June 2001

Kathleen Ann Goonan: Extending Our Senses Kathleen Ann Goonan is the author of Queen City Jazz, The Bones of Time, Mississippi Blues, and, most recently, Crescent City Rhapsody (2000). She lives in Florida. Excerpts from the interview: ''I decided I wanted to bracket Queen City Jazz and Mississippi Blues with the beginning of the story in Crescent City Rhapsody, and, as far as I want to go with it, a conclusive book. That's the new one, Light Music.

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''One of my themes is the development of consciousness, the development of the human mind as you go through different stages of growth. And also, how this might continue in the future, which is something that fascinates me: the different genetic advances, and how they might affect what we know about thought, what we know about how we see the world. Different creatures make sense of the world with different ranges of vision, different ranges of hearing. One of the things I'm thinking about in Light Music is how extending our senses will affect our consciousness."

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"When I started writing, nanotechnology was a gleam in Drexler's eye, and since I wrote Queen City Jazz, it has mushroomed. I believe in these possibilities so much that it's really hard for me to think of a future in which these changes do not occur. Perhaps not mechanically, but biologically – that's where the next revolution is going to be. It's astonishing how little we differ from other life forms on the planet. It's not our uniqueness that astonishes me; it's our connectedness."

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''Transcendence, and the possibility of transcendence, is the aspect of being human – and of science fiction – that keeps me going. One has to believe that there are completely new horizons just over the next rise, possibilities that will change us – personally, and as part of a constantly evolving entity. At least, it's something that I've found that I need to keep in mind, for my own mental health. It's an exciting time for me, but the results won't be visible for quite some time. I have so many interests, I'm bound to be doing something.''