This Polygraph interview with Kim Stanley Robinson is pretty fucking amazing. It provides a clear, well educated, intensely lucid world-view, and a solid conception of where we should be going as a society… which I happen to mostly agree with. I’m especially into his thoughts about the scientific community and the political process (not quite as glib as “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” but the idea is the same); I find the amount of high profile anti-intellectualism lately really terrifying (We had a vice president seriously running on the “Those experts don’t know what they’re talking about, look at my folksy wisdom” platform. Come on.) so a clear conception of how the scientific community should handle the situation is an intensely valuable thing. The text of the interview unfortunately also demonstrates the problem with the interface between the scientific community and society at large; it is rather challenging to read
I’m very found of KSR; I’ve read his magnum opus, The Mars trilogy about three times now, and it has seriously shaped the way I think about the world. I think the first time through was when I was about 9, but the repeats were much more recently, after I realized just how much the first reading had colored my own world-view. They aren’t so much about the future as they are about society and the environment, and where it is about the future it is all amazingly plausible, to the point that many of the near-future predictions have actually come to pass. There is a wonderful sort of grim optimism to the whole thing; running on the view that the world is not inherently a nice place, but we can collectively choose to make it so (or not). It isn’t a quick read; the story spans about 2 centuries, 20 some major characters, and 1700 pages, but it is (I really hate this phrase) a life changing read.
We need more KSRs and fewer Sara Palins. Can we elect this man to a position of power instead of the current selection? I’d vote for him.
