[Kathryn Cramer]

The SF field pioneered the kidult phenomenon, keeping childhood safe for adults.

But also, the SF frame of mind has largely taken over the tech industry, so now SF has a more direct conduit to power. The same cannot be said of today’s literary fiction.

Certainly, movies have larger audiences than anthologies. But an anthology is a good start.

[Kathryn Cramer]

I certainly take your point, but Neal Stephenson named the project and gave a number of high profile interviews about it starting in 2012. So we need to keep it.

He explains the name in his essay Innovation Starvation.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Yes. Welcome.

[Kathryn Cramer]

We don’t know the answer. The most obvious answer in that it is a hard science fiction project. Hieroglyph sets out to be welcoming to a wider range of writers than would usually appear in a hard SF anthology.

[Kathryn Cramer]

We are in the planning stages of the future of Hieroglyph, and one thing I think would be useful is to have five or six specific topic areas we are addressing. If we do that, climate change is an obvious candidate.

Because our first “deliverable” is a commercially published anthology, which takes nearly a year from our story deadline to its pub date, what we have accomplished so far won’t be public until September. Call and response through fiction on important issues takes time.

Regarding the question of whether technology can solve the problem of global warming, that is one of the central questions one might ask of the project as a whole. And it’s one to which I don’t have an answer. Some big problems have technological solutions, and it is better to try to solve problems than not to try.

Some problems have political solutions. Climate change is partly a political problem. And the politics of it are so virulent that on of the main thrusts of science blogging is combatting climate deniers.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Thanks, Bruce. I followed your links and saw many weird things.

[Kathryn Cramer]

(I am not at the California event. I am in Westport, NY in my kitchen making dinner.)

The short answer is that we would be delighted, even overjoyed, to have more Latino involvement with Hieroglyph, and indeed more participation by people of color. While we were actively working to recruit writers of color for the first book, now in copy editing and which will be published in the fall, we were less successful than we had hoped.

Our detailed response will be posted to this site before the Sunday panel.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Welcome, Rudy. We are, in fact, working on a response to your questions. Since you asked a lot of questions, it will be somewhat long and detailed.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Hi Will. Filling out your profile some more might help you to attract participants.

[Kathryn Cramer]

If it were really cryogenic, I don’t think they would develop while in cold sleep.

There is a Mary Soon Lee story called “Pause Time” that explores this theme, though not the science of children with a shelf life.

[Kathryn Cramer]

The short answer to your question is that Neal Stephenson has a concept of how a certain kind of world-changing science fiction might be written, and it has been our job as the editors to find a way to implement that vision. Hence, this website.

ASU has a contract with HarperCollins for a Hieroglyph anthology that is forthcoming in 2014, edited by Ed Finn and me. A majority of the discussions on the site concern ideas connected to stories that will be in the book.

In the longer term, the goal of this effort is to create a subgenre of science fiction that is more directly connected to scientific and technological innovation than most of the current SF field and that will put ideas out there to inspire.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Great! Thanks. I’ll take a look.

[Kathryn Cramer]

I have had EMDR (which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in fiction.

[Author]

Posts