Okal Rel Universe story "Making History" is featured by the e-zine Futurefire's 5th edition, dressed up with some original artwork provided by Futurefire. There's also an interesting interview with Cory Doctrow in the same edition, on the future of culture.

As my collage, here, suggests, "Making History" deals with the origins of arbiters, in the years following the Killing War.

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My mini-essay "Books in the Digital Era" is featured this month in Deep Magic's April 2006 edition.

In it, I talk about the optimistic prospects for books as culture that people can get more up-close and personal with than they can with mass-market movies whose stars must, of necessity, be worshipped from afar. I believe readers and writers will interact more in the new age of "mammals" in book publishing. Those who love books and reading will do so pro-actively: on websites, through reviews, in book clubs, as advocates of favorite titles or critics of trends they abhor. Multiple roles can be played by individuals in the digital age in a way that was not natural in the past. It won't be odd for writers to be readers, reviewers, editors and fans of other writers, for example.

Anyone who, like me, has ever felt depressed by the prospect of a future plastered with wall-to-wall video blasting out impersonal, homogenous messages of 30-second-chunks of action-action-action and buy-buy-buy, should feel a touch encouraged by my point of view.

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One of the Okal Rel Universe buttons I distribute at events says "Okal Rel is about Setting Limits". I am often advised to go with the punchy ones like "Most of What Defines me is in Digital Storage" or "May the Gods Ignore You", because people don't get the ones that touch on Okal Rel philosophy. I like the punchy ones a lot, too, so I'm okay with that. But the hard core whatever-it-is that makes me write, deep down inside me, always grumbles to itself "they'll get the more important ones later". Because I think the most important questions for ourselves, and our planet, are all about setting limits. How much is enough? How much force, how much wealth, how much science, how much of everything can we afford to indulge in without destroying the extremely precious things we simply take for granted?

The religion of Okal Rel is fictional but like real religions it does an important job of underpinning the morality a culture depends on for survival. Like real religions it can be manipulated by the power hungry or small minded for their own ends, and exists in a myriad of variations that people argue about. But the longer I live, the more I believe pure intellect, unchecked by moral and cultural constraints, is not the great liberator I thought it was in my youth. It can just as easily become a cancer that sacrifices everything important about human experience to an obsession with "progress" and high-tech for its own sake, without addressing the questions of what is put at risk and whether we can afford the price, collectively.

Two things made me think about this today. The first was an interview on CBC with Tim Flannery, the author of The Weather Makers. The other was the quote, below, by Ghandi. Both have inspired me to shore up my committment to that small voice, inside, that tells me I write for more than just the slogans on the punchier buttons, however much fun they are, and that having some deeper questions in the mix is not something to be shy about or even ashamed of, in this current climate of marketing that seems determined to see literature re-tool itself in the shape of thrill-a-minute activities for people unable to digest complex or subtle messages. I believe there are people out there hungry to use more of their brains than the quick-fix entertainment modes require. If there are not, then there should be, because we have some serious challenges ahead of us as a species. And being a science fiction author, I naturally feel entitled to think in terms that grand, no matter how slight my own net contribution. In fact, if we are going to learn how to think in terms of setting limits, not exceeding them, we all need to feel empowered to think that way.

When asked whether an independent India would follow the British pattern of development, Mahatma Ghandi replied, "It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve this prosperity. How many planets would a country like India require?" The challenge of addressing the seemingly contradictory objectives of environmental conservation and economic development is particularly urgent in tropical countries, which often have both high biodiversity and some of the world's lowest standards of living." Cited as lead quote by TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR newsletter in a mail out April 2006.

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