The newest issue of Barnes & Noble Review, the bookseller’s online review magazine, has two features of special interest to sf readers. This issue features a long interview of Neal Stephenson by B&N Review Editor James Mustich, and the debut of Paul DiFilippo’s “The Speculator” column, with an essay “Remembering Tom Disch”.
The Stephenson interivew is occasioned by the publication of his new novel, Anathem. In the book, he “invents a political and intellectual history, as well as an ingenious vocabulary, for his imagined world, [composing] a work of enormous speculative dimensions that is enlivened with both ideas and adventure.” In the interview, Stephenson talks about creating the book, as well as his earlier Snow Crash, and about speculative fiction in general. He says “If you choose to read a book today, it’s not like a hundred years ago, when that was your only option. Today, when you read a book, you’re making a conscious decision not to play a video game, not to surf the web, not to watch a movie, not to turn on the TV. It does require a certain discipline to make that decision.…” The interview is available at this link.
DiFilippo’s column remembers the author and the man, Tom Disch, who committed suicide on 4 July 2008. It’s available at this link. Our obituary is here.