Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss  

The BBC has an interview with ex-Viridian Pope Emperor Bruce Sterling - Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss.

Author Bruce Sterling is one of the most respected writers of science fiction. He is also a web activist, columnist, teacher and one of the most anticipated speakers at the South by South West Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, at which he will give a talk entitled: The state of the Cybersphere.

The difficulty with interviewing Bruce Sterling is knowing where to start. His interests range from literature and design culture, to futurism, political activism, micro and macro economics, technology and 11th Century writers.

Perhaps the simplest starting point would be: The future? Explain.

But Sterling does not speak in handy, journalist-friendly soundbites and rejects the notion of being a prophet. Instead he speaks as he writes, launching verbal hand grenades packed densely with ideas, answers and counter questions. "I am a cult author; I don't write for the vast hamburger-eating, seething masses. I try to plant mind bombs - do the most damage," he tells me.

He is the author of 10 novels, many short stories and is one of the most interesting, magpie bloggers of the modern-day techno-infused culture.

Along with writers such as William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, he drove the take-up of the cyberpunk literary genre which both fomented and predicted contemporary society's heady mix of technology and culture. ...

Despite cyberpunk's prescience Sterling does not want to cast himself as a prophet.

In his 1988 novel Islands in the Net he wrote of off-shore global terrorist groups, of de-localised, networked corporations, and of computers becoming fashion items.

"If you read a piece of science fiction that is very accurate about future developments it makes you unhappy. When you read these books you wonder why nothing was done about these problems if you were able to predict them.

"It gives you a sense of helplessness."

But he adds: "There's a clear social need for someone willing to predict the future. People really need prophets in the same way they need faith healers and witch doctors." But he warns that looking to these prophets "doesn't galvanise people; it doesn't change their behaviour".

Sterling is not looking to produce manifestos of the future to try and corral people into making change, despite his strong activist feelings around issues such as the global economy and climate change.

He says: "I like ideas as abstract constructs. I don't fancy myself as political organiser.

"I am too literary and poetic to be an organiser or rabble rouser. I am an attention philanthropist, always pointing to stuff other people are doing."

Science fiction, he says, has as much relevance in today's world of seemingly relentless scientific endeavour across many different fields as it did in the past when the perception of the pace of change was arguably slower.

He says: "Science fiction writers are not suffering from the pace of development. We're suffering much less than stockbrokers and financiers from that pace of change."

Sterling says he is still as able to project 1,000 years into the future as he is the next handful of years.

He says his most satisfying area of output currently is his blog, Beyond the Beyond, for Wired magazine. "I like throwing ideas and making things thinkable that were not thinkable," he explains. "I am a slightly entertaining, cranky fringe figure."