Interview: Bruce Sterling – Cyberpunk author plans European book

Sci-Fi legend Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather, The Difference Engine, Distraction and other great novels) is one of the cyberpunk gang of authors who have seen through the more pollyanna views of 'cool new technology' to warn that innovation can potentially create disruptions in everything from the climate system to the social system. I've been a fan of his since coming across Heavy Weather in the mid-1990's. Climate change was not cool back then. We're so much older than that now and the planet is so much warmer. I was delighted, and honored, when I ran into him earlier today at the FiRE Conference in San Diego and he agreed to be interviewed for Professionally Speaking. I really had no idea what he'd talk about. The last thing I expected was a discussion on the Mafiosi-like features of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels. In fact he's planning to set his next book in Europe. To hear him explain why he finds modern "post-national" Europe so fascinating, and why he predicts the view from across the Atlantic will soon "return to the slightly paternalistic attitude of American’s as poorly educated hay-seeds," click on the podcast icon below.