Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky.From her Q & A with Joel Cunningham at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:
In some ways, I think of the book as an optimistic apocalypse novel. It’s very dark at points, but it’s also ultimately hopeful about humanity. Where do you come down on the question? Considering what we’ve been doing to the planet to each other, do you see a hopeful end, or is it sort of wish fulfillment in your book?--Marshal Zeringue
I’m very worried. There’s a [scene] that got cut out of the book where somebody says, “We’ve built an unsustainable economic system on top of an unsustainable ecosystem, and now they’re all collapsing at once.” I could totally see that happening. We had two things that were not tenable, long-term. And the only ironclad law of economics is that if something can’t go on forever, it won’t. Definitely there’s a lot of stuff right now that can’t go on forever. I heard a speech the other day by Kim Stanley Robinson, who’s very concerned about what’s going to happen in the next century to the climate, and the amount of carbon that we’ll still be dumping into the atmosphere, and the giant financial incentives to keep doing that in spite of how terrible it is.
So I’m very concerned, but on the other hand, I do think that, long-term, I have faith in humanity, I think that we’re a really adaptable species. And if you haven’t...[read on]