Interview Update: June
1997
Q: Okay, the CD is out. How do you feel about
it? Q: Silicon Embrace is a phenomenal book, but I do not think
some reviewers caught on to it. I feel that -- again -- in a few years
the rest of the world will catch up to you. Comment? Q:What else are you working on right now? Q: Why did we recently add non-fiction to the web
site? ©1997 Paula Guran
Original Interview: January
1996
Interview Update: December
1996
Interview Update: January
1998
Interview Update: January
1999
A: It's as close to what I wanted as we could get
given the limited amount of time we had to work on it. I think it's
original enough to disorient people who want to pigeonhole it. Some
will "get" it and some won't.
Q: Any directions you want to go with the music
now?
A: More
tuneful, but also tougher sound in some ways. Probably more electronic
resonance. In fact, I am planning a collaboration with John Roome now.
He did the Terminal Power Company albums on Beggar's Banquet and the
tres cool new LP Witchman on Deviant Records. My own
project with John is electronic danceable, but thoroughly ambient with
rants and song lyrics.
It's that way with anyone worth reading. The San Francisco
Chronicle loved the book as did lots of other people --
LOCUS, all of the underground and alternative places it was
(and still is being) reviewed. The majority of reviewers dug it. Not
everyone will get either the music or the book. If they did we'd have
an unendurably homogeneous society.
Q: What about the "ideas" in the book.
The spiritual, metaphysical issues?
A: As I said in the 21C interview with R.U. Sirius,
it's a transitional book, incorporating cyberpunk, but attempting to
build a bridge to a greater awareness of life, a bridge to
metaphysical, philosophical issues. I was trying to bring people to
this in whatever way I could -- narrative, humor, satire, fun with
conspiracy and paranoia, social issues -- to draw them into what seems
to me higher questions. I think some of the greatest satirists did
just that. Jonathan Swift did that. And Kurt Vonnegut. It's something
to aspire to. So I use certain kinds of ideas to draw people into ever
deeper ideas. In my books ideas, concepts, are themselves metaphors.
A: I'm working on several script projects, but I am not free to talk
about them. I plan to write a suspense-type novel about the so-called
"real" world, some street activity spilling over into the suburbs,
along the lines of certain of my short stories. I still may write that
fantasy, Angry Angel. I recently wrote a short story
for an anthology based on The Crow edited by Ed Kramer. I put
the manuscript together for a collection of my darker fiction,
Black Butterflies, that should be out in about a
year, and I'm working on another original short story or two that will
be included in that.
A: Because those pieces were about things I care about and I don't
want those ideas to languish now that they've gone out of print.
