ëëThereís a danger in the field of science fiction. Science fiction can be very liberating, but itís a postmodern field in a sense. Itís sort of like rockíníroll. Its salad days are over, and the people writing in the field now are living in the ruins of what was established before. It dictates an ironic stance, an unserious attitude toward your material that is not always a good thing.

ëëBut in SF you can still say something serious. Iím sort of optimistic. I donít know if thatís true of the field as a whole, since one of the things science fiction is about is catastrophism. You also have a whole period of dystopian science fiction. But thatís not what I want to write. As much as I love Walter M. Miller, I donít agree with him that civilization is cyclical. I donít think thereís going to be another Dark Age. In the worst case scenario, if you had a nuclear war in the world right now, I think after 150 years you would have basically the same technology we have now, with much reduced levels of population.íí

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ëëWe used to think we were going to Outer Space. Weíre not. We used to think robots were going to change everything, and they didnít. None of that happened. If you look back at what really changed America, it was the interstate highway system and air conditioning. And look how the discovery of America transformed the world, every single person in the world, in the last 500 years. It was natural to think that going to the moon or to Mars would have the same transformational effect, but it didnít. Thatís the kind of thing I wish science fiction dealt with more.íí

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ëëIíve done a lot of short stories, and managed to sell a story to Playboy about once a year, which is probably more than any other science fiction writer does. The last two or three years, in my short fiction Iíve been doing what I would call light romantic comedy, like the Playboy stories. But Iíve sort of gone away from that recently, and my science fiction is more political. This story ëmacsí was the beginning of that. Itís about the death penalty. ëmacsí actually came out of a panel discussion I was on, with Jack Williamson and Nancy Kress out in Portales, New Mexico. We were talking about cloning and genetic engineering and all that. I felt this devilish urge to say something outrageous and shock people. This was only a year or two after Oklahoma City, and I said, ëI was working on a story where they cloned Timothy McVeigh 168 times, so that every victimís family would have their own McVeigh to kill.í Then, as I thought about it, it actually became the basis of ëmacsí.íí

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ëëI also wrote the last 75 pages of Walter Millerís Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, but I didnít touch a word of his writing. I think itís a great book. It obviously doesnít have the force or the singularity of A Canticle for Leibowitz, but to me itís almost Tolstoyan, a very broad canvas with a lot of characters in it, like a picaresque novel, much more ambitious and more mature than Canticle. I was disappointed that it didnít get any recognition whatsoever. I thought Iíd be on all the talk shows and everybody would be fascinated by the idea of this guy who wrote one great bestseller and never did anything else, then killed himself after he hired someone he never met to finish the book. This is a great story! But the family didnít want to put it out there. Even if I never laid eyes on Miller, I really grew to love the guy as I worked on this book.íí

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ëëMillerís take on religion is that itís a system of repetitious actions carried out by fools, which in the long run saves them. You have religion because weíre so unspiritual. His monks are the least spiritual people in the world, but after you spend four or five hundred pages with them, you realize thatís what itís all about. The book is really about this guy who becomes a saint in spite of himself. Heís chasing this girl through the whole book, and at the end he meets up with her. I got word from the publisher that they wanted him to consummate this relationship. I didnít fight with anybody about this, but I said it was very clear that wouldnít happen. ëëMy new novel, which will come out next year, is The Pickup Artist. The idea is that thereís too much stuff in the world - too much music, too much art, too many movies and books - so thereís been a bureau set up which randomly selects and deletes twelve hundred items a year, to make room for new stuff. The Artist is sort of a Melville-type character of bureaucrat. He goes around and makes sure you donít have any old Philip K. Dick paperbacks lying around the house, since Philís been deleted.íí

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