Science fiction writer extraordinaire Kim Stanley Robinson reading from his newest book and sharing some of his consistently brilliant insights:
He defines science fiction, a genre he's "patriotic" about, as
recounting "histories we can never know" - futures which might unfold
(like the thoroughly realized world of 2312, when humans have
rendered many other planets and moons of our solar system habitable by
"terraforming," and have also speciated into several sizes and a panoply
of genders), counterfactual pasts (like world history had the Black
Death wiped out the population of Europe in The Years of Rice and Salt) or stories of the
unknowable past (the new novel Shaman takes place 30,000 years ago). I'm persuaded that it's a serious form of moral critique and imagination.
