?
I’d love to see good meaty sf that goes after the big questions about where we’re headed and how we’re going to sort it all out, but I have a hard time believing that it’s going to be done by techno-fix alone. And I have a very hard time believing that we’ll do anything before the damage is already enormous. After all, I’m writing this on a coal-burning computer, which will then be posted to a coal-burning web server, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’re reading it on a coal burning computer at your end, too.
At this point, writing realistic optimistic sf feels like another genre entirely– it feels like fantasy.
When I was out at SF in SF, Rick Kleffel of the Agony Column recorded my reading of “The People of Sand and Slag.” If you’re one of those people who likes audio, I don’t stumble too much as I read. :-)
Rick also recorded our after-reading panel discussion where Terry Bisson, Carter Scholz and I all wax thoughtful about sf. It was an interesting conversation and the audience had great questions (though they aren’t mic’ed well so you have to crank up the volume and listen carefully to hear them).
And finally, I want to link to Carter Scholz’s reading as well. We only met at the event, and I was sadly ignorant of him going in, but he did an astonishing reading from his book Radiance. I liked it so much I bought the book.
Aaron Hughes over at Fantastic Reviews has a very long interview with me, which ranges over everything from my writing process, to free markets and externalities, to the idea of “boy” stories. It was a fun conversation.
They also have a review of PUMP SIX which opens with, “There is no shortage of talented writers in the science fiction genre today, but there are all too few who matter.” And they give it a 9/10. Shiny.
"Stellar... consciousness-altering power." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
