I gave science-fiction wildman Rudy Rucker a copy of my forthcoming novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom for a blurb and he did one better, saying some real nice things about it in this killer interview.
I have a vague sense that it's about time for a new cohort of exciting SF writers. You could say we had the Golden Age guys in the 40s, the New Wave in the 60s, Cyberpunk in the 80s, so there ought to be something interesting in the 00s. But I'm not out there reading the magazines and the first novels, so I'm not the right guy to ask. Just at random, one first novel I did recently happen to read and like is Cory Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, due from Tor Books this fall. He does this next-generation thing of pretty much taking for granted certain far-out SFictional notions that I still think of as a big deal; for instance, his characters are online all the time via implants, which still strikes me as a kind of shockingly evil possible development. Why evil? How would you like to have Muzak, spam, telemarketing calls, political ads, polling, and surveillance going on in your head 24/7?
(Thanks, Rudy!)
