What's the one invention/political policy you'd like to see realised in your lifetime?
You know, this is a tough question. I've been pondering it off and on for days, and I'm struck by how long the list of candidates is and at the same time how difficult it is to suggest any of them without sounding a bit naïve. Clean and clean energy is high on the list, but does one really want to perpetuate the current economic system? An alternative to the capitalist model then--but will we ever get one without undermining the influence of the patriarchal religious right? Technological wet dreams like orbital towers, matter transporters, and life extension would be great too, of course, but is any of them the one?
I've settled in the end for something that's both technological and social. The capacity to alter the human body at will in the context of a society that will accept such changes without judgment or reproach. So if someone wants to change sex, skin-colour, apparent age, shape, or whatever, they'll be allowed to--without the stigma we see attached today to gender reassignment, plastic surgery, piercings, euthanasia, neurological enhancers, elective amputations, and so on. The human body is a flexible vessel as it is, and shucking off the remaining restraints will have a huge effect on everyone, I'm sure.
If you could be any fictional character for a day, who would it be, and why?
Louis Wu from Larry Niven's classic novel Ringworld. At the beginning of that novel, he's 200 years old, good-looking, healthy, rich, famous, widely travelled (with lots of alien friends), and happy, for the most part. I wouldn't want to be him in any of the sequels, though.
Five books that will always stay with you...
A Maze of Death (Philip K Dick)
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Alan Garner)
Mythago Wood (Robert Holdstock)
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy (Robert Anton Wilson)
I picked these because they really have stayed with me. There might have been better books more recently, but only time will tell if I'm still reading them in twenty years or more.
Has the Internet significantly changed writers, for good or bad?
Writers, like all people, are and always have been an entertaining mix of good and bad. Until I get my wish in the first question, that's never going to change.
If you mean "How do I think that the evolution of the Internet has influenced the practice of creative writing?" then I reckon it's way too soon tell. The Internet (via the World-Wide Web, search engines, etc) is a terrific research tool for discriminating researchers, which I think that's been liberating. It's a bottomless market, too, and that's not always a bad thing. It has the potential to truly revolutionise the way stories are disseminated, that's for sure, but will writers most writers end up better off for that or just a few? I couldn't say either way at the moment. That my vocation on a day-to-day level hasn't changed much in fifteen years doesn't mean that it'll stay that for another fifteen years, or even another fifteen months, so I won't make any wild predictions or judgment calls.
What are you working on right now, tell us more!
A Star Wars novel, a near future thriller, a realist crime novel, and a spec-fic kids' adventure series, all at varying degrees of completion. I'm also undertaking a PhD examining the intersection of crime fiction and SF because, you know, I like to keep busy. :-)
Born in the dry, flat lands of South Australia, #1 New York Times-bestseller Sean Williams has been called "the premier Australian speculative fiction writer of the age" and dubbed the "King of Chameleons" for the diversity of his output. Author of seventy short stories, five collections, and twenty-nine novels aimed at adult, young adult and child readers, he is best-known outside Australia for his award-winning space opera series, while his fantasy novels--inspired by the landscapes of his childhood--occupy a unique niche in Australian publishing.
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